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Sauce Chef--A Day in the Life

by Kirk Bangstad
kirk.bangstad@culinaryartsschoolreview.com
Culinary Arts School Review Columnist

What if your job was spending every day creating sweet and savory sauces to complement entrèes and hors d’oeuvres?

If you were a sauce chef, your day might look something like this:

• Upon arriving for work, run through the various courses for the evening with the executive chef
• Stock your line with the appropriate bases, thickeners, spices, and other ingredients
• Make first batches of most of the sauces, and make more as needed throughout the course of the evening
• After finishing for the evening, clean your area and tools, and take an inventory needed items for the next day

If you enjoy cooking and creating, becoming a sauce chef might be the perfect career for you.

A Sauce Chef’s Education

Getting a comprehensive chef education at a culinary school is imperative in today’s competitive restaurant industry. Many fine dining establishments won’t even consider an applicant who hasn’t graduated from a notable culinary school, and part of any good chef education is time spent in a kitchen learning how real-world kitchens work. If you can’t even get your foot in the door without a culinary school degree, your ultimate chef education may be incomplete.

Once in culinary school, you’ll learn about different areas of cooking. You’ll take your turn as a sauce chef, vegetable chef, and meat chef, among other specialties. Many students ultimately find the sauce chef job to be the most interesting. Making a sumptuous sauce can be the most creative aspect of cooking a meal, and what differentiates that meal in the eyes of a customer. In fact, sauciers are considered the third highest position in a restaurant under the executive chef and sous chef. If you like the idea of concocting the perfect sauce, perhaps it’s time to enroll in a culinary school near you!

Sources

Sauce Chef High on the Totem Pole
Wikipedia

Kirk Bangstad is a singer living in Chicago, IL. Having received his B.A. in Government at Harvard, Kirk previously worked as a management consultant.