This second in a two-part series on teaching culinary arts through ratios in practical culinary labs focuses on incorporating ratios into your lesson plan.

By John Reiss, CEC, CCE

In my previous article, I wrote about using ratios in professional culinary training. Here, I focus on the ratios themselves and how to incorporate them into your lesson plan.

Ratios in Professional Cooking
As professional chefs and culinary educators, we use ratios that might be explicit or subtle. On one hand, for example, we know that a pilaf is 2:1, vinaigrette is 3:1 and a roux is 1:1.

On the other hand, there are ratios that we apply instinctively and without much thought. We “know,” for example, the amount of water needed to prepare a stock, or the amount of salt we should add to water when preparing pasta.

Knowing ratios like these streamlines the cooking process and creates speed and efficiency—both valuable commodities in the kitchen—where time is of the essence. It’s also liberating to have ratios like these at our fingertips, because they provide a zone in which we can channel our creativity in developing techniques and methods.

The National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation unveils the most comprehensive restaurant-industry workforce study in decades. Among findings were average annual salaries for chefs and cooks and restaurant managers.

Nine out of 10 restaurant employees say they are proud to work in the restaurant industry, while three-quarters believe the industry offers them a strong career path and upward mobility, according to a new workforce study released in August by the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (NRAEF).

As the most extensive research of the restaurant sector workforce in decades, “Who Works in the U.S. Restaurant Industry” details the opinions of nearly 5,100 Americans who currently work or formerly worked in the industry, as well as those who own or operate restaurants.

“This landmark research finds that employees and owners/operators have a decidedly positive perception of our industry and believe extensive career choices and opportunities for advancement are readily available,” said Dawn Sweeney, president and chief executive officer of the National Restaurant Association (NRA) and NRAEF. “This study offers fresh and compelling insight into why so many Americans choose to chart their careers in the restaurant industry, how they advance and why so many plan to stay until they retire.”

Hosted by Le Cordon Bleu North America and taking place on the West Coast for the first time, successful candidates will join an elite group of only 67 chefs in the United States.

Eleven chefs from across the nation are preparing to take the ultimate culinary test—the American Culinary Federation’s (ACF) Certified Master Chef® (CMC) exam. The eight-day exam will be held Oct. 26-Nov. 2 at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Los Angeles, Pasadena, Calif.

Among the 11, four are foodservice educators. They are

• Timothy Bucci, CEC, CCE, CHE, culinary-arts instructor, Joliet Junior College, Joliet, Ill.
• Kevin Quinn, CEC, lead chef instructor, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Austin, Texas
• Daryl Shular, CEC, director of education/executive chef, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Atlanta, Tucker, Ga.
• Randy Torres, CEC, AAC, chef instructor, Oregon Coast Culinary Institute, Coos Bay, Ore.

As Tater Tots® hit the Big 60, the Idaho Potato Commission celebrates six decades of tot-inspired menu creativity.

When Tater Tots® began arriving in grocery stores in 1954, they quickly caught on as a snack food, a side dish and the foundation for casseroles at dinner tables across America. (Tater Tots are a registered trademark of Ore-Ida, a division of the H.J. Heinz Company).

Across the next 60 years, foodservice operators capitalized on tot popularity, enthusiastically integrating them into menus ranging from quick service to white tablecloth. As these bite-sized potato croquettes officially move into middle age, the Idaho Potato Commission (IPC) salutes the tot as both an inspired potato product and a springboard for potato creativity.

A popular Louisiana-style restaurant goes from roadside stand to Cajun cuisine sensation.

True tastes of the bayou are surfacing throughout the South, and Cajun Steamer Bar & Grill is happy to take the blame.

For years, co-founder Jeff Thompson has been pouring his Cajun heart and soul into the growing chain of restaurants, but he admits that it all began from his own selfish interest.

When Thompson moved to Birmingham from Louisiana in the early 1990s, his first order of business was to assess the local dining scene. That’s when he discovered a glaring void that made it virtually impossible for him to call Alabama home.

“There was no Cajun food at all, and I just can’t live without my crawfish!” Thompson says, laughing through his thick Louisiana drawl. “It was either do something about it or go home. This was a deal-killer.”

Thompson took matters into his own hands, setting up a modest roadside stand and selling crawfish from the back of a trailer hooked up to his truck. It was anything but fancy, but his winning formula of fresh seafood sold at reasonable prices proved that the market was ready for authentic Cajun cuisine.

“It was pretty simple—just a couple of tables and some umbrellas—but you wouldn’t believe how excited people here got over it,” Thompson says. “It was as if I had introduced them to a whole new culture, like they’d never had crawfish before—not the fresh kind, anyway. That little stand still brings back fond memories for me; it still brings a smile to my face when I think about all the people I met. That’s when I could start calling Birmingham home.”