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Prep School: How to Improve Your Kitchen Skills and Cooking Techniques
Prep School is the ultimate collection of the weekly Chicago Tribune column of the same name, written by culinary instructor and award-winning food writer James P. DeWan. The columns and this book are focused on teaching readers how to become better cooks—from amateurs who are learning to cook for themselves or their families, to professional and gourmet chefs who are searching to perfect their technique. Illustrated with full-color photography and a plethora of simple, plain-spoken instructions, Prep School is an easy go-to guide for becoming more adept to any cooking environment.
Prep School is filled with insightful and straightforward tips on knife skills, preparation techniques, pantry essentials, holiday meals, and general advice on how to make your kitchen as user-friendly as possible. Before any home cook or professional chef picks up a cookbook, they should first pick up Prep School and be sure to take DeWan's advice to heart. His recommendations on improving kitchen efficiency and ease, along with his in-depth knowledge of shortcuts and cooking common sense, make DeWan the perfect teacher for any aspiring culinary student.
Prep School is filled with insightful and straightforward tips on knife skills, preparation techniques, pantry essentials, holiday meals, and general advice on how to make your kitchen as user-friendly as possible. Before any home cook or professional chef picks up a cookbook, they should first pick up Prep School and be sure to take DeWan's advice to heart. His recommendations on improving kitchen efficiency and ease, along with his in-depth knowledge of shortcuts and cooking common sense, make DeWan the perfect teacher for any aspiring culinary student.
533 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 5, 2012
274 people are currently reading
213 people want to read
About the author
James P. DeWan
3 books2 followersJames P. DeWan is a chef, award-winning culinary instructor and award-winning food writer, but his path to the culinary world was nothing if not circuitous. After completing a Master of Divinity degree at Chicago Theological Seminary, he spent the better part of two decades playing music, as an accompanist to some of the world’s greatest Irish traditional musicians on recordings and stages across the U.S. and Europe, as a staff songwriter for the Acuff-Rose Publishing Company of Nashville (home to Hank Williams, the Everly Brothers and Kenny Chesney), and as an instructor on the faculty of the Old Town School of Folk Music.
Always a passionate and self-taught home cook, he turned a one-off invitation to contribute to the Chicago Tribune into a regular presence in that paper’s Good Eating section as well as numerous other local and national publications, including Plate Magazine, North Shore Magazine and Restaurants and Institutions.
As his presence on the culinary scene grew, he earned a degree in Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago (CHIC). Before long, he put his twenty years teaching experience to use, returning to CHIC, first as a writing instructor, and later on the culinary faculty. Since 2008 he’s served on the faculty of Kendall College’s School of Culinary Arts, rated one of the top 10 culinary programs in the country. He was the recipient of that school’s 2012 Excellence in Teaching Award.
His Chicago Tribune column, Prep School, now in its tenth year, offers in-depth and lighthearted instruction in classic culinary methods and techniques. A collection of his columns were published in ebook form in the fall of 2012, where it reached the #1 position on Amazon’s Top 100 Professional Cooking chart. A hardcover edition was published in 2013.
He is also the author, with Jeffrey Elliot, of The Zwilling J. A. Henckels Complete Book of Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to Use, Techniques and Care (Robert Rose Publishing, 2010).
DeWan lives on Chicago’s northwest side with his lovely wife and two excellent children.
Always a passionate and self-taught home cook, he turned a one-off invitation to contribute to the Chicago Tribune into a regular presence in that paper’s Good Eating section as well as numerous other local and national publications, including Plate Magazine, North Shore Magazine and Restaurants and Institutions.
As his presence on the culinary scene grew, he earned a degree in Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago (CHIC). Before long, he put his twenty years teaching experience to use, returning to CHIC, first as a writing instructor, and later on the culinary faculty. Since 2008 he’s served on the faculty of Kendall College’s School of Culinary Arts, rated one of the top 10 culinary programs in the country. He was the recipient of that school’s 2012 Excellence in Teaching Award.
His Chicago Tribune column, Prep School, now in its tenth year, offers in-depth and lighthearted instruction in classic culinary methods and techniques. A collection of his columns were published in ebook form in the fall of 2012, where it reached the #1 position on Amazon’s Top 100 Professional Cooking chart. A hardcover edition was published in 2013.
He is also the author, with Jeffrey Elliot, of The Zwilling J. A. Henckels Complete Book of Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to Use, Techniques and Care (Robert Rose Publishing, 2010).
DeWan lives on Chicago’s northwest side with his lovely wife and two excellent children.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 24, 2023
Not exactly something I'll use a lot, but am rating based on quality of material.
Would be a very good instructional book for a confident new cook interested in learning techniques. Good refresher for more experienced cooks. I don't agree with the two-knife trick the author touts. Not only have I never seen that used in a restaurant by any chef or prep person, but it's not all that more efficient than using a single knife (and has a lot more potential for injury unless you have huge hands and are extremely skilled in knife work. But that's just one bit in a whole lot of good information. Recipes are carefully chosen to allow practical use and practice of the skills being covered, and each section builds on the skills of the previous.
Would be a very good instructional book for a confident new cook interested in learning techniques. Good refresher for more experienced cooks. I don't agree with the two-knife trick the author touts. Not only have I never seen that used in a restaurant by any chef or prep person, but it's not all that more efficient than using a single knife (and has a lot more potential for injury unless you have huge hands and are extremely skilled in knife work. But that's just one bit in a whole lot of good information. Recipes are carefully chosen to allow practical use and practice of the skills being covered, and each section builds on the skills of the previous.
July 24, 2023
Excellent book about cooking and techniques written with both humour and detail. I've bookmarked a few recipes and techniques to go back to. The authour didn't make it too hard and the photos are useful. It reads as though it was from a series from something like a magazine, as he often says "at this time of time" and means Spring, Autumn or Thanksgiving which one must infer from the recipe.
The only issue I have and it's not specific to this book by far, is the use of the archaic American measuring system: sticks, cups, pounds, quarts, gallons etc - the temperatures are handy enough to convert to Celsius, but the rest is..???? He does say at one point something like "most amature cooks don't have kitchen scales, so he's sticking to [medieval] measures" - so maybe that's just another odd Americanism.
The only issue I have and it's not specific to this book by far, is the use of the archaic American measuring system: sticks, cups, pounds, quarts, gallons etc - the temperatures are handy enough to convert to Celsius, but the rest is..???? He does say at one point something like "most amature cooks don't have kitchen scales, so he's sticking to [medieval] measures" - so maybe that's just another odd Americanism.
January 7, 2022
Fantastic book.
This book is an amazing book. Best for beginners and people who love to cook. I love straightforward, uncomplicated cookbooks without dozens of ingredients most of the times. This is the second book that has a true recipe of the pound cake that has no baking powder or bicarbonate of soda. For people that like pictures there plenty but also step by step pictures showing you how to do technics on how to do certain technics. The Book was also on sale.
Whether you buy it hardcopy or digital it's well worth it.
This book is an amazing book. Best for beginners and people who love to cook. I love straightforward, uncomplicated cookbooks without dozens of ingredients most of the times. This is the second book that has a true recipe of the pound cake that has no baking powder or bicarbonate of soda. For people that like pictures there plenty but also step by step pictures showing you how to do technics on how to do certain technics. The Book was also on sale.
Whether you buy it hardcopy or digital it's well worth it.
July 22, 2017
New cooks, take note. There are many instruction book out there. They teach a lot and leave out a lot. This book guides you through many basic cooking techniques and does not over complicate the process.
Seasoned Cooks. What a great quick refresher yet reminder that cooking is fun.
Great book for anyone who wants to learn about the most important part of cooking.
Seasoned Cooks. What a great quick refresher yet reminder that cooking is fun.
Great book for anyone who wants to learn about the most important part of cooking.
June 2, 2021
This book is brilliant!
This book tells you many things I have learned from a chef friend- I wish I’d had this book years ago!
This book tells you many things I have learned from a chef friend- I wish I’d had this book years ago!
December 16, 2013
This is such a great resource for cooks!! From bare beginners to confident cooks, all can glean from this reference book for cooks. From chopping onions, to cleaning mussels, corning beef, poaching an egg, making homemade ricotta cheese (something I LOVE to do, but I know many cooks who didn't even realize you could easily make your own at home), carving a turkey or cooking in parchment paper, this book covers it all. It's not just a "how-to" book, but after teaching you the technique then gives you at least one recipe to use that technique. While most cooks can glean something from this book, I especially recommend it to beginner cooks. There is so much they can learn out of this book. I highly recommend it!
I received a copy of this book from Agate Publishing for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
I received a copy of this book from Agate Publishing for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews