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How a Blind Chef Cooks

Memorize layout of kitchen. Amazon Echo for timers.

In 2012, Christine Ha was crowned the winner of MasterChef. She’s also blind.

In this video, Ha takes us into her home kitchen to show how the blind cook. Blindness, of course, isn’t all or nothing—Ha is legally blind, but as she told Entertainment Weekly, “From a medical standpoint, doctors call my vision ‘counting fingers.’ If you hold your hand 10 to 12 inches from my face, I could count your fingers as long as the lighting isn’t too dark or glaring. The way I often describe it is that it’s like if you take a really hot shower and then you look into the foggy bathroom mirror, where you only see vague shapes and shadows.”

Here Ha uses a GoPro to walk us making a typical weeknight dinner (for her, at least): red snapper with black bean sauce and Sichuan green beans. She’s memorized the layout of the kitchen, and relies on touch. She uses an Amazon Echo to set timers. And she’s neater with chopped vegetables and defter with a hot stove than any of us.