I‘m not/have never been a pro, just really into cooking and following chefs and cooking as a hobby online and in cookery books. I love old videos of Keith Floyd and in one he gave this speech about how a kitchen only has one chef, that it came from the French word for chief, and that everyone else in the kitchen is a cook.

I know that’s dated as there are multiple chefs in some kitchens, but I told my friend this (also a hobbyist) and he was seriously incensed and got really argumentative about how pro cooks are chefs.

It was a stupid argument either way, but I haven’t ever gotten to ask actual chefs what they think? It seemed offensive that I said not all cooks are chefs, but I was just thinking (based on Floyd) it’s clearer in a kitchen setting. The cooks cook and the chefs have some additional responsibilities to the cooking. Is this accurate or is it just case by case?

edit: thanks for the replies! i'm going to get to some now. i figured this had probably been asked before but wanted to get my experience out there, so thanks if you've answered this numerous times.

Do you still have that passion for cooking at home? If not do you ever see yourself finding that passion again?

I'm relatively new to the space (graduated culinary school a year ago, been working at a fine dining establishment for two) and looking for adjustments I can make to more basic dishes or just techniques I could use to improve overall while I'm down. I busted my back pretty bad at work a few months ago, but I'm trying to get better where I can before I make my triumphant return.

I'm opening a cafe later this month and inherited an electric Vulcan Combi oven. I have a basic manual but there is very little information on how to use it. Do I follow air fryer instructions? How do I determine where to set the humidity percentage and cooking time? I've scoured the internet looking for answers.

Heyo; fresh produce at my restaurant has roughly a 3 day turnover; and this past years I’ve noticed a significant increase in the number of rejected produce. So if we reject, we’re out. We currently have ~7 distributors ranging from local to Sysco and I’ve been trying to figure out a better system of what to do when we reject shipments.

As of now, I have one of the sous’s run to an ethnic grocery store or major chain to grab what we need, but that’s a significant waste of labor

This topic has been on my mind a lot lately. I love cooking at home but it is something I do for pleasure and leisure. I think it could be awesome to find an avenue in which I am making a career out of this somehow, but I don't want to work in a restaurant because I know it can be pretty soul-sucking, and I just don't perform well under fast-paced overwhelming environments. Is it possible to somehow make a lucrative career revolving around cooking without that? What would that even look like? Private chef for a wealthy family, maybe? But how would I be able to attain that without extensive professional kitchen experience? Just curious what options are out there in the world? I'm working as a video editor right now but I'm always butting heads creatively, and I also just don't see this being a job that is going to really exist in 10 years time, with the rise of AI capabilities. Food will always be there and needed to be prepared by a human

Food service is often jumping from one burning dumpster fire to the next.

Came in at 17:00 and the afternoon shift had clearly been destroyed. Ten boxes of dough still downstairs, then I got trapped on the oven, tickets wouldn't stop printing, staff food had to go out… and suddenly the dough we normally ball on a strict schedule was 3 hours late.

The problem: this is Wednesday's 72-hour fermented pizza dough.

It will obviously continue fermenting, but those extra three hours in bulk could change the gluten structure and final proof enough that Wednesday's shift inherits the consequences.

Anyone running long-fermentation pizza dough professionally: would you expect a 3-hour delay in balling to be noticeable 72 hours later?