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• The Professional Chef: Study Guide

Editorial Reviews

Book Description:
“A serious reference for serious cooks.”
-Thomas Keller, Chef and owner, The French Laundry

Named one of the five favorite culinary books of this decade by Food Arts magazine, The Professional Chef® is the classic resource that many of America’s top chefs have relied on to help learn their cooking skills. Now this comprehensive “bible for all chefs” (Paul Bocuse) has been thoroughly revised and expanded to reflect the way people cook and eat today.

The book includes essential information on nutrition, food and kitchen safety, and tools and ingredients, as well as more than 640 classic and contemporary recipes plus variations. One hundred and thirty-one basic recipe formulas illustrate fundamental techniques and guide cooks clearly through every step, from mise en place to finished dishes.

This edition features nearly 650 all-new four-color photographs of fresh food products, step-by-step techniques, and plated dishes taken by award-winning photographer Ben Fink. It explores culinary traditions of the Americas, Asia, and Europe, and includes four-color photographs of commonly used ingredients and maps of all regions. Written “with extreme vigor and precision” (Eric Ripert, Chef and co-owner, Le Bernardin), The Professional Chef® is an unrivaled reference and source of inspiration for the serious cook.

The Culinary Institute of America (Hyde Park, NY, and St. Helena, CA) was founded in 1946. Known as the Harvard of cooking schools and credited with having “changed the way Americans eat” by The James Beard Foundation, the CIA has trained nearly 50,000 foodservice professionals.

Customer Reviews

Worth the Price and Technical Focus by Gavin Way
Excellent book. I don’t get to cook often, but I love it and the science behind it. This book is everything and more you would every need to know for any cooking endeavor. Yes, it is very technically oriented, and the measurements are in awkward amounts, but the awe-inspiring content and recipes makes it a worth-while investment.

the ULTIMATE cookbook by T. Schardt
This cookbook is amazing. Really. I ordered this for my boyfriend’s birthday, and he is the pickiest person I know. He said it’s what he’s always wanted. This book is great for beginners or someone who has been cooking for years. It has great photographs and easy to understand steps. It is divided into cuisine for different parts of the world, and also is divided into various groups of food (including photographs) such as greens, legumes, meats, fruits, vegetabels…with information about how to store, cut, simmer—anything you want. It’s all in here. (My boyfriend was excited about the cuts of meat that were shown…I was more interested in the vegetarian aspects of it.) Nothing can top this.

The cover is also beautiful

Outstanding Must-Have! by Laura J. Emahiser
Great recipes, very specific cooking and baking methods and explanations. For the professional–or the “wannabe”, I recommend this one to everyone.

A bit disappointed by D. Holt
I have been looking for a book to help me make the leap from a so-so cook to a so-so chef, to be able to create my own dishes and free myself from recipes sometimes. My wife got me this book for Christmas, and while it has some good information on cooking techniques and other basics, it does not really live up to its reputation.

As other reviewers have noted, it is geared towards beginner chefs. This means: 1) people who have almost no knowledge about how cooked food arrives on their plate, 2) those interested in pursuing a career in restaurants. I thought the large scale recipes (gallons of stock; ten servings) wouldn’t be a big problem, but it is much harder to scale down to family size than I thought. The “how-to” info is way too basic; if you watch Alton Brown’s Good Eats on the Food Network regularly, you probably already know most of what is in the book, and Alton gives much more in depth knowledge, I think.

The book is more useful as an encyclopedia of food: sections on world cuisines and their central ingredients; breakdowns of meat cuts, fish varieties, grains, pastas, etc. and their properties and best uses. Stock and sauce making are particularly good sections also. For $44 I would say it is okay, but I don’t think it is worth the full cover price. For that, get Good Eats on DVD.

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