Gordon Ramsay's Go-To Advice For Aspiring Chefs

Among celebrity chefs, Gordon Ramsay has become a household name due to his steady string of television shows like "Hell's Kitchen," "Kitchen Nightmares," "Hotel Hell," and more recently "Next Level Chef." On and off camera, Ramsay loves a wide range of different foods and he's worked with tons of cuisines ranging from North and South American entrees and breakfasts to his signature British beef Wellington. It's hardly a surprise, then, that Ramsay advocates for young chefs to travel and experiment.

In 2022, Ramsay appeared on an episode of the Super U Podcast hosted by Erik Qualman to give life advice to aspiring young chefs. Ramsay's advice wasn't directly about cooking, but more about personal growth as a chef: "My advice to any young chef anywhere in the world — get out of your comfort zone, and put yourself in a scenario where you have to build a character, learn a second language, and find out a lot about yourself on your own, without mum, without dad, without a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, and without any money." According to Ramsay, placing yourself in these new situations and "building a character" helps you improve over time: "You'd be surprised three years down the line, what that does for your self-esteem, phenomenal."

Later on in the podcast, Gordon Ramsay spoke more about growing in a specifically culinary way. Perhaps contrary to his intense onscreen persona (although he's known to be a fairly nice guy when the cameras are off) he believes in being generous with the cooking know-how he's accumulated: "I have an unselfish way of teaching people to invest in their palate to get it as strong as mine. I try to say to them, 'It's lazy to copy, anybody can copy.' So take 25% of everything you've learned from other chefs. And then put yourself on the plate. And over the years of experience, reduce 'me' less and improve yourself. And that's the foundation to becoming a great chef."

Over the years, Ramsay has given cooking advice quite a bit, and the wisdom he's shared tends to be more directly about the food, like salting your cutting boards when mincing garlic and freezing mozzarella before grating it so that it stays firm. His advice about placing oneself in new situations does seem to come straight from his own life: born and raised in the United Kingdom, he eventually moved to France to train as a chef before returning and opening his own restaurant in London some time later. It worked out for him.