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Why so few women here?

susan_fox_33805

Is sous vide a men's sport? Why so few women pioneers?

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Mike_Minh_Truong_54120

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Chris_Young_80640

@CarolynMW

Thanks for taking the time to give us your thoughts. I know that Grant, Ben, and Nick will be happy to hear that they're easy on the eyes. ChefSteps has had two female chefs work with us, but Trisha left to go to pastry school (we did try to talk her out of it) and Bronte is currently running the raw bar program at Seattle's Westward. Grant and I would both like to see more great female talent in our kitchen.

As for diversity at ChefSteps, we spend a huge amount of time focused on the culture of the company we're building. Our biggest hiring criteria are: you have a proven track record of shipping highly regarded work in your field, and you are excited by working with a world class culinary team. You can get more of a sense of how we approach hiring at our jobs page.

http://www.chefsteps.com/jobs

This approach has actually resulted in a pretty experienced and mature team. Although the kitchen team is younger, the age range of the 18 folks working at ChefSteps spans 21 to 63, with the median being somewhere around 38 (my age). Six of our current employees are women, and they are all among the most talented people I have worked with. In fact, all but one of our shooters, film editors, and writers are women.

But, yes, I'd love to see more women in our kitchen (and on our engineering team). Know of someone who would be a great fit? Let us know.

CarolynMW_37183

Chris, back to your question about drawing more women to the site. First, anecdotal stuff:
I arrived at Chefsteps after gorging on Dave Arnold's Cooking Issues. I'm reasonably well informed within the field, so it takes a lot to get me interested in something new. Dave's work isn't gimmicky or instinctive - he researches and informs - plus his freneticism is fun. I listened to your appearances (and those of the other crew), wandered over here and stayed.

What keeps me coming back:

ChefSteps recipes and ideas are data-driven. In all walks of life, humans usually make decisions based on faulty information. ("My grandma sez cook the chikn in mayonnaise to keep it moist.") I'm not grossed out by the mayo but by the inaccuracy. Research is much more fun and informative.
Focus on the food, not technique at expense of the food.
Quality of writing is high.
Beautifully shot and orchestrated short videos.
Accessibility of the site (everything is linked so you can trail ideas around easily).
Audience is clearly not just professionals - everything you do is easily adapted for home cooks.
ChefSteps hires incredible talents who just happen to be easy on the eyes. (C'mon, let's be real.)

So: if you want more women engaged on the site, leverage those strengths. Where are you advertising? What percentage of their visitors are women? Since there are more women home cooks than women professional cooks (okay, the ratio is changing, but...), direct content at home cooks in particular. Doing so doesn't require dumbing down the content, just positioning it in different sites. Make the food the focus of those ads - not the mechanics or equipment that's necessary.

Finally: we need to see women in your videos. I'm never a fan of hiring based on anything but qualifications, but come on: are there really no women cooking for CS? It does tend to come across as a very male environment. As a cooking enthusiast I'm definitely in, but as a women the message I get is, "We don't hire you." That's a problem. (Note: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your hiring. I'm sure there isn't. But the lack of diversity may reduce the number of women you draw in.)

Lynda_Vaughn_72120

My 2 cents as a complete newbie to modernist cuisine...

I don't know that this is specific to women and SV, modernist cooking, etc, but the main reason it took me awhile to become interested was the lack of in depth info on it in the mainstream - especially mainstream TV.

The first I recall was several years ago on Top Chef - and without detailed info about it, it (referred to as "molecular gastronomy” at the time) seemed to be little more than a gimmick, a way to show off “weird” equipment and ingredients. It seemed like it was a fad based on showing off without really focusing on flavor.

As I started seeing more in cookbooks / food writing about it, I gained a lot more respect and interest in it, but it still seemed like it was something possible only in a high-end restaurant kitchen with tons of extremely expensive specialty equipment and lots of professional cooks. It was fascinating to read about (and look at photos), but didn't seem accessible to home cooks.

That changed recently. My husband and I both love to cook, and we enjoy working on different cooking projects together on the weekend. We were in Sur la Table and got into a conversation with the store manager (about tongs, if you can believe it). It turned into a long conversation about technique, tools, favorite things to cook - no sales pitches, just 3 people talking about cooking. The manager then started telling us about the Sansaire - again, not as a sales pitch, but because it was new and he had recently starting using it and had fallen in love with SV. His enthusiasm was so great that we started to get excited as well on the idea of doing SV ourselves at home. We didn't buy it (we had already bought the bone caviar spoon and a few other odds and ends that we went in for), but we were inspired to do further investigation. Since then, we got MC@H and did a lot of web surfing (and found ChefSteps), and we are now excited to give it a go.

By the way, I am NOT scientifically inclined, but despite that, I'm not intimidated by MC. I use scales, I can follow a recipe - and I don't think you have to be a scientist to enjoy learning the new techniques of MC. Of course, it doesn't hurt that my husband is a mathematician and interested in physics and science in general (though I would do MC on my own even if he weren't).

So, to return to my original point - I think that a lot of avid home cooks don't get into MC mainly because of a lack of understanding of it - and I think many would (will) get into it as more in depth info gets into the mainstream (like the excited store manager telling his customers about it).

azumisura

Hello Carrie

What kind of blast chiller you get, can you guide me with this? I'm thinking is time to get one, but I will like one that can be used with wine and beers also, and a countertop preferable, 110v will be A+, if you have information about a centrifuge also? I will appreciate it a lot. Regards

Carrie_34614

I'm a woman...and I'm here, too! Actually...I'm a 60 year old woman who started cooking at age 4.

I don't have an outside job - I'm a housewife with an empty nest. But I do have a renewed interest in culinary arts. I don't want to ever, ever, stop learning!

In September I was actually invited to attend the "Chef-Sache 2013" in Cologne, Germany. Met and talked with some of the greatest Chefs in the world! Two days of wonder and learning that I will not ever forget. (As this was for professionals and those in the trade I'm pretty sure I was the only "housewife" in attendance!)

I think I'm lucky. My husband is an engineer...so he does understand...and he absolutely enjoys that I'm enjoying being engaged in the kitchen. Never a single complaint by him about anything I've bought - or money I've spent - including cookbooks that I can barely lift...or the chamber vacuum sealer that he can barely lift! Just yesterday he asked me if I wanted to go look at new kitchens! What a sweetheart!!! On the way to the store he told me that I shouldn't feel the need to justify my purchases...(I was feeling a little guilty because I'm getting a beautiful Irinox blast chiller/shock freezer that I've long wanted). My appliances and tools have really begun filling all available spaces. Even after a major declutter. Non-the-less, I'm thinking of asking my husband if he could design a safe, home sized centrifuge for me. But I doubt he has the time.

p.s. My husband was happy when he found out that a blast chiller worked for beer and wine, too!

p.p.s.A few months ago I found my way to ChefSteps. I'm so glad I did!

Jos_Marlowe_15864

I am female and I am obsessed with modernist cuisine. But my friends are not. The guy next door is an engineer, and i was describing what I am buying, and he just shook his head. He (apparently) likes to do things the traditional way. He was never in research. So intolerance of change is certainly a factor. My sous vide machine arrives in 4 days. I have some equipment that I bought locally, but not enough to make anything yet. But I am hooked on the concepts, totally. I got into this from watching Hannibal on NBC. It is food porn. The culinary consultant is Chef Jose Andres, who cooks modernist. So Hannibal also cooks this way because Andres supplies the recipes. But Hannibal pretends to live in the 19th century. He uses technology, but sparingly and covertly. For one soup he used a centrifuge, and he mentions that, but the centrifuge is not shown. And hannibal's recipes are hand-written and stored in a small wooden box. As long as cultural icons glorify cooking as it was done in the old days -- Auguste Escoffier et al. -- the general public will resist techniques like sous vide.

seijoed

Yes

Mira_63004

Johan, true, but I was referring more to my circles of family/friends where its predominantly the women doing all that. While some households might share those responsibilities, a good chunk still have traditional gender roles. Nothing wrong with either way, marriage is a "contractual agreement" of sorts, isn't it? But, I digress from the topic