Rising Stars: Meet Patrick Lee

Today we’d like to introduce you to Patrick Lee.

Hi Patrick, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve been cooking since I was seven years old and while it’s always been a passion of mine, the passion never grew beyond a hobby. A year ago, I lost my job of 8 years and felt lost and hopeless. My entire life had been centered around working in corporate America and growing my professional career.

Losing my job gave me a chance to put some things into perspective. As I began to look for another job, I had to start becoming creative with making my meals stretch for the family and began to cook more often and record my meals for Instagram and Tiktok. I started posting the meals that I made and little by little, day by day, I would see small tidbits of growth in likes, followers, views, etc.

I’m somebody who truly believes in growth through grit. I worked diligently to improve on my craft. I always think of different recipes to make, taught myself how to edit videos, started networking and befriending several great culinary influencers and chefs.

I started visualizing my plates as an artist drawing on a canvas seeking, to make the perfect masterpiece. My food presentation told a story. And here we are an entire year later with a successful social media platform, a handful of sponsorships, a podcast, and a rapidly growing fanbase!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’d be lying if I said this was easy, but I assure you, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I never went to culinary school nor have I ever worked in a restaurant. I just genuinely had a love and curiosity for cooking. All of my kitchen knowledge came from trial and error as I gained more experience and confidence in the kitchen.

I felt that I was just going to be another blip on the radar in the sea of content creators on social media. I used this to drive myself to learn as much as possible and always look for ways to improve my cooking and videos.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
While I’m working on making my small business dreams a reality, I still have to pay the bills in the meantime.

I currently work as a front-line manager. I specialize in helping families pay off the remaining debts and balances owed by their deceased loved ones. Working in customer service requires a great deal of empathy, patience, and a genuine desire to help others, which translates to why I want to create food-based content.

It gives me the ability to teach and help others become more confident in their cooking.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
I believe that the Covid-19 crisis has taught me to appreciate life and to be grateful for the blessings you have both foreseen and unforeseen. Unfortunately, I’ve lost family members and friends to Covid and haven’t seen many of them because of this pandemic.

However, I make it an avid point to keep in contact regularly with my loved ones. From a cooking perspective, I’ve actually learned how to make a lot of recipes from scratch. With supply chain shortages becoming normal as a result of the pandemic, items like bread are becoming scarce.

So I’ve learned to make my own hamburger buns and fresh bread. I started to learn how to make my own cheeseburgers with my stand mixer because the price of ground beef was going up. I think to sum everything up, this pandemic taught me to be grateful.

Contact Info:

• Email: cookingwithpatlee@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cookingwithpatlee/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRQdmsagoPqnXBz7mv6TK6Q