Could you be the 2019 Roux Scholar? Here are the 13 skills you need
The contest opens for entries on 12 November, after which chefs will have until 31 January to apply with a recipe using selected ingredients.
This year's winner will receive £6,000 to support their career development and the chance to cook and train at a three-Michelin-starred restaurant anywhere in the world for up to three months.
Competition chairman Roux says he wants to encourage chefs of any background to apply, though they will need to master several key skills to ensure they are “competition-ready”.
“To be a Roux Scholar you need to have what it takes to reach the top, that’s a given, but many will be surprised to see they have the majority of these skills in their repertoire already,” he says.
The 13 typical skills the Roux family says the next scholar should have mastered are as follows:
- Roast/ poach a whole fowl, whole joints on the bone, and fish on the bone
- Fillet round and flat fish
- Bone all meat
- Prepare a ‘ballotine’
- Prepare a stuffing: ‘farce fine’, coarse or gratin
- Prepare a ‘mousseline’ – protein-based mousse
- Make sweet or savoury soufflés
- Do a liaison: Roux, beurre manié and use flour, yolks, blood and liver
- Make a pastry base: puff, suet, leavened or shortcrust
- Make emulsified sauces: hollandaise, sabayon, mayonnaise
- Cook ‘à l’étouffée’ and ‘braisé’
- Cook under pressure, under judges’ gaze
- Exquisite presentation skills.
In 2019 18 chefs will be shortlisted for regional finals, before six will go on to compete at the national final on 1 April.
The scholarship was founded in 1984 by Michel Roux Sr with his brother Albert, and previous winners include Andre Fairlie (1984), Sat Bains (1999), and Andre Garrett (2002).
Last year's winner was Martin Carabott, who was then senior sous chef at Hide in Mayfair.
