Teen Chef: Basic

Cooking is one of those life skills that changes everything for anyone once they learn it.  It makes access to nutritious food easier, it keeps costs down and it means never having to rely one anyone else for a full belly.  So what better way to learn how to cook, than to do it in a professional kitchen, instead of watching videos on a phone that never really sink in. That’s what Teen Chef does for your kids.

Our Teen Chef Basic program runs four consecutive Saturday afternoons where your teens will work with our Chefs, building real skills from the ground up.

Over the course of the program, your teen will go from learning how to hold a knife and set up a workstation, to making fresh pasta dough by hand, poaching eggs with confidence, and putting together composed dishes and sauces that would hold their own at any dinner table.

It’s practical, it’s hands-on, and every session ends with everyone sitting down to eat what they’ve made together.

Curriculum

September 12 | Mise en Place 101
“Mise en place” is a French term that basically means “get your stuff together before you start cooking,” and it’s the first thing every professional chef learns for a reason. This class covers proper knife technique, station setup, and pantry fundamentals, because once you know how to use a knife properly and organize your workspace, everything that follows gets easier.

September 19 | Salads & Dressings
This one sounds like our least fun session, but it’s more interesting than you’d think. Not only do our young chefs get to practice the knife skills they picked up in Mise en Place, but this class also covers all kinds of fun dressing creations. Teens learn to build a vinaigrette by taste, make creamy emulsion dressings from scratch, and put together a composed salad that works as a real meal.

September 26 | Breakfast Cookery
By week three, your teen has two weeks of real kitchen skills under their belt, and this is where they start putting it all together. This session is all about eggs, and there’s a reason professional chefs consider the egg the ultimate test of technique. Your teen will learn to poach, scramble, and fry with precision, build a classic eggs benny from scratch, and plate it alongside sides that bring everything together into a breakfast worth sitting down for.

October 3 | Starch Cookery
Starches are the backbone of almost every meal your teen will ever cook, whether that’s a Tuesday night pasta or a holiday dinner. This final session teaches them how to work with the ingredients they’ll reach for most often in life, and by the end of it they’ll be so comfortable working with starches that they’ll be making fresh pasta dough by hand, building an impressive potato gratin, and turning out truffle gnocchi that sounds like it belongs on a restaurant menu, but is built on techniques they can carry through life.