Book Excerpt: How Chef José Andrés Learned to ‘Change the Recipe’ in Haiti and Beyond

The city was still very dark at night. Nobody was out and a lot of people were in refugee camps. There was a shelter outside of Port-au-Prince, roughly 250 people, where I met a group of women who were cooking for their community. We joined them for a day, planning to make some black beans and rice, comforting food. Some of the women in the camp were helping me, cutting onions, peeling potatoes. I spoke some French, but they spoke Kreyòl, and they didn’t speak Spanish or English. Still, I could understand something from the way they were looking at me, with a smile, almost a laugh. I started to see what they were telling me with their faces. While they appreciated me making meals for them, those beans I was cooking were not the way they liked to eat them.

I was surprised and maybe a little upset. I thought, I’m making the best beans in the world! After all, I’m José Andrés. I had a TV show in Spain and America. I have many restaurants.

But I listened to those women. When I finally understood, I put the tools in their hands and indicated, Show me how you like to eat the beans. We gathered burlap sacks and used them to sieve the black beans, pushing them through the sacks slowly, with muscle, to make sure that what was coming out on the other side was a smooth, creamy purée. A sauce! I finally saw it, this sòs pwa nwa, a black bean sauce to be eaten next to steamed white rice. It ended up so beautiful and rich and velvety, this perfect texture that I had never seen before from beans.

In a way they were showing me a path of what World Central Kitchen should be doing. To this day, when we go away to faraway places, we make sure we give people what they want to eat. It’s smarter to use the ingredients you have on hand, often local and seasonal ones, prepared by local cooks who make the dishes they know best. We need to be able to respond to events that disturb the lives of people by helping them rebuild their lives.

Since that day, World Central Kitchen was created as an organization that listens. When we go into a community, we never tell them, This is what you need to eat; this is what you want. Instead, we come to learn from them, to collaborate on making meals that are comforting and familiar to everyone there.

It goes beyond cooking, of course. Listening will get you far in life, no matter what your calling is. If you’re listening, you’re learning and growing your understanding of the world. If you’re talking loudly all the time, telling people what to do and how to do it, how will you ever soak up the knowledge and the experience of others — especially in situations that are new and different for you?

It’s funny, I think listening is a skill that we develop as we get older. When we’re young, we think we know everything — many of us, including me, think that we are the center of the universe when we are 22 years old. But now I see I didn’t know everything back then, and I certainly don’t now. I still have so much more to learn. I’m thankful to those Haitian women who spoke up for themselves. They used their voices, and we listened and learned, in real time.

I still have trouble listening sometimes. I love thinking I’m right. I love to be the one who is telling people what to do. It’s not like I’ve grown up and become the world’s greatest listener (just ask my wife!). But maybe the experience of cooking beans in Haiti was the moment when I realized the importance of both talking and the listening. Some days, I’m a talker. Some days, I’m a listener. When I’m at my best, I’m doing both — bringing everything I know, while also being open to new ideas.

Excerpted from Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs by José Andrés. Copyright © 2025 by José Andrés. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.