Ken Hom OBE is the man who showed the British how to cook Asian food. A leading authority on Chinese cuisine, he is one of the most respected and celebrated TV chefs of all time. His phenomenal success is easily measured. He is the author of almost forty books, which have inspired millions of home cooks around the world. And in Britain alone, the Ken Hom wok is in one in seven kitchens. Ken Hom, who resides in France and in Thailand but travels tirelessly all over the world, continues to appear regularly as celebrity chef, write new books and keep an involvement with restaurants worldwide.
2019 is a landmark year for Ken Hom, as he will be celebrating his 70th birthday and will have been cooking for almost 60 years.
Ken was born in 1949 in Tucson, Arizona, where his Cantonese parents had emigrated. After losing his father when he was just eight months old, his mother moved to Chicago to be with relatives. As Ken grew up, he found American food unpalatable compared to his mother’s cooking, so she used to send him to school with a flask of hot rice and stir-fried vegetables.
Aged 11, he went to work in his uncle’s restaurant, where he earned the equivalent of 30 pence per day. At 19 he headed off to California to study art history and French history. To pay for his university fees he started to give cookery lessons and quickly realised that this was where his heart really laid – especially with his native Chinese cuisine. He soon started teaching first in his home, and then at the California Culinary Academy (a school for professional chefs in San Francisco). He also travelled to France and Italy to explore gastronomy further.
His career to date – A major national profile on him, published in the New York Times in 1981, lead to the publication of his first book on Chinese Cookery Techniques to much acclaim. Soon after the BBC contacted him, producing his first UK television series in 1984 Ken Hom’s Chinese Cookery, which bore the same title as the book accompanying the series, that many still regard as the ‘bible’. The show introduced and demystified Chinese cooking for the UK over 30 years ago, and was an instant hit, broadcast throughout the world. The book sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide making publishing history by being the first non-fiction book with a first printing of 350,000. In 2009, the BBC celebrated the 25th anniversary of the book, which to this day continues to be a top-seller after more than three decades in print.
Ken presented a further six television series – Hot Chefs, Ken Hom’s Hot Wok, Ken Hom’s Foolproof Chinese Cookery, Travels with a Hot Wok and Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure, attracting millions of viewers. He also presented a documentary on the origins of the noodle, ‘The Noodle Road’. This documentary series for KBS (Korean Broadcasting Service) was a huge success when broadcasted in early 2009 that it was sold to over 25 countries around the world, winning several awards, including the prestigious Peabody Award in 2010.
In November 2014 he released Truffles, the updated version of his book ‘Truffes’ first written in French in 2000 with Pierre-Jean Pebeyre of France’s legendary Pebeyre truffle family. The book won the Gourmand Award 2014 for ‘Best Mushroom Book’ category – USA.
His most recent book is his autobiography ‘My Stir Fried Life’ released at the end of September 2016. Currently being translated in Chinese with a publication date August 2019, the book is a high-spirited, life-enriching feast where the chopsticks never stop clattering, the platters are always abundant, and dreams – no matter how ridiculously unbelievable – can and do come true.
The Ken Hom Wok – The year 2016 marked the 30th anniversary of the Ken Hom Wok, the iconic piece of cookware which epitomises Ken’s style of cooking and which he commercially introduced to the British public in 1986 and it is the world’s longest best-selling branded cookware. It has sold 8 million units globally in 70 countries, of which 5.43 million in the UK alone and continues to sell around 100,000 units per year. Through his pioneering television series Ken Hom demystified the secrets of Chinese cooking and taught the UK how to cook with a wok. Ken’s name is so intrinsically connected with the wok, that James Martin, long-time former presenter of BBC cookery programme ‘Saturday Kitchen’ affectionately described Ken Hom as ‘half man, half wok’.
Charities and Causes – Since 2008, he has been an ambassador for Action Against Hunger, the humanitarian charity which works in over 40 countries helping families to feed their children and build a sustainable life. www.aahuk.org. Ken Hom also tirelessly supports several other charities such as The Ronald McDonald House Charity (RMHC) and Prostate Cancer UK, www.prostatecanceruk.org raising awareness of the need for early detections. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2010 and has since made a successful and full recovery.
An ambassador of GREAT, the government’s international marketing campaign showcasing the best Britain has to offer, he has been supporting the campaign including at the 2015 Milan Expo Since its inception in 2012, and thanks to his supporters, the campaign has delivered a £1.2b return on investment up to March this year, and the UK is now expected to welcome 42m international visitors by 2020.
Ken Hom’s Honours – In 2018 Ken received the Outstanding Contribution to Food Award from the inaugural Golden Chopstick Awards. The awards celebrate the best of the UK’s oriental food community. He was also honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Services to Culinary Culture by the Hurun Report, the world authority for the Chinese high net worth individuals. The Hurun Report aims to build a bridge linking the elites from both the UK and China and recognise outstanding contribution for the UK-China relationship. In 2009 he was awarded with an honorary OBE for ‘services to culinary arts’, recognising his achievements and the impressive social and historical impact he made on the way the UK has ‘adopted’ Chinese cuisine, which has now become one of the nation’s favourites. In 2007, he was awarded with an honorary doctorate from Oxford Brookes University for his ‘outstanding success within the international food world’. He donated his entire library of almost 3,000 cookery books for the benefit of the catering students. He was also appointed as Founding Patron of Oxford Gastronomica, which from 2007 to 2017 was a food and cultural studies Institute based within Oxford Brookes University. He is now a Founding Patron of the Oxford Cultural Collective, an independent cultural Institute that promotes better understanding of food and drink. The Collective has links to Oxford Brookes University through its foundation, formed to provide students with outstanding learning experience. https://oxfordculturalcollective.com/
Ken Hom Restaurants and Consultancies – During his long career, Ken Hom has fronted a number of top restaurants world-wide, including the Yellow River group and the Oriental Restaurants group throughout the UK, the Ken Hom restaurant at the Bandara Hotel in Bangkok and most recently MEE restaurant at the Belmond’s Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro. All restaurants won several prestigious awards, with MEE being awarded a Michelin star as well as winning ‘Best Asian Restaurant’ from the Eat and Drink awards and ‘Restaurant of the Year’ from the Brazilian Government Tourist Bureau.
Ken Hom has also worked as a consultant for hotels, restaurants and airlines and has cooked personally for presidents, prime ministers, celebrities and royalty.