The 4-Hour Chef – Dish Reviews

I’ve been a fan of Tim Ferriss ever since I read the 4-Hour Workweek. His approach to learning has truly helped to demystify many of the (supposedly) most complex topics and most desired ways of life out there.

Before I dive into what I hope to learn from the 4-Hour Chef, I’ll break down his last two books in a short and, hopefully, concise manner so you understand where I am coming from:

In The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim challenges the age-old perception that becoming “rich” and “successful” involves slaving away for 40+ hours a week for your entire adult life, until final you can retire in your old age to enjoy…

Well now you are old… so I guess you can enjoy, like, grandkids or prune juice or something?

By redefining what it means to be “rich” and “successful”, Tim explains that the “New Rich” define their riches not by how much money they make or how many new Ferarris they have, but by their ability to free up both their time and location. The book is a loose tutorial on how to achieve your financial independance by way of outsourcing, cutting out unprofitable time-sucks, trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and mini-retirements, and much, much more.

Tim’s second book, The 4-Hour Body, goes even further with some of the concepts he had developed in his first book, applying them to more than 50 health topics including rapid fat-loss, increasing strength, boosting endurance, and polyphasic sleep. A true masterpiece of physical transformation.

Now, I’m quite happy to say, good ole’ Timmy has added a much tastier, though just as fun to read, wealth of knowledge to the series. The 4-Hour Chef.

Before I go any further, let me explain something. The 4-Hour Chef is NOT just a cookbook… or at least its not like any kind of cookbook I’ve read.

Not only does this book have an incredibly expansive assortment of exciting, easy-to-make, unique recipes – the beginning of the book also includes a lot of content on the learning process that directly ties together with his first two books (and just about any subject you can think of).

Cooking can be one of the most confusing, complicated, intimidating, and frustrating hobbies (or careers) to take up. Where do you start? What cookbooks are good? How do you even read cookbooks? What if I don’t have all the ingredients? What if I don’t have all the tools? What if I burn everything? What if my girfriend breaks up with me because I burned everything? What if my apartment burns down because I forgot to turn the oven off and burnt the food and the towel by the oven caught fire and started a chain reaction that spread quickly and engulfed my entire living room in flames before I could break the fire extinguisher out of the box in the hallway?

No worries, my friend. Cooking delicious exotic food is actually not that hard. The problem is that most cookbooks and recipes do a piss poor job at getting to the nitty gritty. They oftentimes include way too many ingredients, mention expensive appliances or tools, intimidating knife skills, and are just all around unreliable.

That’s where this book comes in. I won’t get into too much detail, but the five sections of the book progress very nicely and logically. In the first section, Tim introduces every important principle he’s discovered about accelerating learning. In the next four, we dive into the actual lessions. From the building blocks of cooking, to survival cooking, to artful creation, to full on professional.

Naturally, I’m starting at the bottom. Hope I can taste my way to the top – if not only to impress my dinner guests!

Stay tuned for individual reviews of each dish I muster up the courage to whip up!