If you think learning the core subject areas online is tough, try learning how to cook. On the one hand, students probably have access to a kitchen at home, but that might be about all the students in Lars Mitsuda’s Culinary I class shared. 

Through self-made tutorials and YouTube links, Mitsuda has managed to teach students how to cook despite their not being able to get into his professional kitchen.

“I basically gave students the option to cook at home,” Mitsuda said. “We worked on yeast breads (in the first quarter), but had to modify some of the lessons because yeast was hard to find.”  Students were able to make tortillas, a non-yeast bread, instead, he said.

Senior Tayli Ikenaga said taking a culinary class online is “hard because we’re not physically in class doing it.” But, she added that Mitsuda “has been very helpful trying to do demos for us on Google Meets, acting like we’re there with him, which is fun to watch.”

Although Ikenaga said she was unable to obtain all the ingredients for the bread unit, “I was able to practice my different knife cuts” by watching the video tutorials.

In the first quarter, students were still able to learn about topics such as the difference between Asian and European knives, the different knife cuts and how to properly freeze and defrost bread dough through teacher-made and YouTube videos.

Despite the unconventional class set-up, Ikenaga said she is now inspired to do more cooking at home and experimenting with different recipes.