Culinary Arts – A Brief Discussion

Culinary Arts is simply defined as the practice of food preparation. I cannot think of any definition simpler than that. However — and as simple as it may seem, Culinary Arts is a broad topic that needs to be divided into chunks for everyone to fully digest.

What is Culinary Arts?

Culinary Arts is anything related to food. This includes food preparation, Menu Planning, Food styling or designing edible art, diet and nutrition, hotel kitchen and restaurant management (this is also considered as Culinary Management), and even Food Photography. These are just a few of the countless areas that can be tied to Culinary Arts.

Of all the areas or topic related to Culinary Arts, food preparation is considered to be the most associated. To validate this statement, please allow me to ask you a question. What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear the word Culinary Arts? You might have thought of a nicely arranged plate, or perhaps a person preparing a meal. Has someone thought of a delightful chocolate cake, or a hot apple pie (this exercise is making me hungry)? I know that you get the idea.

Science Behind Culinary Arts

Basically, Culinary Arts mainly deals with food preparation. However, this is not just another way to prepare or cook food — there is a science that goes with it. You might be asking — “What? I thought that this only involves the Arts, how did science got into the equation?” Pardon me if you hate science (this is also not my forte), but hey — there is still the Art part. I guess that it will be better if we concentrate on Art for the meantime, and keep the science at the back of our heads until there is a need for it.

Seriously, the science part can be well understood once you take a formal education in Culinary Arts. In every restaurant or hotel kitchen, a group of people (that wears tall hats) can be seen roaming around. These individuals or called Chefs (and the hats that they wear are called Toques). These people are considered as experts in the field of Culinary Arts. By the way, we all know what a chef is — right? Did you know that there are still hierarchy and divisions in this profession? I won’t spill the beans yet. We’ll discuss that topic in our future posts. Let’s concentrate on culinary Arts for now.

Becoming a Chef is not that easy. A formal education in Culinary Arts is necessary to be on the top of your game (this is where the science part comes in) – although there are still self taught chefs. This is also applicable to other roles related to Culinary Arts.

We can elaborate more on everything about Culinary Arts in our next posts. My purpose for writing this article is to connect all the readers. Once in a while, I get emails asking questions about Culinary Arts. I know that there are chefs and Culinary Arts professionals reading this blog. Since we are also a community, I thought of linking everyone together (through your comments) so that we can help each other. You can post questions, while qualified individuals can answer them.