A Chef Just Set a World Record by Cooking for 53 Hours Straight (That's More Than 2 Full Days!)
750 dishes, 15 assistants, 8 stoves, and 1 very sleep-deprived chef.
You probably think you know what endurance is. Maybe you ran a marathon, or completed a triathlon. May you pulled an all-nighter studying for an exam, or put in a 70-hour week at work. But until you’ve spent (literally) an entire weekend sweating nonstop in front of eight stoves while cooking more than 750 dishes, you don’t really know what endurance is.
And, if you have done that, you must be Vishnu Manohar, (nice to have you as a reader, Chef), the celebrity cook from India who Food and Wine reports spent 53 hours last weekend obliterating the previous Guinness World Record for “most consecutive hours spent cooking.”
To train for his momentous record, Manohar worked with a nutritionist who put him on a diet filled with protein and carbohydrates to help him raise and maintain his high energy levels. Prior to his attempt, the Times of India also reports that Manohar practiced cooking at all-night canteens in order to get used to cooking without sleep. On three separate occasions the energizer-bunny-turned-chef cooked for 45 hours straight—each of which would have been enough to beat the old record of 40 hours set in 2014 by teen chef Ben Perry.
But Manohar wanted more.
Starting last Friday at 8 a.m., the chef began working and didn't come up for air until 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, cooking with 15 assistants in front of Guinness officials and a crowd of supporters (many apparently/weirdly wearing Manohar masks).
According to the record rules, each of Manohar’s 700-plus dishes had to weigh at least 100 grams in order to count. Additionally, one five-minute break was given to the chef for every two hours of cooking—presumably to keep him from dehydrating/dying on the spot. Even with only these minimal breaks to sustain him, Manohar was apparently no worse for wear by the time Sunday afternoon came around. “I still have the energy to go on for 10 more hours,” Manohar told The Times of India (confirming our suspicion he’s a cyborg sent from the future.)
That's what we call endurance.
