Men are Chefs while Women are just Cooks?

If you’re a woman who loves to cook, yes, I totally understand why your hair is standing on its end right now. On the other hand, if you’re a man reading this, I know why you’re basking in the glory.

While watching one of our favorite TV shows Iron Chef America, my husband casually noted that he can’t really put a finger on the idea of a woman chef. I asked, why not? He said there’s just something “not right” about it. The best chefs are men, he even added. Just when I was about ready to fillet the issue with him, the only female Iron Chef Cat Cora lost on that episode. Ngark. He shot me with that “I told you so” look.

I wanted to debunk his myth so he challenged me to name famous male chefs alongside female ones to see which category has more. Okay for the male chefs, we have Jamie Oliver, Anthony Bourdain, Wolfgang Puck, Gordon Ramsay, Emeril LaGasse, Ming Tsai, Bobby Chin, and the Iron Chefs: Mario Batali, Bobby Flay… to name just a few (or at least the ones that we see often on the Lifestyle Network & Discovery Travel/Living)

For the women I immediately said Cat Cora (because she was on screen that time) and then… I was stumped. The popular female “culinarians” that came to my mind were not exactly Chefs… Martha Stewart is not a chef (she’s a homemaking icon), Nigella Lawson is not a chef either (she just loves putting food into her mouth and making them from time to time :-), The Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten is not a chef too (she started as a specialty food store owner in the Hamptons), and my goodness Rachael Ray herself claims she’s not even qualified for any job she’s ever had, especially the cooking part. How she got that gig is just one of the mysteries in this world. Okay, Giada de Laurentiis may have trained at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu, but there’s something about her that screams “Italian Model” rather than Chef. My husband even said she’s too pretty to be a Chef.

Alright, so what are we getting at? So is this phenomenon really true? Are men really better chefs than women? Does that mean they have better taste buds? Is it an anatomical difference? Is this part of the whole Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus thing?

Let me straighten this out. Let’s put into consideration the word in question here – CHEF. It’s a noun that simply means PROFESSIONAL COOK. So there we encounter another word to reckon with – PROFESSIONAL. And this is where everything is put into good light. Okay, we probably must admit it. There are more legit male chefs on TV than there are female. In professional kitchens around the world, the staff may hold a lot of female chefs but the head chefs are more often MALE. Why? Simply because it is the PROFESSIONAL WORLD. Like any other professional jungle, the honchos are usually the hombres. Professional kitchens are no different from corporate offices.

I don’t really have the answer to why this is true in the Culinary Profession. In a time when more women have already stepped up several flights in the corporate ladder, we wonder why this has not happened in the world of gourmet food. BUT, and let me reiterate this for clarity, just because men are better chefs doesn’t mean that women can’t cook at par. Women may just be “cooks” (amateur chefs if you may) because we prefer to take our talents in BETTER USE – to feed our families. I believe that women don’t need to put on starch white uniforms and toques to cook. Women do not cook for money. We cook for LOVE.

So okay, I told my husband. Men may be the Chefs while women may just be cooks but don’t forget that all of these men first learned how to cook in their mothers’ kitchens.