Where To Start: Part 2

Trade schools are becoming more and more popular among those that wish to begin a career as quickly as possible, but there are pros and cons to choosing a trade school as your means to getting your credentials. Let's take a quick look at them.

Pros It is much cheaper than college or culinary institutes You can be certified in less time Condensed classes leave more free time You can work at your own pace You get some hand son experience

Cons You are only accredited in the State in which you trained You still must apprentice somewhere Condensed classes neglect some necessary courses You can work at your own pace (you may rush yourself) You have to buy your own equipment separately

As you can see, trade schools can help you get your certification, but it leaves out a bit of stuff too. All in all, trade schools are great for some people as not everyone can afford to invest the money or the time to a full time college, university or culinary academy.

On-Site Training On-site training is basically when an employer trains you to be a chef in their establishment. The best thing about this type of training is that you generally get paid to do it.

The down side to this is that you are only trained to work for them and you are not accredited. This means that you are not a certified chef. You will not be recognized in the field as a chef either.

Another bad point to this type of training is that if you lose your job, you are back where you started. Training on-site doesn�t make you a chef, it makes you a cook. Without your chef certification, you are not eligible for a chef's wages either. As a cook, you will earn a cook's salary.

A benefit to this type of training is that you will already have a job waiting for you that could elevate you to the pay of a head chef eventually, without having to do all of the studying for it. Just know that trying to change locations will not be a good idea unless you already have a position lined up.

Training on-site can give you plenty of hours in the culinary field if you happen to live in a state that requires a certain number of hours of experience before starting the certification process.

Online Training These days, just about every profession on the market has courses that you can take online. Some of the courses claim to make you accredited, but be very careful and research it thoroughly before parting with any money.

Some of these courses can be as cheap as $19.99, which is an obvious bargain. Of course you must consider that the courses can't really be of any use. You simply can't use an online course manual to learn how to be a chef. You don't get the obvious benefits of hands on learning, and there is no one available to help you if you have any problems.

You don't really have a way to know if you're even preparing meals properly, or I they've turned out right. You might have better luck just reading a cookbook for your qualifications.

Online courses just don't cut the mustard insofar as teaching you to become a real chef. Without a real teacher there to help you along the way, you will not learn anything that you can really use in the work force.

All an online course can do is to give you the basics. It can't really help you get your credentials and certainly not the kind of credentials that will be nationally accredited. All in all, this is a case where you will get exactly what you pay for so let the buyer beware.

Now that you know which type of culinary institute to attend and how to get started our next article is going to cover what type of equipment you will need to obtain. As in any other profession there are tools of the trade and we will help you understand what those tools are when it comes to becoming a chef.