Tulsa's Platt College Offering New Culinary Arts Program

by Rick Wells, The News on 6

Tulsa, OK -- The need for more people trained in the food industry is up. Partly because more new restaurants are opening in our area and partly because of the growing influence of the food network.

Platt College has created a program to fill the need, part of the training involved cooking Thanksgiving dinner for themselves.

Improving their knife skills in Platt College's new culinary arts program, cleaning and finely chopping parsley against the clock.

"We have 6 total kitchens," said Chef Jeff Howard, Director of the new Culinary Arts program at Tulsa's Platt College.

Just about everything they're making will be part of the Thanksgiving meal they are preparing for themselves.

Gotta make sure the turkey is done. Speaking of that there's gotta be a take home tip here, how long do I keep the leftovers?

"With stuff that's been heated once, Two-to-Three days then get rid of it, the fresh stuff can go three to five," said Howard.

The student are even preparing deserts for their Thanksgiving feast.

"We've got red velvet cake, they're putting the cream cheese frosting on. They're working on banana and pumpkin cheesecake," said Howard.

Over on the pastry side I met Susan Lockart who is totally changing careers.

"I just decided I wanted to do something different," Lockart said.

She loves to bake so here she is. I tried a piece of her red velvet cake, which was sensational by the way, then I asked her about pastry school.

She told me a secret, she knew she was going to do a lot of tasting so she joined Jenny Craig before she started.

"I thought if I'm going to cooking school I've got to lose some weight first," Lockart said.

So happy Thanksgiving and good luck.

More information about the program is available on Platt College's website, click the Culinary  box on the homepage.