First of all, let us try to define what a chef is. According to Wikipedia (the internet free encyclopedia), a chef is a person who cooks professionally. In a professional kitchen setting, the term is used extensively for the one person in charge of everyone else in the kitchen, the executive chef.

Let me recap what the above statements say. A chef is a professional who cooks professionally. Did you see the terms “professional” and “cook professionally”? That’s right, a chef prepares meals and food in a professional manner. But what do you mean by professional? How does that different from, let’s say, someone whose interest is in cooking (you maybe?) or your grand mom or even your mom who does a good job in cooking? Do you consider yourself, your grand mom and even your mom to be a chef?

To answer the above question, let us first define what a professional is. A professional is someone who works in a specific type of occupation referred to as a profession. Field such as teaching and nursing are also referred to as a profession. A profession has the following characteristic:

• It requires mastery of a specialized body of knowledge and an extensive period of training.
• It provides a service to society.
• It maintains high standards of conduct and competency for its members.
• It offers its members opportunities to become certified or licensed and to be active in professional organizations.
• It asks members to be committed to lifelong learning or continue study.

Therefore, from the above definitions of a professional, do your grand mom and your mom master a specialized body of knowledge and go through an extensive training in culinary arts? Do they provide culinary services to the society? Do they maintain high standard of conduct and competency in culinary art for its members? Well, the answer to these questions are obviously a resounding no. In short, we can clearly see the differences between a casual cook such as your grand mom or mom and a professional chef.

A chef is a professional who meets the above requirements of a profession by being service-oriented and having a body of knowledge, code of conduct (from the American Culinary Federation), certification programs and lifelong learning.

In fact, being a chef now is more than just cooking and preparing food which is what people are usually thinking about. In the current competitive world, a professional chef does more than what is usually being done in the kitchen. Aside from carrying out common kitchen activities such as cooking and baking, a professional chef needs to be well-versed in management, marketing, finance, communications, purchasing in order to gain a competitive edge. Skills such as financial reporting, computer techniques, menu costing and menu development are indispensable and important for a professional chef.

In conclusion, being a chef is not an easy task in today’s world. It is a profession which requires more than just ordinary culinary skills. So are you ready to take these challenges by becoming a chef? If you do, then move on to explore more topics on chef by reading the articles below.

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