Cooking At Sea, A Guidebook For Ship Chefs

Photo By KucherAV, Shutterstock

A new book brings passion to cooking aboard ships.

From our first post published over a decade ago gCaptain has been dedicated to bring news and information to everyone from ordinary sailors to shipping company CEO’s. We are inspired by all professionals who work aboard and around the sea but what really excites us is learning about a passionate and engaged individual in a mostly overlooked maritime job. Eric Mahoney is one of these people. 

After working aboard freighters and tugs for the past 20 years , Mahoney still finds passion and excitement everyday in his work cook/deckhand at sea.  Now he hopes to pass on his experience and knowledge in a new book Cooking at Sea, A Guidebook.

“This cooking guidebook was created to help anyone learn to cook good, basic meals.” says Mahoney “I wrote it specifically for someone new to cooking in the maritime industry, who gets thrown into the job as cook for a vessel and has to survive.”

Mahoney has also become a minor internet celebrity among sailors working in the galley. His  posts on the gCaptain forum offering help to young mariners have accumulated hundreds of questions and comments and the two dozen videos he has posted to his weekly vlog has a small but dedicated community of subscribers.

What makes his advice helpful is the fact it’s simple and takes into account the unique difficulties of cooking at sea for a crew of professional sailors. “I’m no gourmet chef.” admits Mahoney. “But I do know how to cook and if I don’t know something, I’m willing to find out.”

You can purchase Eric Mahoney’s book “Cooking at Sea, A Guidebook” on Lulu and he hopes to have it available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble soon but, even if you never read the book, you will surely thankful if the cooks aboard your vessel do.

Here’s one video from his Youtube channel which demonstrates Mahoney’s simple and practical advice.