About Ken Hom

Ken Hom was born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1949, but was brought up in Chicago, Illinois by his mother, after his father died when he was a baby. It was a hard life, and meant that Ken had to take his first job in his Uncle's restaurant at the age of eleven. It was where he first learned to cook, and he remembers it as a formative experience: "I did everything and it became my culinary education." In those days, he earned the equivalent of 30p an hour.

Later, he went on to study History of Art and French History in California, and while there, to supplement his scholarship, he began to teach cookery lessons, Italian pasta dishes to begin with, in a congressman's wife's kitchen. But he soon returned to his first love, Chinese cuisine, and began teaching that instead to general acclaim. In 1977, after being reccommended to them, he joined San Fransisco's new California Culinary Academy as an instructor.

His big break came in 1982. Madhur Jaffrey had just finished an extremely successful series on Indian cooking, and the BBC was keen to follow it up with a series on Chinese cooking. Madhur had seen Ken giving lessons in California and recommended him. The series, Ken Hom's Chinese Cookery, was an instant success, and one of the most successful cookery series the BBC has ever produced. The book that accompanied the series has sold over 1.2 million copies, and is still in print today.

Other television series followed it, and Ken has also written over a dozen cookbooks, exploring other types of Oriental cookery, including Vietnamese, Malaysian, Cambodian and Thai. As well as being a leading authority on Chinese cookery, Ken has also cooked and consulted in many restaurants and hotels worldwide, and pupils of his have opened major restaurants around the world. Ken has also cooked for over thirty Heads of State.