I may be in prison, but I am also a personal chef, with access to choice meats, a full pantry and a large spice rack. In the past week, I’ve cooked tender baby back ribs, chicken piccata and beef kofta. And I regularly bake gourmet desserts, including souffles and cheesecakes.

Within the confines of a classroom kitchen, we carry around spatulas, serving spoons and whisks that must be checked out from and returned to our supervisor. We even use real kitchen knives. They are connected to stainless steel tables by a tether and padlock. Still, the knives work: I once sliced off the tip of a finger. I have since learned to dice an onion and debone a chicken faster than Bobby Flay.

My official job is back-of-the-house tutor in the prison’s food technology and hospitality vocational class. My primary duty in this job is to teach our students, who are incarcerated youth and men, how to handle food safely, and how to cook and bake.

It’s the same course I took 12 years ago, and it changed my life. As a student, I learned how to read a recipe, what temperature to cook different meats at, and how to handle food in a safe and sanitary manner. 

In 2014, I landed the tutor job. Ever since, I have worked in this full-service kitchen nine hours a day, five days a week. I’ve learned directly underneath a master chef and have perfected my skills cooking dozens and dozens of dishes and creating over 50 of my own recipes.

It’s the most coveted job in Michigan prisons. But with it comes hard work, a tremendous amount of responsibility and a level of danger.

Gourmet meal comin’ up! 

The classroom kitchen looks like a restaurant kitchen. There’s even a large back window above the dish tank, which looks out onto a gun tower and fences topped with razor wire. Three industrial refrigerators, a double-door freezer and a walk-in freezer make up our cold storage. We’ve got an 80-square-foot steel cage for our pantry and tool storage. Our work is done on three large stainless steel tables.

Most of the hands-on work teaching students how to cook and bake is delegated to a coworker and me. Under supervision, I teach two to five students each day how to prepare gourmet meals that prison staff can purchase for a discounted price of $4 to $8.

The students and teachers have a meal of the day. Sometimes it’s a gourmet beef sirloin sauteed with mushrooms. Sometimes it’s our own version of a popular meal advertised on TV. Recently, we cooked a Chick-fil-A-style crispy chicken sandwich with homemade pickles, served on my homemade potato buns. I even make homemade ketchup (you’ll never go back to normal ketchup after you try it).

Around 70 staff members purchase a meal each day, the proceeds of which go back into the class budget to buy food and supplies. Occasionally, I cook meals to order for those who want something special. If the deputy warden desires apple stuffing-filled pork tenderloin, that is what she gets. One day my boss received orders for smoothies, so I made 40 strawberry-banana smoothies while also preparing our main course.

Hard work and conflict

Most prison jobs require an hour or two of actual work a day. But I rarely sit down over my nine-hour shift (and often there’s overtime). All day, in addition to teaching and cooking, I wash dishes, scrub pots and pans, mop and do laundry.

I handle food responsibly and safely for staff who are nice to me as well as those who have recently ransacked my belongings in a search, or who have written me misconducts in the past.

In the kitchen, I am trusted with items that would elicit high prices in the rest of the prison. For that reason, I am constantly nagged to get stuff for others, and have even been threatened for refusing to do so. Imagine what a gang leader serving life would do for steak and cheesecake. Then imagine having access to it, but having to be the one to tell him “no.”

Others resent me for having a position with perks, despite the fact that they never have applied for my job.

Side hustles

For my full-time job, I make 40 cents an hour, the highest pay available in the Michigan prison system. That pay only goes so far. To eat healthy on my days off, and to avoid asking my loved ones for money, I’ve had to adopt side-hustle skills to support myself. 

I’ve learned how to cut hair here. I’ve sold handcrafted greeting cards to pay for our commissary’s overpriced instant coffee. For a fee, I regularly craft artwork on the coffee cups for sale in the commissary. Technically, all of this is against the rules, but most officers view it as harmless.

Even with the most coveted job in the entire Michigan Department of Corrections, I have to work extra on the side just to purchase what I need to stay healthy and mildly comfortable. And I still have to return every night to a cage. 

But, for a little while each day, I feel a bit of freedom.