Leading online culinary school Rouxbe recently released a course, Kitchen QuickStart, that focuses on kitchen fundamentals to support and complement restaurants’ immediate culinary training needs, as well as providing aspiring cooks a jump start to employment in the food industry.

Today the announced its 10-hour Kitchen QuickStart training course will immediately be available for free. The offering comes as the industry struggles to find qualified staff to meet their needs in a post-pandemic reality.

“We developed Kitchen QuickStart as an affordable way for restaurants to get their staff trained efficiently as they head back to work, and quickly realized the need for the program was greater than even we anticipated,” says Scott Samuel, vice president of culinary at Rouxbe. “We speak to so many restaurant and hospitality owners who have been hit hard this past year, and now that things are looking up, staffing has become a real issue. In addition to the free Kitchen Safety Course we offered at the start of the pandemic, providing this course at no charge is a small way of giving back to an industry that has suffered this year.”

The course features 14 key lessons that range from using a chef’s knife and roasting vegetables, to vinaigrette basics and poultry fundamentals. There are over 50 instructional videos, with knowledge check quizzes after each section. At completion, students will be knowledgeable in a variety of cooking methods, ingredients and kitchen terminology that will help them hit the ground running.

Access to the course can be found at Rouxbe's website.