The externship in a commercial kitchen is part of learning how to cook. Not only learning something about the commercial environment, but cooking period. This includes dealing with time pressure, learning to fix disasters on the fly, keeping your head in what you're doing while everything is going nuts around you, and maintaining a an extremely high degree of organization and cleanliness.
You may be able to keep your externship in a catering rather than a restaurant environment which, in a sense, is more practical for someone who plans on doing a lot of entertaining. You may or may not be aware of it, but catering cooking differs from restaurant cooking in a lot of ways.
If you want to cook at a professional level (whether or not you want to cook professionally) a short time in a professional kitchen will teach you lots of important lessons more quickly and thoroughly than you can learn them elsewhere.
While you may never sully your culinary education with money, "One never knows, do one?"
BDL  |