/ck/ - Food & Cooking

[Anonymous No.4393609]

how many of you bros are professional cooks of any level?
>inb4 culinary school faggots with 0 real experience come through to give us all protips

[Anonymous No.4393611]

>>4393609

I've cooked professionally. Right now I'm a sales rep, though.

>mfw culinary school kids act like they're gordon ramsay

[Anonymous No.4393612]

I have no training or restaurant experience.

I like to think of myself as a god damn fantastic cook though, at least at home. Friends like my cooking and give me praise so that's cool I guess.

[Anonymous No.4393614]

>>4393612

[Anonymous No.4393616]

>>4393614
thats my favorite cat picture you make me sad

[Anonymous No.4393626]

>>4393612
great contribution. let me know when you're all caught up on rachel ray episodes nigger

[Anonymous No.4393628]

>>4393626
>elitism in /ck/
>way2bedgybrah
>mfwihavenoface

[Anonymous No.4393629]

>>4393626

>rachael ray

hahahaha

ahahahaha

HAHAHAHAHDAFAS

[Anonymous No.4393630]

i cooked in retirement homes for about 130 old fuckers for like 3 years

[Anonymous No.4393636]

>>4393630
how miserable was that? did they at least have decent food?

[Anonymous No.4393638]

It's not so bad actually. But it depends entirely on the facility. Some places i had only garbage to work with, other places had pretty top class kitchens.

[Anonymous No.4393643]

>>4393609
god that image makes me sick

[Anonymous No.4393644]

i only come here to find things like string cheese egg rolls
why the fuck would a professional cook be here

[Anonymous No.4393647]

>>4393644

boredom

to laugh at all the plebs

[Anonymous No.4393681]

In my own mind a cook is someone who can make staple dishs or follow a recipe. Chefs are people who know why things need to be prepared and cooked a certain way, and can replicate them perfectly every time.

I fancied myself a chef and went to school but after i brushing off mushrooms and making dishes that would be at home in the 1970's i regret wasting the money.

[Anonymous No.4393755]

Very low level. I don't have formal culinary training.

I cook, bake, and prep salads at an upscale retirement community. It's in the top fifty long term continuing care facilities in the country, and the typical starting down payment for their basic packages is something like half a million dollars.

I got started in the kitchen because I started on waitstaff, but ultimately bonded with my superiors because we all enjoy cooking and eating good food. We have this brick, wood burning oven that we prepare specials in using single-serving cast iron dishes, and I took extra time to help brainstorm and tinker with recipes to make in them.

Our food quality overall is pretty meh, but we're mainly held back by two things: corporate standards and the inability to use much (if any) salt on our food. Our recipes are put together by a corporate chef, and they're fucking ridiculous. A chicken soup recipe for two hundred might call for ten pounds of carrots, and two pounds of chicken. Many of the recipes yield disastrous results if followed, most are downright confusing. They'll refer to ingredients in the instructions that weren't listed to begin with. Seasoning is minimal. We're all smart enough to work around them though. It's not rocket science. But there's a caveat: we have a few health-conscious vegan and vegetarian residents who are on a nutrition board. They say that when we don't follow the corporate recipes, we're "lying" to the residents about their meals, and that's wrong. So now we have to follow most of them to a t, although we still doctor up the really bad ones. There's been a marked change in the quality of our food, so we keep telling the other residents who are dissatisfied to speak up about it and keep writing comment cards. Hopefully enough of them being made unhappy by the demands of a persnickety few can affect change.

On the bright side, specials can be whatever we want because they're not on the menu. We have fun with that at least.

[Anonymous No.4393813]

>>4393643
Me too, I never knew people could puke that much in one sitting.

[Anonymous No.4393823]

>>4393609
jesus it's like she's hiding a fucking beanbag chair under her shirt

[Anonymous No.4393844]

Not a cook or a chef just a refugee from /b/ that decided to stop eating frozen/boxed/fast foods. My goal isn't to be a chef but only to rise above bachelor chow.

been going pretty good. I don't buy premade crap anymore, and i rarely eat out. Ive lost a little weight and rediscovered flavors. My skills are not great but i can follow most any recipe now. I try and branch out into new things every now and again. I come to /ck/ for some laughs, some cringes, some support, and some inspiration.

[Anonymous No.4393883]

>>4393755
>Seasoning is minimal.
Someone from a lifespan development background needs to go talk to corporate, at their age their taste buds are already going down the tube, do they not want them to taste anything?

sage cause off topic

[Anonymous No.4393896]

>>4393609
Pumping out meals a million miles an hour, can take the love out of it. Remember to always be passionate about your master pieces. Stay calm, Because there is always shit fucking up one way or another. Large kitchens are a stressful environment with stuff going every which way, Being organized is crucial. Most importantly Kitchens are about team work. Good luck Op

[Anonymous No.4393904]

>>4393896

Forgot to mention I did five years in 5 star restaurants. 10 years cooking in total. I'm 24 :/

[Anonymous No.4393924]

>>4393611
They always fucking do. I've worked in the food service industry since I was 15. I'm 22 now, I'm going to culinary school once I get a couple more years under my belt. They know absolutely fucking nothing. They think being a chef is glamorous. Bull fucking shit

[Anonymous No.4393928]

>>4393609
Are there brand that actually cook pizza this big ?

[Anonymous No.4393954]

I am the executive chef at a local Applebee's and before that I was a sous chef at an Olive Garden for 8 years.

feels good to be among my peers, brah

[Anonymous No.4393988]

I cook at a award winning brewery. Never trained and I was recommended by the sue chef. Rich people are our regular clients and because of them I have come to despise people who alter shit on the menu.

[Totemo Kawai !!n6Fx2e4DTXE No.4394002]

I staged at the French Laundry and El Bulli before finishing week 2 of knife skills. Thomas Keller was really impressed by my brunwah.

[Anonymous No.4394073]

>>4393928
Could be a Costco pizza.

[Anonymous No.4394075]

>>4393609

i've seen this pic so many times and each time i see it it still disgusts me. I feel the same way about that pic with with the hamplanet chowing down on a whole fucking block of cheese.

[Anonymous No.4394080]

>>4393883

Dude, I'm with you.

I understand going easy on sodium and spicy stuff. But simple things like herbs or mild spices are called for in as minimalistic amounts as possible.

It makes so many residents unhappy. They come up to me and say, 'look. I'm eighty-ninety-some years old. I just wanna eat.'

We get to have fun with our specials, like I said. And it shows that the residents have more fun with them too. Some nights the main dinner entrees and sides won't get touched, and we'll sell out of all of the specials because they are made to actual taste instead of to some corporate model.

[Anonymous No.4394082]

>>4394075

It amazes me that republicans can spend all this time worrying about gays sticking their dicks in each other behind closed doors, but nothing is done about these obeasts who waddle around in full view of the public and make me lose my appetite the second they open their mouth and try to talk as they strain to breathe.

Land whales need to be banned, on a federal level, and I fully support a constitutional amendment for this. I'm sure it would only cost a couple of billion, a drop in the bucket, to create a fleet of slaughter ships and hire some unemployed forklift drivers to get them all moved to Africa or Papua New Guinea where they can be devoured by starving natives.

[Anonymous No.4394085]

are you faggot telling me there 15 yr olds cooking my food

[Anonymous No.4394089]

>>4394082

>obeasts

all of my lols

[Anonymous No.4394112]

did almost 2 years working at a college kitchen, about 6 months at a greasy spoon & now im 2 weeks in at a fine dining italian restaurant

[Anonymous No.4394122]

>>4393681
"Chef" is an earned rank/title. People do what you said chefs do all the time without training, as home cooks. It's more of a personality/mindset/perspective/etc. thing which determines how someone will go about it. Those things you say chefs do are what some *people* in general do and are interested in doing naturally/on their own time. I have many years of cooking daily with quality ingredients and fairly "exotic" dishes I've learned about from distant email pals, /ck/, youtube, and hours upon hours of food porn gazing and then researching the photos. It's a hobby to me. For many it's a chore, which takes the fun out of it as well as the potential for passion.

[Anonymous No.4394128]

>>4393755
>Seasoning is minimal.
That's so cruel, old people have been trough enough shit, they don't need to be tortured anymore

[Anonymous No.4394161]

>>4394128
my dad is 82 and he tells me not to season food strongly, even the smell bothers him

[Anonymous No.4394164]

>>4394128
Many old people, in care facilities, have lost their taste and don't notice seasonings as much as texture.

[Anonymous No.4394308]

Not like most restaurant cooks are all that decent anyway.

[Anonymous No.4394333]

>>4393954
Applebee's. I've heard they don't even have ovens there. And make mashed potatoes from a box.

[Anonymous No.4394351]

>>4393630
>>4393755
I am in the same boat as you. I only work in my retirement home during breaks from the university but when I come back it is so sad because we can't do anything without the old people bitching.

[Anonymous No.4394357]

>>4393609
My favorite part about this picture, for some reason, is the bottle of ranch the blob is unwrapping.

[Anonymous No.4394370]

I worked at Domino's when I was a teenager.

I was a professional cook by definition.

[Anonymous No.4394386]

>>4393609

I cooked for money in a crab shack/ jimmy buffet themed biker bar one summer. Just generic American Bar food plus Baltimore seafood stuff, crab cakes and soft crabs mostly.

[Ixzigrizix No.4394972]

line cook/ sous chef here.worked high volume fine dining in new Orleans and California.
Specializing in sauté and grill
Not as cool as it seems, 10-12 hours no breaks 100 degrees plus, waiters who don't know shit and talk back cause they are pampered collage students frequently. 2nd degree burns are an expected and frequent event and when there are only 2-3 people cooking for 150-250 people in 4 hours. With an average of 25 to 40 dishes devided between 7-20 seperate tickets each plate with seperately cooked to order meat sauce starch and veg. A lot of time with only six burners and when you have one filet for one person one ticket thets three seperate sauté pans on your six burner for one dish and you have 12 more that need to come out at the same time in coordination with the other cooks dishes and make sure the meat has tested for the right amount of time so that it will come to the projected temp.
But if you're not up for chaos and stress and 60 hours a week you probs wanna work at a grocery store