Culinary students win silver, gold awards

Do you ever want to make a quick meal after school, but don’t want to make the same boring grilled cheese sandwich? Want to spice it up a bit, but don’t know how? Well, culinary might be a good class for you to take. 

The culinary program has been at Silverado High School for quite some time now. It is a good class to take for credits since it is a CTE course. A CTE course is a career and technical education class you can take certification exams for. In culinary, you can get certified to get your health card which can really help you in the future. 

Culinary is a three-year program, so you start at level one, go to level two, then three throughout the years. A third year of taking the class will get you program certifications, which are approved at the College of Southern Nevada (CSN). 

You typically start a day in culinary with a lesson, sometimes reviewing the previous lesson as well. Then, students do some vocabulary and give examples of everything. Students typically will ask questions and do some more review. On certain days of the week, students go and cook whatever they are required to that week or whatever they are learning about. 

“My favorite part of culinary is being able to cook with my friends and learning about the different cultures having to do with that food,” said sophomore Shayla Jones, a first-year student. “My favorite thing I have learned about this year so far would be the four different types of eggs since there are so many steps.” 

In addition to this fun class, the higher level students get to travel and compete in competitions. Their last competition was March 8-11 in Reno. Congratulations to our Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) team, who received gold awards for cupcakes, food safety, and sanitation and silver awards in knife skills, creative garnish, and cooking lunch at their competition in Reno. 

“Fourteen students [participated] in knife skills, three-course meal cooking, cupcakes, garnish, and T-shirt design for FCCLA,” explained Jayasree Ravi, the culinary teacher.