Yes Chef
home cooking and having the juice 🍝
Hello my sweet Pot Heads,
I am back from my extended summer break with a lot more energy. I was EXTREMELY nervous taking time off, but I am pleased to report that it was exactly what I needed. When I started this newsletter in February, it was out of necessity. I spent years building my previous newsletter, honing the content, the brand identity, and building an audience but its income wasn’t mine. In January when it became clear exactly how little I had received and how much more others had taken, I had to—once and for all—get the fuck out of there.
So Stir the Pot was born. I kept up the frenetic pace that I’d been working at for years and published lots of great recipes and articles that I’m very proud of. But now that I’ve had some time to reflect and plan for the future, it’s time to refine. Welcome to Stir the Pot 2.0.
I am a home cook, a fact I was extremely insecure about when my first cookbook was published a decade ago.* I was worried that my recipes would be characterized as amateurish; that the knowledge I had to offer wouldn’t be seen as valuable because I had cultivated it on my own. Fuck all the jokes and goofy swearing, I was worried about what people would think of the food that I had worked so hard on. The food industry was, and remains, preoccupied with chefs as the pinnacle of what cooking should be. When interviewers would refer to me as a chef, I would correct them saying that I was simply a cook. I was not being overly humble; I didn’t think I had earned that title. Sure, the majority of self-taught cooks who gain fame are women and most of the professional chefs on TV and in restaurants are men. One is seen as innate and low stakes, while the other is seen as rigorous and serious. I fell into that trap of devaluing what I had to offer because it was seen as typically feminine. I wanted that validation of my skills but trying to hold myself to meaningless chef standards just stunted my creativity.
I used to wish I had time away from writing recipes, creating cookbooks and cooking 24/7… to go to culinary school. Yes, it sounds dumb to me now too. Wouldn’t I want the job I was doing even after I graduated with some certificate? Yes. I love learning new things but it wasn’t a lack of knowledge I was worried about, just the missing accolade. I had to stop being so insecure and tell the good girl in me to stfu. Ten years and five cookbooks later, I feel like I have more than earned the right to call myself a chef. No six or twelve month program can compete with actually cooking and obsessing over food for decades of your life. You either have the juice or you don’t. And in the kitchen, I’ve always had the juice. Now I am happy to identify as a home cook and want you to feel the same way.
Your kitchen is not The Bear. It doesn’t need to be. Just because something is difficult, time-consuming, and involves a lot of people screaming at you doesn’t mean it’s worth doing. It doesn’t make it important, but it does make a temper tantrum during dinner look even stupider if there are 50 people waiting on food from you. Home cooking doesn’t need to be dramatic to be important. You don’t need to be feeding hordes of people to want to cook a perfect meal. Just you is enough. It’s the grind, the never-ending question of what’s for dinner, that makes it tough. That’s the pinnacle of cooking right there, not cranking out entrees in a restaurant that won’t exist in five years. Dinner never stops, never closes, never falls out of fashion. It’s exactly that grind that I want to help you with.
Moving forward, I’m going to publish a few less recipes per month here at Stir the Pot but the recipes are going to have more depth. I am going to show you lots of applications for the recipes so that once you have mastered them, you can turn out tons of different meals based on what you have available. I want you to be confident and well-fed. This weekend paid subscribers are getting one I have been working on for a while: an instant cheese mix that you make in bulk and leave in your pantry for months. It’s perfect for instant mac and cheese (that even tweens could make), nachos, and tons of other applications that I’ll have all lined out for you. Plus, it's much cheaper than any box of vegan mac you can buy at the store. This is the kind of useful stuff I want to bring to you. Groceries are too damn expensive to waste your money cooking up a bunch of bullshit. So what does your subscription buy? Me, in the kitchen, working for you in the best ways I can find, original recipes, a great subscriber chat, free membership to
, and a cooking concierge service where I answer your kitchen questions ASAP. Not bad for $5 a month.Can’t afford to be a paid subscriber? Don’t stress. I have a deep bench of recipes I’ve created over the last 10 years that I will keep sharing here along with all hot takes, tips and tricks in the kitchen, city guides, honest reviews, and personal essays that you all have come to expect. Everybody can have a seat at the table, no entry fee required. As more and more content (ugh) moves behind paywalls and subscriptions, I still want to offer lots of stuff for free that has actual value. I am excited that a decade into my professional cooking life people still want to hear from me and I don’t take that for granted. My purpose has always been to help people get excited about food, cooking, and share my favorite recipes and ideas along the way. Thank you for letting me keep up that work and thank you for supporting me while I took a step back for the summer. You all showed up in the chat and supported one another while I hid out in the woods, cooked with friends, spent quality time with my wife, and found ways to stop focusing on all that is going wrong so that I can see all that is going right. I filled my cup back up so that I can get back to helping all of you have fun with your food. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I’ll see you in the kitchen.
xoxo,
Michelle
* Yes, October 7 makes 10 years since Eat Like You Give a Fuck was released, and I don’t know where the years went.
So glad you got that rest and relaxation you needed!
I find my time in the kitchen meditative and it's always helpful to be reminded that it doesn't have to be a High Stakes kind of thing.
Home cook vs chef has always felt the way Folk Art vs High Art does: one is practical, natural, mostly done by femmes, and not valued. The other is High Octane, Pushing Boundaries, Impractical Is Sometimes The Point, and the one that receives the most accolades, money, and space in museums. People can diminish the importance all they want but my great-grandmother's art has kept me warm. My mother's art collection of well-worn recipe cards has kept me fed.
That got rambly, but - cheers to Home Cookery! Cheers to taking rest! Cheers to finding validation in yourself! Cheers to keeping your own damn money from your own damn content! Just - cheers!
Let me be the first to say that I can’t wait for 2.0! And also to thank you for leading by example. Maybe if we keep seeing people we admire taking a left turn off of work-yourself-literally-to-death-boulevard and not only surviving, but thriving, we’ll get the fkg message. 😜