Think Like a Chef
It’s not about cooking faster—it’s about eliminating what slows you down
It’s 6 PM. You’re staring into the fridge hoping dinner will magically appear. The kids are asking “what’s for dinner?” for the third time, and you’re mentally calculating if takeout fits the budget this week. Meanwhile, you’ve got ingredients scattered everywhere, but no clear plan to turn them into an actual meal.
Sound familiar? Here’s what might surprise you: it’s not because you can’t cook. It’s because you’re thinking like a home cook instead of like someone who owns their kitchen.
When I stepped onto my first cruise ship as a young chef, fresh out of South Africa, I thought I knew what “high volume” meant. Back home, I’d worked hotel functions for 400 to 600 people and felt proud of our operation. But nothing—absolutely nothing—had prepared me for what I was about to witness.
2,000 hungry passengers. Three full restaurants. One kitchen. Every single night.
For the first week or two, I just watched. I stood there during service, mesmerized by this culinary orchestra unfolding before me, not fully understanding how everything came together. I could see the fruit prep station with every garnish precisely cut and ready. The vegetable station with mounds of perfectly diced onions, julienned carrots, and blanched greens waiting in pristine containers. The protein station where steaks were perfectly portioned and seafood was cleaned and seasoned.
But I couldn’t see the invisible threads connecting it all.
Then, as I spent more time on board and got to understand each section, something clicked. The magic wasn’t what they were adding to their process—it was what they had eliminated. I watched this incredible system work night after night, and I realized they had systematically removed every single thing that could go wrong.
But here’s what blew my mind: every single day, all three restaurants had completely different menus. This wasn’t just about prepping the same dishes over and over. This was strategic planning on a level I’d never imagined. And with daily menu changes, they had to monitor food waste meticulously—items couldn’t be reused for the next day’s completely different menu. To wrap your head around the planning needed to feed that many people daily with minimal waste is truly something amazing.
The night before, marinades were prepared for tomorrow’s proteins. Slow-braised items were already simmering. Stocks were reducing. Complex sauces were in their first stages. There were precise pickup times when each prep station had to deliver their components to the main kitchen—not a minute early, not a minute late—so the final assembly teams had exactly what they needed when they needed it.
When service started, chefs plated dishes in mere minutes. The tickets were clear and concise with minimal substitutions allowed—no confusion, no staring at complicated orders, just smooth, elegant execution.
It looked effortless. But I realized it was effortless because of the incredible amount of thoughtful work that happened before anyone even got hungry.
The secret wasn't superhuman chefs or complex systems. The secret was elimination:
Instead of adding more complexity to handle problems, they removed the problems entirely.
Fast-forward to when my husband and I were working at our first establishment that didn’t provide family meals. This was the first time we had to provide our own lunch and dinner at work, and it was taking a huge hit on our grocery bill. Between buying more groceries and working long hours, we didn’t always get a chance to cook the food we’d bought, so we found there was a lot of waste. That’s when we decided to bring our professional planning skills home.
We planned out all our lunch and dinner meals for the entire week.
This wasn’t just meal planning—this was thinking like a chef about our home kitchen. I designed a complete menu, then chose ingredients specifically for those meals. No random ingredients hoping to make something work. No wandering the aisles wondering what to cook. I used the same ingredients multiple times across different meals to cut costs and eliminate waste.
The result? Online grocery delivery became strategic, not stressful. Cooking became assembly, not invention.
The Chef’s Secret:
The 4 Eliminations That Change Everything
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