The Chopping Block has been teaching Culinary Boot Camp for many years, over 16 years to be exact. We’ve obviously tweaked the program during that time, but it’s essentially the same as when we launched it at our Merchandise Mart location in January 2008. In the years it took to develop this five-day program, our chefs (led by Founder Shelley Young) examined curriculums and techniques from professional culinary schools, leaned on our popular Building Blocks series at the time, curated the most important cooking techniques and made it all accessible for home cooks.
I’ve attended many Culinary Boot Camps over the years to get to know the students and why they chose our program and of course, to get marketing material to promote our five-star rated class. Now that I wear a CBC Concierge cap in addition to my marketing hat, I talk about this program with prospective students almost every day.
In my conversations (and my own competitive research), I’ve learned that there really is no other program for home cooks like our Culinary Boot Camp. The closest competitor I’ve found is the Culinary Institute of America’s Basic Training Boot Camp. Both classes are five days, include hands-on cooking, cover the basics of cooking and are designed to grow students as home cooks. Our course is only offered in Chicago while the CIA has campuses in Hyde Park, New York, Napa, California, and San Antonio, Texas. Our course is 40 hours in the kitchen (9am-5pm for five days), whereas the CIA has shorter days, around 5.5 hours each day. And like The Chopping Block, the CIA also offers single or multi-day boot camps focused on a particular cuisine or regional cooking such as baking, seafood, Mediterranean, Mexican, etc.
Pat Parcham has attended classes at both schools and shares her insights into the pros and cons of each.
Pat attended TCB's Culinary Boot Camp in January 2011 at the Mart with her sister, Joan Joyce. It was their first major cooking experience together, but they have since taken many classes at both schools, including three at the CIA in New York and one at the CIA in Texas. With seven girls in their family, the two of them found their common bond in cooking.
Back in 2011, Joan flew from her home in Arlington, Virginia to Chicago to attend Culinary Boot Camp with Pat. Pat remembers that about half of the students in her class were not local to Chicago and traveled for the course. Now, that number is more like 80% of each class! We like to think that Culinary Boot Camp has evolved into a “culinary vacation” for many people, though there’s obviously a lot of hard work involved.
I recently met Pat on The Chopping Block’s culinary immersion tour to the Basque Country of Spain.
Pat and I in Basque Country
Of course, we chatted about her Culinary Boot Camp experience (among many other things) and when she mentioned she had also attended classes at the CIA, I asked her to reflect on both experiences. She says they are both good programs but very different.
“What I appreciated about The Chopping Block’s program is that it was very hands-on. We started with Knife Skills on day one and rather than just doing a quick demo and hoping you got it, we literally chopped vegetables for two hours. The chefs would come around and ask to see our different cuts of julienne, dice, rough chop, chiffonade, etc. We filled bowls and bowls with vegetables that we would use in different recipes over the coming days,” said Pat. “Learning how to cut an onion properly was the best thing I’ve ever learned in the kitchen, even to this day.”
Pat especially remembers the lesson on the types of knives. “It wasn’t about one brand being better than the other, it was about what feels good in your hand. I ended up trying different knives for a long time and eventually finding the best ones for me. Choosing a knife is a very personal decision,” said Pat.
Although Culinary Boot Camp students are grouped in teams, there is still a lot of individualized work. Each student gets their own whole fish, beef tenderloin and chicken so that they can have the experience of breaking down each protein, getting guidance from our chefs along the way. Pat preferred this teaching method as opposed to sharing tasks as they do at the CIA. “For me personally, I may hang back and let my partner do the work, but this way, you had to do it yourself, so you learned the techniques. It was very helpful to get that hands-on individualized experience,” said Pat.
Each group of students makes every dish in the Culinary Boot Camp curriculum, if not individually. For example, on the egg cookery day, each student learns how to flip an egg in the pan as well as perfect an omelet. For dishes where you work in a group, you may divide the tasks a bit, but you still get the full experience.
Pat says that’s not necessarily the case at the CIA. “The class is divided into four groups, but each group is doing something different at the same time. The chef pulls everyone together to watch demonstrations, but you don’t always get a chance to make that dish. I remember one group got to make pasta, and I wished I was on a different team. So, there are four dishes for four groups. Sometimes you collaborate, but I had to wander around the kitchen to see what the other groups were doing. You get to taste everything at the end of the day, but unlike Culinary Boot Camp, you don’t work on every single recipe,” said Pat.
Because every single recipe is executed by the students in Culinary Boot Camp, we need a full 8-hour day. The days are shorter at the CIA because it’s more of a group effort. “Everyone works on their dishes to create a big meal and as you eat, you analyze the dishes and the chef offers his/her critique or what could have been done differently,” said Pat.
At TCB, our students cook for half a day before enjoying what they’ve prepared for lunch and then they cook for another half day before sitting down for another meal. Both schools let students take their leftovers home. “When my sister and I attended TCB’s Culinary Boot Camp, we brought so much food home each night that I would invite all of my neighbors to taste what we had prepared,” said Pat. “We even got to take home some beautifully fileted raw Arctic Char that I froze for later. That’s one benefit of living in Chicago where the class is held, because you couldn’t do that if you were staying in a hotel.”
Another big difference between the two schools is the dress code and kitchen environment. At the CIA, you must dress to the school’s code, with no tennis shoes or jeans. You must wear your hair back and have your hat on and chef’s coat always buttoned to the top. “Those are the standards that they hold all their students to and since you are in the same space as the professional culinary students, you are expected to comply. I read the rules ahead of time and bough chef shoes but some people didn’t, so they had to pay for a pricier pair at the school’s shop,” said Pat.
When Pat took Culinary Boot Camp, we provided chef coats for our students, but since then, we’ve migrated to an even casual kitchen atmosphere for TCB’s Culinary Boot Camp. Students are advised to wear comfortable clothing, closed-toe shoes and aprons are provided.
The kitchen atmospheres are also quite different, according to Pat. “At TCB, the kinds of tools and equipment we worked with were more comparable to a home kitchen, whereas the CIA is like a restaurant. We had to figure out how to use the ranges and ovens. They have big machines like deep fryers and giant mixers. I remember thinking this stuff is fun to play with, but I don’t have any of it in my own kitchen,” said Pat.
Of course, the chefs at both schools are knowledgeable so they can speak to how things translate to your own home kitchen. At TCB, we use gas ranges, but a lot of students have induction stovetops at home now, so we are well equipped to answer questions about cooking on induction.
Learning is also structured differently at the two schools. Students are in the kitchen for the entire day during TCB’s Culinary Boot Camp. They are taking notes in their binders throughout the lead chef’s demonstrations throughout the day and then immediately executing the same techniques at their stations.
At the CIA, Pat says you start with classroom lectures and then go into the kitchen to cook, which emulates a professional culinary school education.
One may think that since CIA is a professional culinary school, their students would learn more than students at TCB’s Culinary Boot Camp. Not so, says Pat.
“At the CIA, the students have a very diverse level of skills. I came from a home cook background, but there are students coming from restaurants, caterers, other food businesses, etc. so the chefs assume a level of expertise that isn’t always there. I’ve taken so many cooking classes that I feel like I know a lot at this point, but sometimes you are teamed with people who haven’t really cooked a lot. At TCB’s Culinary Boot Camp, there are also different levels of experience, but you really get a solid understanding of the basics as a home cook because for the most part, that’s what everyone is,” said Pat. “I learned the most at TCB’s Culinary Boot Camp. They taught us the basics and then how to evolve from those basics.” For example, our students learn about the classical French Mother Sauces, but they are also taught different variations of those sauces as well as modern sauces.
“At the CIA, I met many people I liked, but I don’t always feel like I came away with a lot of knowledge. I liked the chefs, but I’d have to run over and watch their demo. For me, watching something doesn’t teach me anything. I need to see how I don’t know how to do it myself!” said Pat.
If you want to experience TCB’s Culinary Boot Camp for that hands-on experience that will benefit you for a lifetime like it has for Pat, we would love to have you in one of our classes in 2025. We have dates posted for the first half of the year!