Grace Young

Title: Freelancer

Location: New York, NY

Education: University of California, Berkeley

Expertise: Wok cookery, Chinese cuisine, healthy cooking

Experience

Grace Young is an award-winning cookbook author, culinary historian and Chinatown activist. Named the "poet laureate of the wok" by food historian Betty Fussell, Grace has devoted her career to preserving the traditional iron wok and demystifying the ancient cooking utensil for use in contemporary kitchens. With the growing popularity of nonstick cookware, the wok is an endangered culinary tool. She is the first food writer to write extensively about wok hei, the Cantonese term for a stir-fry imbued with the wok's unique fragrance and flavor. Grace's translation of wok hei as "breath of a wok," which she coined in The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, is now a part of the Western culinary vocabulary. She is also the author of the cookbooks Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge and The Breath of a Wok—which was honored as a Culinary Classic by the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

Grace's work has been featured in The Washington Post and The New York Times and on CBS Sunday Morning. She has appeared as a guest on Sara's Weeknight Meals and The Martha Stewart Show, and her work has been featured in Cook's Illustrated, America's Test Kitchen, Food52, Epicurious, Vogue, Bon Appétit, the Kitchn, Serious Eats, Chow, Food & Wine, Fine Cooking, Saveur, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Edible Communities and Serious Eats.

Grace is the co-founder of Wok Wednesdays, an online stir-fry cooking group. She has taught healthy stir-frying in cooking schools and spas throughout the U.S., and her popular online class, "The Art of Stir-Frying" on Craftsy, has reached more than 12,000 students.

Healthy cooking has been a primary focus throughout Grace's career. She was the test kitchen director for the U.C. Berkeley Wellness Cooking School and has written for Shape, Men's Health, Women's Health, Fitness, Health, Cooking Light and Diabetic Living magazines.

She has been a fierce advocate for Chinatown, never more so than in her video series Coronavirus: Chinatown Stories, produced in collaboration with videographer Dan Ahn and the Poster House museum. Grace is currently partnering with the James Beard Foundation and Poster House on the #LoveAAPI social media campaign to counter anti-Asian hate. Dubbed the "accidental voice for Chinatown" by Grub Street, she has been fighting for the survival of Chinatowns and Asian American and Pacific Islander mom-and-pop businesses across the country, and her efforts have been chronicled in the media, including in The Washington Post and on PBS NewsHour, Today.com and CNN.

Grace has won six IACP awards, including the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award. She has been honored several times by the James Beard Foundation Awards, and is the recipient of the 2022 Humanitarian of the Year Award as well as the 2022 Julia Child Award.

Grace is a member of Les Dames New York and the New York Women's Culinary Alliance.