The Professional Chef

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 edition is the most comprehensive book for an aspiring chef, a novice cook or someone who just entered the workforce in a professional, industrial or any commercial kitchen. This book is for you. I have worked in restaurants for many years, and was accepted and got a new job in an industrial kitchen for a grocery store. As health and food safety standards are always met, especially working and dealing with all food items that are organic. This book is vital to learn new skills in the kitchen, and hone it as your perfect it while producing recipes and serving food to the public. It has everything that you need to know the basics of what a professional chef should know, explore, learn and use it. This is probably one of the best textbooks that has been updated for today's chefs and cooks. I liked how each chapters explains it clearly and concisely. The Kindle version is the same of the hardbound book, but of course, this is not heavy. Great resource, and easy to learn.

This book is a must have for the aspiring chef and even professionals alike! I wanted to wait a while before writing this review to be able to give an honest opinion on it. It is very well written and that not only goes for the theory part but also when describing techniques it goes into detail from start to finish. I read other reviews about how others keep this book in their kitchens all the time, I can tell you that you will too! It starts with the very basics in the kitchen, then ingredients are described and it is explained on how they are used. From there you work with the foundation of all the dishes and how flavors are achieved and then you get into the recipes that are just wonderful. The book has some basics on baking and as you know that is another realm in itself, but regardless the bit that is in there is highly informative. Why continue reading reviews, get to ordering your book today! You will not be disappointed that's for sure. Buon Appetit!

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.

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

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…..

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.

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.

Un ouvrage très réussi , complet , organiser, bref une superbe acquisition ! Ce livre s'adresse à tous publics , cuisinier amateur et apprentis professionnel !

Knowledgeable book

Libro fantastico, io già lo avevo, l'ho comprato negli stai Uniti e ora l'ho regalato a uno dei miei cuochi, una vera bibbia!!!! Amazon ha confermato il servizio impeccabile anche perché precedentemente avevo ordinato erroneamente un libro che ha lo stesso titolo ma non è altro che quello è egli esercizi, insomma me l'hanno fatto restituire anche passato più di un mese e mi hanno rimandato i soldi!! Quindi fare attenzione quello con la copertina arancione e che costa un po' di meno è il libro degli esercizi anche se la descrizione prodotto e identica

O livro é muito bom! São mais de mil páginas em papel de ótima qualidade e com inúmeras fotos lindas! Além de algumas receitas clássicas, o livro tem guia para escolher e para reconhecer vários tipos de alimentos, e também comenta como eles são comumente utilizados na cozinha. É bem dividido em tipos de comida, por exemplo sopas, massas e etc. Uma coisa que gostei é que eles colocam as medidas tanto na medida americana como no sistemas internacional (gramas, ppr exemplo). Vale bem a compra!

When you receive this book you will be acutely aware that you have bought yourself a textbook not a cookbook. It is not fun, artistic, or poetic but it is extremely to the point and extremely useful and you will get way more than your $50 worth of information from this book. If you are willing to feel like you are back in school and you really want to learn how to cook this is the book to buy. Cookbook writers like Julia Child or Marcella Hazan give you lots of technique information but it is still not enough to really understand what you are doing. First you need to read this book. It seems to me that the recipes are basic mother recipes that a creative chef would build upon. The recipes seem straight forward with relatively short ingredient lists but there are no friendly discussions about all the things that could potentially go wrong, like Julia Child would provide, and I do miss that. The biggest inconvenience is that the quantities are referenced by weight so it might say 2oz of sugar and I have no idea how much that is. If you want to compare other cookbook recipes with their recipes you will probably need a calculator. I suppose professionals have to obsess over standardizing their recipes so they come out the same every time but a home cook probably doesn't care and can't be bothered to weigh everything. Or maybe this book will convince me that I should be weighing everything - I don't know. Maybe you should make a recipe in the standardized way at least once before you start throwing things in the pan willy nilly like you see the people on TV doing - everything is a handful of this and a pinch of that. Anyway, so far I love this book and I highly recommend it.