LINCOLN, Arkansas — Serving meals to hundreds of kids every day is no easy task, and Lincoln school cafeterias are working to sharpen their skills in the kitchen.
The school district partnered with the University of Arkansas-Medical Sciences to bring a professional chef to each of its school cafeterias for culinary training.
“That way, we can provide a healthier, fresher product to our students who are our customers,” Child Nutrition Director Valerie Dawson said.
Chef Kent Getzin travels around the country to train school food service workers to make high-quality food in large batches. He said COVID was a setback for school food services nationwide.
“[There was] a lot of plastic-wrapped food and a lot of manufactured food, and so [we’re] just trying to get them to think about serving a more whole-food-based menu, and it really requires skills to know to be able to do that,” Getzin said.
Getzin works with the schools ahead of the training to make a shopping list.
On Wednesday, he worked with Lincoln Middle School’s cafeteria team.
“When I come in and do a live setting training, we're looking at just a certain amount of things. Today we made stir-fried vegetables, so we did some knife skills, we made two Asian-flavored sauces, a teriyaki, and an orange sauce from scratch, and we made fried rice,” Getzin said.
The meal was hot and ready just in time for the lunch crowd.
Getzin says during these training days, the goal is to teach basic, simple approaches that can carry over into the rest of the year.
“The idea is hopefully that tomorrow, they would be able to do this menu on their own,” Getzin said.
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