What skills does a Cook need?

Food safety

In most cases, it’s the role of cooks to check that the food they prepare is safe for consumption. Understanding the local health regulations and industry standards on food safety can help you prevent foodborne illnesses. For example, knowing the right temperature to cook and store food can help you reduce the rate of spoilage.

Teamwork

Cooks often work alongside other kitchen staff, such as wait staff, line cooks and head chefs. You may use teamwork in various situations, including when you rotate cleaning duties with other kitchen staff, deliver food orders to customers and cook alongside other cooks. To improve your teamwork skills, you may work on your communication and empathy skills.

Commitment to Quality

A chef can show commitment to their work by producing quality food for their customers. Every restaurant has a standard way of cooking and making meals, and it’s your role as a cook to meet these standards to retain and attract new customers. You can improve these skills by taking time to ask customers if there’s anything they would like improved in the food.

Cleanliness

Cleanliness is one of the main essential skills that employers expect you to have. Cleanliness encourages kitchen and food safety and also portrays a pleasant and healthy environment to your customers. You can demonstrate these skills by cleaning and sanitising your kitchen tools every time you finish cooking. You can also improve these skills by enrolling in a class on food safety and sanitation.

Multitasking

As a cook, you may do a lot of things simultaneously. You may cook in different pots or pans simultaneously, all by yourself, to meet customer orders and move swiftly to the next dish. You may also help teammates, such as servers, while you’re cooking. For example, you may be cooking one meal when a teammate asks you to cook something quickly because a customer returned an item.

Creativity

Another great chef skill is creativity, which allows you to experiment with different cooking techniques, potentially impressing your customers and employers. There are many ways to demonstrate creativity in cooking, like cooking a dish using new flavours and methods, creating unique themes for the restaurant and serving food to your customers uniquely and beautifully. You may improve your creativity by researching new cooking methods and brainstorming ideas for making new dishes.

Attention to detail

As a cook, being detail-oriented can help you notice small things in the workplace, such as flavours that make a dish better. It also helps you see a different perspective from others, allowing you to plan and accomplish goals, using your information from observing things and those around you. Learn to pay attention to detail by focusing on every task you do and reviewing your work to see what’s different. You can also make notes of anything you notice that may be useful to your work.

Ability to accept criticism

As a chef, you may get both positive and negative criticism. It’s important to learn how to accept negative criticism in your workplace, for it may give you a chance to learn from your mistakes. For example, if a customer feels dissatisfied with what you cook, you can plan to offer them something else and ask them why they may have preferred a different meal. This lets you know what to improve so you can please both the customer and staff.

Decision-making

Professional cooks may make many decisions about their work to keep their customers happy. For example, you may reduce the number of meals on the menu to get time to perfect some of the most ordered meals. In such a case, you may analyse the impact of that decision and see if it’s positive or negative. You may improve your decision-making by considering the impact of your decisions on your team members and customers and also researching various cooking techniques to help you make better decisions.