Culinary Arts

Students will be given the opportunity to expand upon their personal interests within the food service profession by training in real life working environments both here at Shepherds College and in the surrounding community. An optimal learning environment for acquiring food service and restaurant skills will be offered through in-depth classroom instruction and substantial hands-on experience, providing culinary students with food service knowledge and a varied set of pertinent workplace skills.

The Culinary industry offers a vast array of diversified fields. What we strive to do is find the right match for each of our students so that they may thrive in what may be the first place they have worked in their life. Chef Brett McCarthy conducts the rigorous program with the same level of intensity that he did when teaching classes in his last position as the program coordinator of a community college culinary program in Kentucky. Students will spend forty weeks learning a variety of techniques and food preparations while also learning about sanitation, kitchen safety and professionalism. By the end of their second year, they should have the skill-set to be able to work in a variety of restaurant environments.

Here is student David Ellenberger's Account of Culinary Arts Class on October 27, 2009:

We made fried chicken sandwiches. We followed the basic breading procedure. First, we made the bread crumbs from scratch. We toasted the bread and we cut it into pieces. Then we put the bread in a food processor and ran it until the bread was finely cut. We cracked eggs in a separate bowl. We added 16 ounces of eggs to a similar quantity of milk. We spread flour on a baking sheet. We took raw chicken and placed it in the flour to coat it. We used the wet - dry - wet - dry method of coating. After we coated the chicken with the flour, we put it in the eggs and milk mixture. We let the chicken drip-off the excess egg mixture before placing it in the bread crumbs. We use one hand for our dry ingredients and one hand for our wet ingredients so that our hands would not become coated with flour or breadcrumbs. We cooked the chicken in the fryer and then put the chicken on a baking sheet and placed it in the oven to keep it warm. We cut up tomato and lettuce to eat with the chicken sandwich. We invited some of the staff to try the chicken sandwiches we made.

To learn more about what our students do in the Culinary Arts program, contact Brett McCarthy, our experienced Lead Culinary Arts instructor at 262.878.5620 ext. 6422 or bmccarthy@shepherdsministries.org