My story
About Big Brother Chef Joe
I'm Joe. I cook, and I teach people who thought they couldn't.
My Family Table to Yours
How I got here
I started in professional kitchens as a dishwasher and worked my way up through every station, eventually cooking restaurant-quality meals for hundreds of guests a night — meats, fish and sauces made from scratch.
I specialize in Italian cooking, and I also cook Portuguese, Spanish, American, French and other cuisines.
I worked in busy professional kitchens where we could serve 500 to 1,000 people. My two brothers owned an Italian restaurant, and cooking became an important part of our family.
Both of my brothers have since passed away, but what I learned and the memories around food and family are still a big part of why I created Big Brother Chef Joe.
I have more than 30 years of cooking experience and have also cooked and catered for family and groups at home.
I created Big Brother Chef Joe because I want to teach beginners and busy families that they can make restaurant-quality meals from scratch in their own kitchens without being intimidated.
I teach shopping, preparation, knife and pan skills, cooking temperatures, sauces, timing and plating so people understand the whole process, not just a recipe.
My Family Table to Yours
My message
From My Family Table to Yours. My faith, family and giving back are important parts of my mission. My mission is bigger than cooking — through Big Brother Chef Joe, I want to give back, support Christian ministries and hunger missions, and help provide food for families in need — from my family table to yours.
What I believe about cooking
Technique beats recipes
Learn six techniques properly and you can cook a hundred dinners without looking anything up.
Fast can still be good
Thirty minutes is plenty of time to cook something genuinely excellent, if you know the order to do it in.
The table is the point
Restaurant quality isn't about showing off. It's about giving the people at your table something worth staying for.
Why I do this
I grew up around a table where food was how people took care of each other. That's still the point. The technique matters because it gets you back to that table faster, with something worth sitting down for.