ABOUT

So what do you actually do?

I’m a trained professional chef and the creator of Sliced. I feel like over the past year, I have done so many different projects and stuff like that. But currently I have just decided to go full on with Sliced. I also recently released a book called Dates and Water recently, and I have just decided to take a leap of faith and just completely go away from the kitchen for now, and focus on the social media side of things.

Sliced is a food page that I founded, where I post content. Originally, for like the first year and a half, it was entirely just aimed at students. It was about making food where each portion was under £2.50 so university students could afford it and I could show them a really simple easy meal for them to cook.

But as time went on , I branched out and this change happened around the George Floyd protests where I saw a lot of companies and organisations doing performative posts and actions and I was thinking how could I do something meaningful with Sliced? And that’s when the second half of the identity of Sliced came about – which is me covering the history and culture and the origin of foods, and appreciating this.

So yeah, Sliced as a whole is a good page. It’s quite light-hearted but I want people that come to a) find food accessible and easy to cook and b) learn something about the history and origin and culture of food.

What was the inspiration behind your book?

When you think of the word ‘halal’, or anything Islamically related to food, you don’t see the beautiful years and centuries of histories that we have had. You see neon signs and chicken shops, which is absolutely fine. But I’ve always wanted to elevate the status that we have. And when people think of Halal, I want them to think of it as a good thing, a great thing, and focus on our years of history.

So when I looked online for Ramadan books, there were hardly any written especially for a month that is so centred around food and culture. And I think for a lot that were written, not a lot were written professional by chefs – they were more guides and things like that, which is great and I support that. But I want to change things and create a book that is written by professional chefs, and graphic designers, and features art and poetry and really encapsulates what Ramadan is all about. So I wanted to do something different and find a niche, and hit that.

What has your career path been?

Growing up I was quite academic. I did English, Religious Studies, and Psychology at A-Level and I really enjoyed that and I was close to going into that kind of field – really thought provoking subjects. Subjects that have a lot of discourse in them and things like that.

But then when I really thought about it, food is something that I have loved since I was eight years old and I’d always kind of developed it, and learnt from my parents and from YouTube. So I’ve kind of been self-taught. And when it came to it, I remember sitting there with my UCAS and I didn’t really want to do Business or English and my mum just said to me – what do you want to do? And I said that I wanted to be a chef. And she said, do it then.

So I looked online, literally typed in chef degrees because I didn’t even know that existed. For anyone that wants to be a chef, I would actually recommend that if you just want to learn how to cook, going into a restaurant and doing an apprenticeship for a year. But I was more interested in the management side of it and I’ve always wanted to own my own place one day.

The degree I chose was called Culinary Arts Management and it was a four-year course in Birmingham – and they also do it in London and Birmingham, and some other cities. It was really good and the second year I spent working in a 5* hotel as a chef and the third and fourth year was all about learning the management of food and things like that. I graduated last year and because of the pandemic the space has been weird with all restaurants being closed but I have worked as, I want to say as a consultant. I have worked on the business side of projects, recipe development side of projects and things like that. A good niche I have found is reaching out to organisations that have wanted to tap into the cultural side of food.

What is the best part of your job?

The best part has always been people sending me pictures of stuff that they have made. It’s starting to pick up now thankfully, but in the first year and a half when I was getting a few hundred views per video and not much was happening, it can be demotivating when you’ve put so much effort in but for every video I put out, if one person sent me a picture and said look, here’s what I made, then that’s very relieving and motivates me a lot.

And it’s always been my favourite thing – people sending me pictures, people asking me questions about a dish and knowing that I have had an impact is a great feeling.

What inspired you to do Sliced full time?

The idea came after my year of placement. So I studied a four year course in Culinary Arts Management at university, and in my second year I was on placement and spent a year at a hotel cooking. It as amazing. And while I was there, I was thinking to myself that whilst I like working here as a chef, I don’t want to be working 40-hour weeks for the next couple decades of my life and be away from my family and things like that. I want to create something where I can help multiple people and still be involved with cooking. And that’s where Sliced started because I wanted to help students and stuff like that, and it just kept growing and growing. And I felt like it’s a great niche.

Again, similar to one of my biggest intentions for food in general is to change the perception of Halal. So I want people to look at me and not just see a Muslim guy that can cook, I want them to see a professional chef. I think it’s important and someone who is a great example is Nadia from bake-off who did that. She wears her religion and her culture proudly, but she’s not just looked at like a Muslim baker. She’s just a baker. And that’s how we should look at things. So again, I really just wanted to change the perception of who we see social media chefs and food pages and stuff like that.

And in terms of doing it full time I realised that if you truly want something to take off, you should put your whole time into it and you can’t just do it as a hobby, or as a side thing. And I’ve never been afraid to say that food, for me, in our community, would be seen as a hobby. And I was like, I’m going to make a career out of it.

One piece of advice for someone starting in your role?

Firstly, mistakes happen all the time. I literally made a huge mistake a few days ago – in a kitchen it’s so normal.

Secondly, the advice I always give to people who want to be chefs is that you have to truly love food. Not just, I’ve seen it on Masterchef and I think I can do that. I know a lot of people who have done that and they break and can’t take it, and I have broken too at points. It’s a very good environment and you meet a lot of great people that nurture and help you, but it is a stressful environment and if you don’t truly love food – then it’s not for you. There’s so much pressure and intensity and you’re sweating and running around. I think I was doing around 20k steps a day in the kitchen so it is really intense.

If you’re the person who is itching to cook and can’t stay out of the kitchen, then do it. But if you’re on the fence, I wouldn’t recommend it. So make sure you go in with the pure conviction that you love what you’re doing and it’s the same for all career paths – but definitely in a kitchen.

Check out Yusuf’s socials below!

DAY IN THE LIFE

So I always consult my whiteboard, and write a big list of ideas on that and I would scratch some out and think about the sequence of the videos that I am putting out.

 For example, in Ramadan I am only going to put out Ramadan videos. But aside from that, if I’ve put out my main series or the struggle meal series, or the origin of food series, I need to think of something new. It has to be balanced. So I always spend a day a week just planning out all the videos and the sequencing o it, and I’ll try to get one or two videos done a day and spend as much time on them as possible – filming it ad making suer I’m happy.

Because I am a chef but I’m not experienced when it comes to filming and editing and things like that, so it’s what I’ve learned as I’ve gone along and so I’ve always tried to tweak or improve little things. I try to film during the day to capitalise on the daylight and summer is my favourite time of the year because of this so a large part of the day is filming, and in the evenings I’ll edit and try get this done the day before so that I’m not rushing everything on the day of posting.

Any free time that I have I spend working with other organisations, collaborations and developing other ideas for Sliced. I have pads of little notebooks and I’ll always be writing down ideas of things that I’m trying to develop. I love the creative process of going to a shop, picking out one ingredient and then building a dish around it.

There’s so many videos that I’ve never posted because they turn out awful – but it’s all about experimenting for me, and finding something that works. There’s a traditional Palestinian / Levant dish called Maqluba and I made it like four times and it kept falling apart, wasn’t holding, and so I constantly try to perfect my dishes and tweak things to try something new. And then when I’m happy with it, I’ll post a video on it. And some videos that are posted I’ll remake them again because I’ve found a better recipe for it. So the cooker doesn’t turn off in this house and yeah, that’s my average day.