USA Rice Introduces New Teaching Tool for Culinary Educators
Arlington, VA, September 8, 2009- The USA Rice Federation introduces its new comprehensive teaching tool, "U.S. Rice in the Culinary Classroom: A Complete Guide for Food Educators and Professionals," at leading industry events for culinary educators. Equipped with a complete manual and classroom PowerPoint presentations on DVD with culinary video demonstrations, the tool is designed to include everything instructors and students need to know about rice and its application in foodservice.
To create a curriculum that delivers the most value in a variety of classroom settings, the USA Rice Federation collaborated with a diverse advisory panel of culinary instructors and chefs to assess the needs of educators, main areas of learning interest, content, and delivery format for ease of use and flexibility.
Based on the feedback, a complete rice curriculum was developed with all the essential information for teaching culinary students how rice is grown, the importance of rice in foodservice operations, its role in international cuisine, and how to select, cook and handle rice properly.
"USA Rice believes that fostering growth of culinary students through education is critical," says Judy Rusignuolo, Director of National Consumer Education & Foodservice Marketing, USA Rice Federation. "Learning about fundamental ingredients like rice is the cornerstone of culinary education. We hope this teaching tool will be of great value to culinary educators and support students’ needs as future leaders in the foodservice industry."
Renee Zonka, Associate Dean of The School of Culinary Arts at Kendall College, utilizes materials provided by commodity boards for reliable information that’s easy to adapt to her culinary curriculums. "The advantage with the USA Rice teaching guide is the content is broken down by sections with timed lesson plans, making it very flexible. It also helps that within each section key information is bulleted for easy reading. This saves a lot of time for instructors when planning." The teaching tool is presented from the perspective of the professional chef, and is divided into four modules that can be used together for a full rice curriculum, or as individual units to complement an existing syllabus.
Modules include:
What is Rice – History and Production
All About Rice – Science, Varieties and Nutrition
Cooking Rice – Basic Methods
Rice in Cuisine – International Recipes
Each module offers: lesson objectives, lesson plans, activities with timing, topic content and review/quiz questions. The teaching guide also includes charts and maps that are ideal handouts in the classroom.
U.S. Rice in the Culinary Classroom and the accompanying PowerPoints can be downloaded from www.MenuRice.com/teachingtool, a comprehensive online resource for information, educational materials and recipes for U.S.-grown rice. A limited number of print copies are available to chef educators by online request.
To create a curriculum that delivers the most value in a variety of classroom settings, the USA Rice Federation collaborated with a diverse advisory panel of culinary instructors and chefs to assess the needs of educators, main areas of learning interest, content, and delivery format for ease of use and flexibility.