Chef Circle didn't start in a professional test kitchen or culinary school. It started in a cramped apartment kitchen with mismatched measuring cups and a persistent smoke detector.
Back in 2019, I (Sarah) was working a typical 9-to-5 job that left me exhausted and uninspired. Cooking became my escape, but I kept running into the same problem: recipes that looked gorgeous online but fell apart when I actually tried making them. Instructions skipped crucial steps. Ingredient lists were vague. Cook times were wildly off.
After one too many dinner disasters (we still don't talk about the "flourless" chocolate cake incident), I started keeping a notebook. Every time I made something work, I'd write down what I actually did—not what the recipe said, but what really happened in my kitchen. The real temperatures. The actual times. The little tricks that made the difference.
My roommate at the time, Jessica, was my first taste-tester and biggest cheerleader. She convinced me to start sharing these recipes with friends. What began as a simple Google Doc for our friend group somehow turned into a small email list, then a basic blog.
The Turning Point
In 2021, during the pandemic, something shifted. People were stuck at home, trying to cook more, and they were tired of the same issues I'd faced—recipes that didn't work, instructions that didn't make sense, food that didn't taste like the pictures looked.
That's when I realized Chef Circle needed to be more than just my personal recipe stash. It needed to be what I wished I'd had when I started: a place where recipes actually worked the first time, where instructions were written by someone who knew what it was like to juggle work and dinner, where you didn't need fancy equipment or hard-to-find ingredients.
What Makes Us Different
We test every single recipe at least three times before it goes live. Not in a professional kitchen with perfect equipment—in regular kitchens with regular ovens that run hot or cool, with standard grocery store ingredients, and with the same time constraints you're dealing with.
I've brought in friends, family members, and now a small team of home cooks who help test and refine recipes. We've learned that a recipe isn't done when it works once—it's done when it works consistently, even when things aren't perfect.
Today, Chef Circle is still small, still growing, and still driven by the same frustration that started it all. We're not celebrity chefs. We're not trying to reinvent cuisine. We're just trying to make dinner a little less stressful and a little more enjoyable.
Whether you're here because you're tired of recipes that don't work, or you're just looking for something new to make for dinner tonight, I'm glad you found us. Let's make something good.
— Sarah Mitchell, Founder