8 Essential Culinary Arts Skills for Students

Students have a lot on their plates. From sauces to science and from math to molecular gastronomy, there are seemingly endless subjects for high school students who are passionate about food to explore. This article will not get into the vast diversity of culinary arts subjects available to students. Instead, it will aim to highlight a handful of foundational culinary arts skills — seven of them, to be precise — that busy high school students should focus on mastering first, in order to help them find success in their studies and in their future careers.

Why Culinary Arts Skills Matter

Firstly, culinary arts skills are essential for anyone hoping to pursue a career in the restaurant or food industry. For aspiring chefs and bakers, these are prerequisites to getting your first job in a great kitchen or bakery. Sharpening these valuable tools requires a commitment to excellence and a keen eye for detail, and young chefs and bakers who consistently practice them will improve their creative expression and build confidence over time.

These skills aren’t just valuable for those seeking careers in restaurants and bakeries. Mastering this handful of fundamental culinary arts skills can open global pathways for professional development in hospitality, catering, food media, product development, entrepreneurship, and much more!

Finally, culinary arts skills are valuable for everyone who loves to cook and is passionate about expressing and sharing their love for food.

Now, let’s get into our list of seven foundational culinary arts skills for high school students.

8 Culinary Arts Skills for Students

1. Knife Handling and Safety

Proper knife handling and safety practices should be a top priority for culinary arts students, and for anyone who spends time in the kitchen. Mastering essential knife skills improves kitchen safety, reduces hand and arm fatigue, and improves cooking results. Young chefs should master the following fundamental knife skills:

• Knife sharpening and maintenance

• Choosing the right knife for the task at hand

• Carrying a knife safely

• Gripping a knife correctly

• Properly positioning the guide hand to minimize injury risk

• Essential knife cuts

  • Dicing

  • Mincing

  • Juliennes

  • Filets

  • Bâtonnets

  • Bias cuts

2. Cooking Methods and Techniques

Once you’ve safely and correctly chopped your ingredients, it’s time to add some heat. Do you know the difference between boiling and broiling? Here are a few cooking methods that are essential to know:

• Boiling: submerging ingredients into a pot of boiling water for a period of time

  • Often used for soups and stews, as well as for softening starchy foods like pasta, potatoes, rice, and quinoa

• Sautéing: placing ingredients on a hot pan with a small volume of cooking medium, often oil or butter

  • Useful for cooking vegetables and proteins

  • High heat can cook the outside of the food faster than the inside for crispy textures

• Roasting: leaving foods on a sheet in a hot oven for a period of time

  • Great for removing excess moisture from vegetables and proteins

  • Air is a slower cooking medium than oil, so it can take longer than sautéing

  • Variant: convection ovens and air fryers quickly circulate hot air around foods, cooking them quickly and increasing crispiness

• Grilling: cooking ingredients over an open flame from below

  • Creates smoky flavors and char marks

  • Often done outside

• Broiling: placing ingredients inside an oven very close to a high heat source from above

  • Uses direct radiant heat, similar to grilling

  • Allows for precise temperature control

  • Note: in British English, this is called “grilling.”

3. Baking and Pastry Skills

Although related to each other, baking and pastry are considered distinct skills. However, they are both separate from the cooking techniques discussed above. 

Unlike sautéing, for example, during which the food and spices can usually be adjusted to the chef’s taste, baking requires very precise measurements from the very beginning. For example, if you add just a little bit too much flour when mixing a dough, the result will be too stiff and your dough will tear instead of spreading. On the other hand, too little flour will make your dough slightly wet, and the bread will be too weak to hold its shape. Baking temperatures must also be carefully controlled to ensure proper leavening (i.e. rising).

Technically speaking, pastry is slightly different from baking, although there is substantial overlap. There are various kinds of pastry, including viennoiserie (e.g. croissants), puff pastry, and sweet dessert tarts. In restaurants and bakeries, pastry making is a specialized skill that requires creativity in flavor and texture combinations, as well as attention to visual details for plating. 

Speaking of plating…

4. Plating and Presentation

Plating is one of the most important skills for professional chefs. In industry and competition settings, the visual design of the meal is just as important as the taste. This includes the choice of plates, glassware, and cutlery, as well as the configuration of the food itself. Here are a few important considerations when mastering plating and presentation:

• Colors

• Balance and shape

• Vertical height

• Space

• Garnishing

• Consistency vs. contrast (e.g. within a dish, or from one dish to the next)

Plating not only influences how people eat food (e.g. what flavor they taste first, and which they taste together) but also changes how people perceive and experience flavors and textures. Finally, artistic plating allows you to express your creativity and to capture stunning photographs of your dishes to document and showcase your culinary expertise.

5. Food Safety and Sanitation

In professional kitchens, chefs are required by law to adhere to health standards for safety and sanitation, both for the kitchen staff and for their customers. The United States FDA Food Code lists the following major risk factors as top contributors to foodborne illnesses in consumers:

• Improper holding temperatures

• Inadequate cooking, such as undercooking raw shell eggs

• Contaminated equipment

• Food from unsafe sources

• Poor personal hygiene

In the interests of health and sanitation, the safe storage and handling of food are required skills for any aspiring professional chef to master.

6. Nutrition Fundamentals

Consumers want delicious food, but they also want food that contributes to their overall health and wellbeing. In fact, many professional chefs work closely with athletes and sports organizations to supply players with high-quality meals that fuel their bodies for peak performance. These culinary professionals plan and create meals that provide the correct nutritional value, as well as vitamins and minerals, depending on individuals’ needs for strength training, practice, and gameday situations.

While most culinary professionals aren’t cooking for professional athletes, having an understanding of the fundamentals of nutrition can help chefs work with their clients to provide delicious means that support healthy lifestyles.

7. Time Management

Time management is a crucial soft skill for culinary arts students (and other students) to master. For culinary artists, time is part of their medium. They must balance patience with efficiency in the kitchen to produce safe and delicious meals, reducing stress and mistakes to maximize quality and consistency. Mastering time management skills allows culinarians to:

• Effectively manage necessary prep work

• Create time for developing and experimenting with new culinary techniques

• Maintain mental composure and perform at a high level throughout peak hours

8. Developing Your Palate and Flavor Intuition

Cooking is more than following recipes; it is about understanding how flavors work together. Professional chefs train their palates by tasting ingredients individually, comparing herbs and spices side by side, and experimenting with flavor combinations. Developing a strong palate allows you to balance acidity, sweetness, saltiness, and bitterness in your dishes and to make adjustments on the fly when something tastes flat or unbalanced.

Students can start small by creating tasting exercises: try olive oils from different regions, compare chocolates with different cacao percentages, or experiment with how herbs like basil, thyme, and cilantro transform the same base dish. With practice, you will sharpen your ability to identify flavors, pair them thoughtfully, and build memorable dishes that stand out.

Pathways to Advanced Skills

Once you master the fundamentals—knife handling, cooking methods, plating, sanitation, nutrition, and time management—you will be ready to take on more advanced skills. These include mastering sauces, braising and roasting large cuts of meat, exploring sous vide and molecular gastronomy, or specializing in pastry arts.

Each advanced technique builds on the foundation of the basics. By approaching your culinary education step by step, you create a pathway for continuous growth. Think of your first seven essential skills as the base of a pyramid: the stronger the foundation, the higher you can climb toward mastery.

Continuous Growth Through Reflection and Practice

Culinary expertise is not achieved in a single project or course. It is the result of years of practice, reflection, and refinement. One effective strategy is to keep a taste and technique journal. Record what you cooked, what worked, what failed, and what you would try differently next time. Over time, these notes will help you see patterns in your strengths and areas for improvement.

Pair this with regular mentorship or feedback sessions. Watching professionals, asking questions, and receiving constructive criticism are invaluable for growth. At Polygence, students can build this feedback loop through mentorship, real-world projects, and peer collaboration. The key is to embrace learning as an ongoing journey, not a final destination.

Building and Practicing Culinary Skills

Hopefully, you now have an idea of the most valuable culinary arts skills to focus on. However, it can still be challenging to build and practice these important skills on your own. In the restaurant world, mentors and coaches are invaluable. It is absolutely vital for aspiring culinarians to seek out mentors or coaches to get frequent, high-quality feedback on their projects and experiments.

At Polygence, our goal is to match students with established mentors who share their passions. Through our mentorship program, students can design and complete an independent culinary arts project based on their own individual interests. Possible topics include street food, sustainability cooking, pickling and fermentation, and more! We also offer beginner-friendly courses called Pods for students who are interested in, say, environmental sustainability. Additionally, students who are interested in learning about the entrepreneurial side of the food industry have the opportunity to join a real-world start up company through our Work Lab program.

Let’s get cooking! Apply now to sharpen your essential skills in the culinary arts with Polygence!