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Career Colleges    » Virginia    » Culinary and Hospitality     » Culinary Arts

Virginia Culinary Arts Degrees

Culinary arts Degrees: Virginia Colleges

Looking for accredited career colleges, technical schools, and universities in Virginia offering Culinary Arts degrees. Culinary arts training will make you skilled at food preparation and pave the way for a future as a chef, cook, or caterer.

Virginia is a great state in which to go to college. Virginia college students enjoy close proximity to Washington, D.C., but also the opportunity to live in a more rural or suburban setting. Virginia is home to many colleges and universities. Virginia is still a surprisingly rural state, with tobacco as the primary cash crop. It was the birthplace of our nation, as the very first European settlement in North America was established at Jamestown in 1607. Virginia is a state of contrasts: not only do you have historic Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg, you also find the home of the Pentagon and of Mae East, the major East Coast internet hub. Whether you enjoy hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains, wandering along its beaches, or enjoying a quiet dinner in its many fine restaurants, you are likely to find attending college in Virginia to be an excellent choice.

Virginia Colleges: Culinary Arts Degrees

The best chefs are creative artists whose medium is food. They bring together ingredients in both bold and subtle ways to make delicious edible creations. As with every artistic endeavor, the best culinary artists have something special that cannot be taught, but as is also the case with every artistic endeavor, excelling as a chef requires a great deal of training and skill development.

Education in the culinary arts is available at a variety of levels. A broad range of community-learning centers offer courses that are geared toward amateurs. Some colleges and universities offer more advanced training, some of which focuses especially on the science of food. Most prominently for aspiring professional chefs, there are culinary arts schools that focus exclusively on training professional culinary artists. Typically students at culinary arts schools are working toward an associate degree. In addition to classroom training, most chef training programs involve a strong out-of-classroom component, placing chefs-in-training as interns or apprentices in professional kitchens.

In the best kitchens, there are chefs working a variety of levels and with varying areas of focus. Some chefs specialize in entrees whereas others specialize in pastries and desserts. Some culinary artists focus even more intensely on one type of food, for instance, artisanal breadmakers. Recent graduates of culinary arts schools will begin at a low level in the kitchen and rather than creating their own dishes, will carry out the orders of the executive chef. Over time, however, they can develop their own recipes and can rise through the ranks to lead their own kitchens as executive chefs themselves.

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