Cooking has always been part of Chef Lynn Rogers’ life; as a child, wife, mother, grandmother and teacher. She has seen that passion for cooking ignite in Liberty Hill High School (LHHS) students in the culinary arts program over the past four years. Let’s chat with her and her culinary arts students about the program.

Chef Rogers began her cooking journey in the kitchen at a young age. Her mother was blind, so around age six, she helped prepare meals for her family with her mother’s guidance. She started her career in elementary education in Corpus Christi and took a few different career paths before landing at LHHS. “I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but my heart was always in family and consumer sciences,” she said.

Her love of cooking runs deep. She spends her days in the LHHS kitchen with students and is still excited to go home and make dinner for her family, except on Friday nights. She and her husband have a standing date night on Fridays, and she lets someone else do the cooking.

Her granddaughters expect to bake cookies when they visit, and her grandson wants to be a chef after graduation. “I love to see somebody take a first bite and have a smile on their face; that is what gives me the most joy,” Rogers said.

Only a small portion of her class is spent in textbooks, mainly focused on proper terminology, because she believes in a hands-on approach to cooking in the classroom. There are stations around the room, and students prepare food in small groups. Every student in the group has a job. They work as a sous chef, product manager, equipment manager or dishwasher.

That hands-on experience was a big part of Ella Brown’s interest in culinary arts. Ella, a 2023 graduate of LHHS, took culinary arts as an elective her sophomore year. She wanted a class where she could be hands-on and see the “why” behind the lesson.

What started as a hobby turned into a career. She attended the Culinary Institute of America in San Antonio after high school graduation and is now a pastry chef at Vanille Pastry in Chicago. “Watching the scientific way that yeast works when making bread and decorating pastries to be eye-catching in the case” is Ella’s favorite part of baking.

Current LHHS student Owen Brown also loves the hands-on experience culinary provides. “I think it is a really nice break,” he said. “Instead of just sitting and listening, I get to actually work with my hands. I learn better when I’m using my hands.”

One of the first things culinary students learn is safe food handling techniques so they can pass a test to earn their ServSafe food handler certification. This allows students to learn basic food safety, personal hygiene, cross-contamination and allergens, time and temperature control, and cleaning and sanitation. The certification also helps students earn higher wages in a restaurant setting since they can start in the kitchen right away.

Owen hopes to use that certification and his experience in culinary arts after high school, either as a career or to help pay for further education. Those options for students like Owen motivate Chef Rogers. She doesn’t want her class to be just about students who plan to go into food service. She recognizes that students are graduating with fewer traditional home economics skills than her generation had.

Some of the practical skills included in her class include how to cut up a whole chicken, make homemade pasta, prepare the five “mother” sauces, bake bread, decorate a cake, use hydroponics to grow vegetables, and understand the different ways to cook vegetables.

When they talk about preparing a meal, they focus on the SHIFT method, which covers shape, height, items, flavor and texture. A plate of food under this philosophy should include different shapes, be presented with height so some items are raised on the plate, feature a main entree with a sauce and an element of crunch, and offer a variety of flavor profiles and textures.

While in the culinary program, students also experience real-world situations through marketing their food and catering. As a student organization, they are allowed two fundraisers per year. This year they sold pies at Thanksgiving and homemade gumbo on Fat Tuesday.

The LHHS culinary team’s gumbo is award-winning — they have placed second in a local competition held in September for the past two years. Owen, who is from Louisiana, was excited to make gumbo this year. Filé gumbo is a household staple for his family during the winter. The recipe he used in culinary class incorporated okra as a thickener instead of the filé powder his family uses. “That was a big difference,” Owen said. “I learned some new things using Chef Corey Smith’s recipe that I actually use at home now, too.”

In addition, culinary students have the opportunity to cater meals in the community. They often provide dinner for Liberty Hill ISD events, and desserts for events hosted by the Liberty Hill ISD Education Foundation and other organizations. They can also often be found feeding the LHHS staff by catering the Thanksgiving lunch or preparing dishes for staff to taste and judge. In the future, Chef Rogers would like to add a food truck so her students can do more outside the classroom.

With every dish they prepare, Chef Rogers knows she is building a cookbook her students can use later in life. “We talk about nutrition in each dish that we make,” she said. “I think it is important that they know they have a choice to eat healthy.” She often highlights the time it takes to prepare a meal compared with the time it takes to drive, order and eat out. She also gives students ideas for freezing meals to reheat at school for lunch or on busy nights when they have practice.

“They can graduate and go to chef school, but it really is about so much more for me,” she said. Thank you, Chef Rogers, for continuing to share your love of cooking and serving others with LHHS students.