Helping out her group, Isabella Ornelas, ’26, mixes the chocolate chip cookie dough preparing to roll it out. Photo taken by Stephanie Romeo
South Salem High School offers a wide variety of culinary classes for students. Its culinary program consists of Food Essentials, Culinary Arts I and II, IB Food Science, Culinary Leadership, Restaurant Management and Culinary Fundamentals.
Different Application of Culinary Skills at South
Food Essentials exposes students to beginner cooking skills and a basic introduction to using commercial kitchen equipment. Culinary Arts I and II are intermediate classes in which students get introduced to the restaurant industry by making menus and serving customers. IB food science is a college-level class that is composed of four units: agriculture, food preservation and packaging, organoleptic properties and sensory, digestion and macros. Students are doing heavy hands-on work in food labs.
Culinary Leadership learns management strategies for the hospitality industry, helps with events, supports student learning in the classroom, provides service to staff throughout the building with pop-up deliveries and raises money for the program. Restaurant management has many of the same requirements that Culinary Leadership has in addition to taking inventory of products and shopping for classes and events.
Culinary Fundamentals is a class that is between the levels of Food Essentials and Culinary I. Students are doing much of the same skills that are applied in Food Essentials but are gradually cooking more and learning more difficult skills.
“I am Not Planning On Pursuing Culinary So Why Should I Join?”
Enrolling in a culinary class can be beneficial to students even if they are not planning to pursue a culinary future. Students get to learn valuable kitchen skills such as proper food handling, cleanup procedures, utensil care, communication, time management, problem solving, critical thinking, respect, teamwork and customer service. Taking the culinary arts course allows students to cook alongside experienced professionals while also creating foods using knives, flames and creative chemistry. Some of the things prepared in the class are appetizers, salads, soups, entrees and deserts.
South’s Culinary Teachers Wish to Teach New Skills
One of the culinary teachers, Amy Bofto, has been teaching Food Essentials and Culinary Fundamentals for six years. Bofto starts all of her classes teaching food safety, sanitation and room safety. In class she likes to focus on professional skills, such as time management, communication, reliability, conflict resolution and personal management.
“Skills we focus on are knife skills, baking techniques, dry heat versus moist heat cooking and many more,” Bofto said.
My favorite part of teaching culinary is watching students develop their skills and grow in confidence. Everyone comes to class with different cooking backgrounds and it’s really fun to watch students learn and grow. I also enjoy that students are able to move around and do some hands-on learning,
Bofto said.
Chef Laura Hofer, the other culinary teacher, has been teaching culinary for eight years. She teaches Food Essentials, Culinary Arts I and II, IB Food Science, Culinary Leadership and Restaurant Management. Her favorite part about teaching culinary to students is working with students.
The kids! Working with high school students is so fun,
Hofer said.
Hofer also gives the opportunity for students to become a part of a leadership program that she offers. To become a part of the leadership program students must be approved by Hofer.
I’ve been doing leadership with Chef for three years now. I kind of decided to join just for fun. I was like, I’ll try it and then I slowly got to understand how it worked and the background of it instead of just being in the class and I started coming out more of my comfort level and started helping people out and talking more to people. The more I did it, I figured out that being and taking a leadership position is something that comes naturally to me and I thought it was something that I could never do. I was always too scared, but then I was like, oh this is really fun, and I’ve really enjoyed it,”
Miguel Orozco, ’24, said.
