Discover the Next Big Thing in Food as a Research Chef

If you take pride in your unique kitchen creations, train to become a research chef by combining your existing talents with a culinary arts degree.

Culinary Arts in the Laboratory

Love food and cooking - but not restaurant life? Research chefs imagine formulas, hypotheses, and conduct rounds of taste testing. These specialized culinary professionals may work in a test kitchen equipped with graduated cylinders and scientific balances. For research chefs, food can be an art and a science at the same time.

Food Service Depends on Accuracy

For Anne Albertine, the perfect taco is a professional pursuit. Her recipes fill the menus of Taco Bell's 6,500 restaurants. After getting her culinary arts degree, she completed internships before moving into food science. Restaurants like Taco Bell value the ability to create products that can be duplicated efficiently, safely, and easily. Because of this, the process behind making fast food can be slow--for every new product, between 30 and 100 alternative recipes never make it out of the lab.
Anne found that adding innovation to her career training in the culinary arts was simple. One of her successful experiments was a grilled burrito, which held more food while remaining extremely portable. "I'm always looking for a new way to achieve something in a recipe," Anne said in an interview with Occupational Outlook Quarterly. "I love seeing a product go national."

The Culinary Education Gets Scientific

Many culinary arts schools offer courses in food science. Career training in the science of food allows research chefs to better understand flavor profiles and other details that many cooks take for granted.
Source:
Occupational Outlook Quarterly, "You're a What? Research Chef"

Amelia Gray is a teacher and freelance writer in San Marcos, TX. Amelia earned a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from Arizona State University.