The Professional Chef

I am a self-taught home chef. Despite learning much on my own over the years, I wanted slightly more information on technique and skill than can often be seen in cooking videos and TV shows. In comes "The Professional Chef" by the Culinary Institute of America, or CIA. Since this book also serves as the CIA's text book, be warned, it is 1200 pages long. It is heavy and you'll definitely get a work out carrying it around. That aside, it is a stunningly beautiful book. It is filled with pages of incredibly useful information, such as various cooking methods, different proteins and their cuts, how to identify grains and spices, how to cook what, and so much more - really, everything you need to know. There are gorgeous illustrations to go along with the charts given, which makes it very easy to follow along and keep it all straight. Additionally, the back half of the book gives you recipe after recipe on basics all the way to complicated dishes. Keep in mind, since this is a text book, the recipes are scaled for 10 servings or more. So, if you are using this to cook for large parties, it's GREAT. If you don't need to cook for more than yourself and one other person, be prepared to learn how to scale down (learning is never a bad thing). I absolutely love this book and can't recommend it enough. Considering the amount of information and the size of the book, the price really can't be beat. Perfect for the chef-in-training or someone, like me, just looking to hone and enhance their knowledge.

A must have ,a beautiful book

Comprehensive Western cuisine cooking textbook. It’s a very good material for self-teaching.

I am an avid and fairly accomplished home cook. I learned about this book in a cooking class when the teacher brought it to show some of the illustrations. It looked good so I sent for my own copy. Wow! Am I glad I did. This very heavy (1200+ pages) book might require assistance to carry around but you will never need another cookbook to answer all your questions. The Professional Chef is the go to reference for all things culinary from filleting fish to making bread, pastries and desserts and everything in between. Cooking theory is explained in clear and understandable terms so that you know why certain substitutions work better than others and why certain ratios need to be maintained for ultimate results. Any cooking technique I have ever attempted, heard of and many I have never heard of are included with detailed explanations and photos. The book is full of excellent photos of many of the processes it explains/teaches and provides step by step guidance to cooks at all levels of achievement and knowledge. The myriad of recipes it contains are extremely varied ranging from home style favorites to the ultimate gourmet level and all the classics included. I am blown away with how wonderfully thorough this book is and I know I will be using it more than all my other 500 cookbooks combined. It is a must for every serious cook's library. If you only have room at home for one cookbook, make it this one. If you need to make room, get rid of some others because The Professional Chef will cover everything the old ones did and ten times more. This book is great!

This book is a comprehensive text that serves as a lighthouse for technical cooks and aspiring chefs. Most of the text covers basic-through-advanced cooking techniques and concepts that improve cooking skills at a fundamental level. Additionally, advanced skills are also taught thoroughly with high-quality images. Recipes are also included but are not the main focus of the book. The Culinary Institute of America is an amazing school and this book reinforces that notion.

I bought this book a few years ago when I was starting to work in a kitchen. I started out as a dishwasher, but was eventually moving into prep, so I got this book. My Sous Chef at the time recommended it since it is the book from CIA, where he attended back in New York. This book has recipes, but it is not the highlight of the book, so if that is what you are after then I would look elsewhere. This is a book that is used at the Harvard for culinary schools, and it covers all the basics. You will learn about all the equipment and tools you use in a professional kitchen, about basic stocks and sauces, and a bunch else. There are a few pages in the beginning that actually cover the food groups. For example it will talk about flat fish and list off different breeds, or legumes, herbs, etc and show examples. Or another example would be beef, and then it will talk about each different cut and their application. If you are a home cook who wants to up your game, or a starting our fresh cook this is a great book to go to. I still have this book on my shelf.

If you're looking to become, as the title suggests, a professional chef, or even if you're trying to become a true master of the home kitchen, this is an invaluable reference to add to your library. But before you buy, you should know what it is and what it isn't. Let's start with what it isn't. It isn't an organized step-by-step course that will take the reader from beginner to advanced. In fact, it's not organized by skill level at all, but rather by topic. As a reference, that's for the best. If you're trying to learn from the very beginning, though, it might be a bit beyond you. It's also not written for the home cook. As the title says, it's meant for aspiring professional chefs, so the techniques, recipes, and quantities presented are intended for the restaurant setting rather than the home setting. It's easy to convert the quantities and most of the techniques are similar enough that it shouldn't be a problem even for the home cook, but it does add an extra step to your preparation. And now for what the book is. What it is, is over 1,200 pages of nearly (but not quite) everything you need to know to become an accomplished chef. It's beautifully illustrated throughout, covers the basics of countless techniques, and includes hundreds of recipes on which to hone your culinary skills. It's encyclopedic in its scope and contains almost anything you might need to learn about in the kitchen. In fact, I wouldn't really recommend reading this book straight through cover-to-cover (though that's exactly what I did). Rather, I'd read the chapters relevant to whatever you're trying to learn as you're trying to learn it. Are you trying to learn about all the different cuts of meat you can get from a cow or pig? Chapter 6 has everything you need to know. Want to master the art of sauces? Turn to Chapter 13. And so forth. Ideally, you'd keep this book in your library and use it as necessary, either in conjunction with a cooking course, a more step-by-step cookbook, or as a trusty reference to which you can always turn as you expand your culinary abilities.

This is a wonderful book IF you understand what you are getting: the Culinary Institute of America’s textbook. If you are looking for a cookbook this book can frustrate you by requiring one, two or three prior recipes to complete the one you are interested in. Why would it do this? Skill building. Learning by building knowledge a few bricks at a time. This is a book about learning. This is perhaps best described as a passionate lifelong cook’s knowledge reservoir book not a cookbook. When I was in college, fresh off a Texas farm, I was going crazy in an apartment with nothing to do with my hands! I was my farmer father’s fabricator. I built things. My brother was and is the farmer-mechanic. I bought a guided tutorial on cooking in my first semester I loved it! It taught me to build successively more complex dishes and meals. That is what this book does! If you do not have the drive to use your hands and learn through trial and error? Ummm, ya’ may want to find a cookbook. This is a book that requires some commitment to diving in and learning over a significant mount of time. Now as a retiree who unexpectedly is a house husband to his wife? Well, I love this book!! Oh, I also now intimately, experientially know what my mother’s statement, “A woman’s work is never done!” means. WOW! I was an idiot kid…..