JONTILLMAN.COM | Part of the problem since 1976

One of the biggest barriers to learning anything new is our preconceived notions about it, and food and cooking are no different in that respect. We tend to think of cooking as somewhat mysterious, and our thoughts in that realm are concentrated on the extremely linear; everything is a recipe. This can be a hindrance in our quest to have a better relationship with our food.

There are several differences between how the average home cook and a professional chef think about food. We will leave alone all of the specific nuances of this, and instead we will concentrate on highlighting the larger, philosophical, differences in how chefs think about food, and cooking.

Food Cost

The first thing a chef can teach a home cook is that it’s all about the cost. There really is no decision that a chef makes in the course of a day at work that is not directly informed by food cost. Home cooks would do well to adopt this manner of thinking, and to abandon the idea of making meal plans before first looking at costs, especially relative costs. A home cook with a meal plan that calls for him/her to serve pot roast on Tuesday will buy the best value on pot roast she can find. A chef would have given up on the pot roast idea and bought the $0.39/lb. chickens instead.

Ingredients, Not Recipes

The second big difference in how home cooks and chefs approach food is their respective attitudes towards ingredients. Home cooks tend to view ingredients as part of a whole, as if they did not have an existance outside of a particular recipe that calls for them.

A chef, on the other hand, thinks about ingredients in almost the opposite way. To a chef, recipes are merely suggestions for treating an ingredient, and chefs tend to master one ingredient at a time, instead of one recipe at a time. It’s a matter of thinking less “what sounds good to make” and more “what else can I make with Daikon”?

Style & Creativity

The third big difference between home cooks and chefs, is that most home cooks see cooking as drudgery - something they have to do or ought to do. Doubly true for the shopping necessary to cook. A chef however sees their cooking as no different from a painters’ painting or a poets’ writing - it is a creative outlet, and art form.

Home cooks would do well to spend some time and energy moving cooking out of the housework column in their brains, and into the same column with their knitting or woodworking. The cool thing about cooking once it has entered the hobby portion of your brain, is that you get to practice your hobby every day!

So much of a healthy relationship to food and cooking is in attitude. cultivating a more chef-like attitude towards food can go a long way towards creating ah ealthy relationship. Of course confidence is also extremely important, and we will cover that next week.

Next Week: Technique de Cuisine

Read the rest of this series:

• Part 1 - Scheduling
• Part 2 - Variety
• Part 3 - Moderation
• Part 4 - Being Picky
• Part 5 - Can The Canned Goods
• Part 6 - Get Your Kitchen In Order
• Part 7 - Think Like A Chef
• Part 8 - Technique
• Part 9 - Mise en Place