Students learning pathway to Culinary Arts at HCHS

HCHS Principal Ginger Estes said the Culinary Arts students at HCHS have been a huge asset to the school. They prepare everything in the school’s very impressive state of the art professional kitchen, under excellent instruction from HCHS Family & Consumer Science Teacher Heather DeJarnette.

“They cater all of our banquets for our students,” Principal Estes said. “They’ve catered the Chamber of Commerce Breakfast, the Daddy Daughter Dance, and any Advisory Council Meetings we’ve had. You name it, they do just about anything we ask them to.”

HCHS Family & Consumer Science Teacher Heather DeJarnette took Clarion Reporter Donn Wimmer on a tour of the outstanding culinary kitchen at HCHS last week. “This is my seventh year,” Heather said. “When I first came into the program, we didn’t have an office so I kind of got to help build this kitchen, which was really awesome because I got to pick out everything I wanted to be in here.

We have a big gas stove, a fryer, a hibachi/flat top grill, a grill, a convection oven, the combi-oven, the induction cook top, a big soup kettle, and a tilting skillet.

My students and I, we do a lot of things in-house. We’re also trying to do things outside the classroom so we’re doing things like teacher box lunches. We do cater the Top Ten Banquet at the end of the year, for the top ten graduating students and their families, and the board members. We get to cook a big meal for that.

We do a big Thanksgiving meal for the teachers. We do the Winter Formal, Prom, and any dances that people ask us to make cookies and stuff for.

For the Thanksgiving meal, we bought 4 twenty pound turkeys, and it’s a whole week of cooking. The first day we season the turkeys and put them in a brine. They’ll let those set for 24 hours and the next day they’ll come in and we’ll cook the turkeys. We have a big slow cooker. We also use it as a warming cabinet to keep food hot before it’s served.

The day after that, they make all of the sides and pies. The next day the teachers come in and eat. There’s more prepping on that day but everything is cooked so we really just have to heat it all up to the right temperature and then it’s served. The students love that; that’s their most favorite thing to do.

I have freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. When my freshmen come in, they’re really intimidated because this is not like a home kitchen. It’s a professional kitchen.

Any student that comes in here, if they go to get a job at a restaurant they’re going to already have that experience and know how to operate in a professional kitchen.”

Computerized Combi-Oven

Heather described how the computerized combi-oven works. “You just push a button and it is loaded with different recipes. You can click on the recipe and it will set it at the right temperature and cook it for the right time, all you have to do is prepare.

We did a roasted chicken in it and just had to put the seasonings on the chicken and put it in, and then you push all of the right buttons and it cooks it so good. It’s so good. That’s one of the newer items that when we got it, the guy who helped build the kitchen said, ‘Any student who comes in here and learns how to use this – this is new age stuff’.

It has built-in recipes like chicken, steamed broccoli, salmon, etc. I can bake cookies and cake in here. It’s called a combi because you can add a lot of steam to it to steam something and you can take the steam out to bake something. It sets to the right temp, time and humidity.

You can adjust the humidity all the way down to zero like a normal oven, or you can turn it up for steaming vegetables. If you’re baking, you set it to 10-15 percent humidity. It cleans itself too.”

Induction Cook Top Stove

“We have one electric stove and it’s an induction cook top so it cooks fast,” she

said. “You can turn it on and it does not get hot until you set a pan on it. It’s magnetized so when a pan sets on the stove, it starts heating up around it.

It’s a safety feature; You can put your hand on the stove and it won’t get burned, only the pan and underneath the pan gets hot. It heats up really fast. You can boil water in 3 minutes. So that’s really cool that they get to use that too because they’ll see that in restaurants also.

Tilting Skillet

Heather showed how the huge tilting skillet works. “You just put everything in here and you can treat it LIKE a stovetop, like a flat top griddle,” she said. “You can cook burgers and bacon in here. It tilts so if you don’t want all that grease, you can tilt it so the grease comes to the bottom. Or, you can make soups because it has measurements in there.

It’s very versatile. It can be used as something you would cook soup in or you can use it like a flat top and make burgers. We usually do chili or potato soup in that because it’s big. If we’re making soup for a lot of people it works good.”

Hibachi

“The flat top griddle, or hibachi,” she said, “you can call it either, but the students know it as a hibachi because that’s what they see when they go to restaurants.

You can do pancakes, bacon, burgers, eggs, etc. It makes a really good omelet because it doesn’t stick to the top and you can flip them good and they don’t break. You can also do fried rice, etc.

The gas range is professional. It’s pretty powerful. The electric stove – they have to cook on a low temperature because it gets really hot, really fast. It’s a really good stove. It’s full power. Everything in here is full power.”

Heather said she has between 70 and 90 students a semester. “I only have 3 classes. I have block classes so they’re longer,” she said. “The classes are about an hour and a half so that when the student comes in they have plenty of time to do their prep, their cook and their clean-up.

I have a few students that said they were going to go to culinary school after graduation. One did not go to culinary school, but she does a lot of in-home baking and advertises on Facebook sometimes. Her stuff looks good. I’m proud of her.

I had a few others that wanted to go to culinary school but I don’t know if they actually have. I’m getting ready to take a group of students to visit South Central Community College in Bowling Green because they have a culinary program. We’re going to go visit that. Hopefully, some of them will be interested in going after graduation.”

HCHS Culinary Student Erica Massey

Junior at HCHS Erica Massey (17), daughter of Tracy & Dean McDaniel, of Lewisport, talked about her enthusiasm for culinary arts and how much she enjoys cooking and baking in the professional kitchen.

“I started off with the first class you could take here,” she said, “and then I slowly worked my way up to Culinary 2. I’ve always been interested in the culinary arts since I was a little kid and so I thought it would be a great fit for me.

I’ve made butter chicken curry and naan, which is an Indian dish. I’ve made vodka pasta, without the vodka of course, which is like a tomato-y, creamy past dish. I’ve made my homemade chocolate chip cookies, homemade brownies and pretty much whatever I’ve felt like making. I usually give it around to the teachers here.

My grandma actually taught me how to cook and she taught my mom how to cook. I’ve learned from the family. I have experimented here with new things and then made them at home, and vice versa. They’re not really used to all of the ethnic cuisine I make but they like it.

I really want to get my business degree after graduation so that, hopefully, I can open up my own restaurant or café. I wanted to go to culinary school but unless I get a scholarship, I probably won’t be able to. It would be something that I would love to do. I might like to go to the one in Louisville – Sullivan University. I’ve been there on a tour and it’s pretty great.”

Pathways at HCHS

Principal Estes continued her conversation with the Clarion reporter and talked about some of the other pathways at the school. “All of our CTE programs are just phenomenal,” she said. “They’ve really taken off this year. Our engineering classes are partnering with Domtar for a track where students get paid to go to school.

They get college credit and a formal internship at Domtar. And, the same with our Diesel group. We’ve partnered with Yager/Carmeuse so our students go to Yager every morning and they have a job and then they come here for their core classes.

They also have had to go through college level classes to get there. It’s all a partnership with OCTC and then whichever – Domtar or Yager. So we’re looking for more of those kinds of opportunities.

AG

Josh Smith does a great job with Ag and all of the community service that he does. He does a lot of the picnic tables for the community, at Vastwood and that kind of thing.

He said yesterday he had a couple of trailers that he’s getting ready to work on for some people in the community and different businesses. Those kids get to work on that and they do some welding and some wood shop; they do great stuff.

Our Allied Health group with Ms. Carnes – they’re pretty successful in all of their industry certifications. She certifies them so that they can go and help at the nursing home or continue that pathway.

We have partnered with Health Force through Owensboro Mercy, where they bring the trailer in. It’s pretty impressive the things that they do there.

Engineering

The engineering students, today they were testing theories. They had strings from one end of the room to the other and they were doing their math equations to determine the force that would be needed for a full balloon to propel a tongue depressor across this string and across the ceiling. It was pretty interesting.

She (CTE Teacher Lori Roberts) does industry certifications through AutoCAD (a commercial 2D and 3D computer-aided design and drafting software application). They do a lot of 3D printing. Yesterday she had the 3D printing class do pallets. They had to scale the pallets down to size and then redesign for weight to see if they could improve upon a regular pallet. It’s really impressive stuff.”

HCHS Merch

“We have a lot of really great stuff going on here,” she added. “Our Hornet Smart group has just finished the beginning process of their catalogue. So if you want to order Hornet shirts, mugs, hats, packs, emblems, stickers, etc., you can get them right here.

Students take what they’ve learned in their core classes – math, English, social studies, etc., and then they get in these pathway classes and they use their core ability skills and the advanced skills they’ve learned in engineering, diesel, whatever pathway they choose.

We do a really great internal program we’ve developed here. Especially our juniors and seniors – we take our leadership teams and all of our teacher teams and we talk about individual students and see where each kid is on their pathway.

So no kid gets lost, and every kid gets an opportunity to choose what their interests are based on their strengths and where they want to get stronger.

Every single kid has some kind of, maybe it’s art related or music, choir or band, but then they also have opportunities through CTE through those programs.

For college readiness, we offer 13 different college classes here in our building – Biology 112 with lab, Math 150 (college algebra), Intro to American Education, English 101, English 102, and our Allied Health CTE Teacher, our nurse, teaches Medical Procedures & Terminology. All of those are college credits that students can get while they’re here.”

HCHS has great success with their pathways, and their core is really strong as well. They currently have the highest ACT average in the region!

By Jennifer Wimmer