Help, My Husband Is a Show-Off Chef

‘Okay, I need to get this off my chest. Sometimes my husband really drives me crazy. Not because I don’t love him, but because he has turned cooking into a show. Every meal is now an adventure, with blowtorches, sous-vide machines and a Big Green Egg. While I just want to eat a normal steak. Yes, this really happens. And yes, it occasionally drives me completely nuts.‘

From Steak to Big Green Egg

‘It used to be simple. My husband would fry an egg, throw some fries in the deep fryer and dinner was ready. But then he decided to expand his skills and discovered the world of cooking as an art form. It all started with the Big Green Egg, but that was only the beginning. We went from a simple steak to reverse-seared dry-aged rib-eye that has to be grilled at precisely 54.3°C.

But that’s not all. First, the meat has to sit in a sous-vide machine for an hour to achieve the perfect texture, after which it gets a crispy crust from the blowtorch. Yes, you heard that right: a blowtorch. Seriously, I was standing next to him the other day while he was ‘flaming’ his steak, and I thought: “who would have thought cooking a steak could be so complicated?”

Grocery Shopping with a Show-Off Chef

You can imagine, grocery shopping isn’t what it used to be either. It’s more like an expedition now. While I work through my familiar supermarket list, he visits specialty shops and wholesalers in search of truffle salt from Umbria, fermented black garlic from China and chillies from Peru. He comes back with the most obscure ingredients, describing them with so much passion that I sometimes wonder whether he’s trying to sell the ingredients or himself.

He says things like: “this spice blend comes from the Himalayas and has the perfect balance of heat and smokiness.” While secretly I’m thinking: “why can’t I just buy a normal packet of herbs?”

Or the other day, he enthusiastically started talking about goat’s cheese aged on chestnut wood, while all I could think was: “why can’t I just put cheese on a sandwich without there having to be a whole story behind it?”

Everything Has to Be a Show

And then there are the cutting techniques! A cucumber is cut into perfect julienne strips, carrots into brunoise… I know by now that those are tiny cubes, because tossing slices into a salad is no longer an option. Cooking isn’t about making a meal anymore; it’s a performance. Terms like spherification, emulsifying, dehydrating, sous-vide, Maillard reaction fly through the kitchen as if he’s a Michelin-starred chef. When he finally serves his dishes, they’re little works of art: emulsified chimichurri, perfectly arranged artichoke hearts and a steak that looks as though you’re not allowed to touch it.

The Kitchen Is His Domain

And that’s not even mentioning the kitchen itself. It used to be our shared space; now it’s a culinary museum where he’s in charge. Every drawer is filled with obscure tools: vacuum pumps, silicone mats, sous-vide sticks… you name it. Everything has its perfect place, and no one is allowed to touch anything except him.

Even the spice jars are arranged alphabetically by origin and type, as if you’re standing in a Michelin-starred restaurant instead of your own kitchen. I barely dare to pick anything up anymore, afraid I’ll accidentally ruin a Maillard reaction or an emulsion.

Just Eat

Still, I have to admit: when he finally finishes, those meals are often phenomenal. The grilled tuna with basil oil, the slow-cooked pulled pork… I wish he would open a restaurant, because honestly, he’d fit right into the Michelin-starred chef category. But sometimes I simply long for the days when he would just fry an egg, without an enormous show attached to it. No Big Green Egg, no sous-vide, no blowtorch; just food.

No Blowtorch for Once

So, if you also walk into your kitchen every Saturday and find your husband there, busy with his sous-vide machine and blowtorch, wondering whether you married an accountant or a showman, know that you’re not the only one. If your husband turns every meal into a performance with cooking techniques that sound as though they come from a Michelin-starred restaurant, you’ll probably recognize that longing for simplicity.

Because sometimes you just want a simple dish without a complicated preparation beforehand.’

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