Most of what makes a cook good or bad cannot be tasted. It is in the hands, the clock, the fridge and the conversation you did not have. Here are the five things that actually matter, how to check each one, and what it costs when they are missing.
1. Hygiene: the hands, the hair, the board and the cloth
Food poisoning at home almost never comes from a bad ingredient. It comes from hands, from a chopping board that did raw chicken and then cucumber, and from cooked rice left out in a warm kitchen through the afternoon.
What good looks like. The cook washes hands with soap at the sink on arriving, after the toilet, after touching the phone, after handling raw meat or eggs, and before touching anything that will not be cooked again. Hair tied or covered. Nails short. No rings while kneading. A separate spoon for tasting, washed between tastes. The kitchen cloth changed daily, and a separate cloth for the counter and for hands.
What to check. Watch the first ten minutes of the trial day. If the hands are not washed before the first vegetable is touched, that tells you more than the dal will.
What to provide. Liquid soap and a nail brush at the sink, a hand towel changed daily, two aprons, and a hair cover. These are cheap and they set the standard without a lecture.
Cuts and illness. A cut on the hand gets a waterproof plaster, and if it is weeping, the cook does not cook. A cook with fever, diarrhoea or vomiting stays home, paid, until a day after it clears. Say this on day one so it is a rule, not an accusation.
2. The diet: cooking for the people who actually live there
A cook learns to cook for one family, usually their own or the last employer's, and brings that food to your kitchen. The job is to make them cook for yours.
Say the medical facts. Diabetes, blood pressure, a cardiac diet, kidney trouble, a pregnancy, a child under two, an elderly parent with no teeth. Each of these changes how food should be cooked: less salt, no sugar, soft textures, no raw salad, measured oil. A cook who is told will cook accordingly; a cook who is not told will cook the way they always have, and nobody will know why the sugar readings crept up.
Oil. The simplest shared rule is a monthly oil budget for the household, and the simplest test is whether the dal has a layer of oil floating on it. Cooks who learned in a mess or a restaurant use two or three times what a home needs and will reduce it happily if asked.
Salt. Cook under-salted and let people add at the table, if anyone in the house has blood pressure.
A real diet. For a dietician's chart, a renal diet, a post-surgery diet or diabetic cooking that has to be exact, hire a special-diet cook at ₹12,000 a month and give them the chart. It is a different skill and a different kind of attention.
Religious and family rules. Jain food, no onion and garlic on particular days, fasting foods for Navratri or Ekadashi, no non-veg on certain weekdays. A Jain or sattvic cook at ₹9,000 knows these rules; an ordinary cook needs them written down.
3. The clock: food at the time the house eats
A cook who is good but late is a cook who is making you eat at 9:30. Punctuality is the second-most common reason a cook is let go, after hygiene, and it is the one most families tolerate for too long.
Agree the time the food must be on the table, not the time the cook arrives. The cook then plans backwards: for an 8 am lunch box, the visit starts at 6:45.
Measure it in week one. Note arrival and finish for six days. If the slot has drifted by twenty minutes, say so on day seven, with the times. Cooks who are told in the first week fix it; cooks told in the fourth month argue.
Give notice both ways. If you will be out, or eating out, tell the cook by the previous evening so they can use the slot for another home. In return, ask for the same notice for a day off.
4. Honesty about what went into the food
This is the hardest to check and the most important over a year.
Groceries. If the cook shops for you, settle weekly against bills or a photographed list, and spot-check prices once a month, openly. A cook who buys for you is doing you a service and should not be made to feel like a suspect; a monthly glance at the bills is enough to keep everyone honest without it.
Leftovers. Agree what happens to them. Reheated the next day for lunch is fine for most dishes if they went into the fridge within two hours. Rice kept out overnight is the single most common cause of food poisoning in Indian homes and should go in the bin, not the fridge. Cooked food that went to the fridge should be eaten within two days.
What was used. Ask, occasionally and without suspicion, what went into a dish. The answer should be quick and specific. A cook who is vague about the oil or the masala is either not paying attention or not telling you.
Taking food home. Some families send the cook home with leftovers as a matter of course and it is a kindness. Make it a stated arrangement rather than a quiet one, so it never becomes a question.
5. The household's side: a kitchen that can be cooked in
The fifth non-negotiable is yours. A cook cannot produce clean, on-time food from a kitchen with a blunt knife, a leaking tap, a cooker with a dead gasket and a cylinder about to run out.
- The stove and the cylinder working, with a spare cylinder or a plan for one.
- A chimney or exhaust that moves air, with the filters cleaned before the cook starts.
- Knives sharpened, two boards, one marked for non-veg.
- A pressure cooker with its gasket and weight.
- Labelled containers for dal, rice, atta and the masala dabba filled.
- Space in the fridge on a shelf the cook can use.
- Soap, nail brush and a hand towel at the sink.
- Pay on the date. Every month, without being asked.
One rule that covers all five: whatever you want the cook to do, say it on the trial day and write it on one sheet. Hygiene, the diet, the time, the groceries, the leftovers. A cook who reads the sheet and asks two questions is the one you hire.
The two situations where "matters most" becomes "stop now"
Cross-contamination you have seen. Raw chicken on the same board as the salad, or hands from the meat to the rotis without washing. This is not a conversation for next week. Say it immediately, show what you mean, and if it happens again the arrangement ends.
A pattern of absence. Two unannounced missed days in the first month, or a habit of arriving an hour late with a different reason each time. A cook who is already somewhere else in their head is not going to settle. Pay to the day, say why, and post again. A trial day at ₹700 with the next candidate is cheaper than another month of hoping.
Everything else, the slightly too-oily sabzi, the rotis a bit thick, the chutney not quite your mother's, is a conversation and a week of adjustment, and a cook who is kept for years was once a cook who got that week.