A Kenyan Chef Maliha Mohammed has broken the Guinness World Record in a cooking competition. The Chef broke the record after cooking for the longest time ever by cooking for 75hrs non-stop beating current 68hrs record.
Early in May 2019 Ms. Mohammed began her quest to have her name immortalized in the Guinness Book of World Records.
The 36-year-old from Mombasa dethrone current record holder Rickey Lumpkin of California, USA, who cooked for 68 hours 30 minutes and one second in December 2018.
“I will be looking to cook a mix of dishes, including local and international cuisines. I must showcase what Kenya has to offer, especially Swahili dishes,” disclosed Maliha in May, 2019.
Maliha is a self-taught cook and currently works as a chef for a leading non-governmental organization based in Mombasa. Initial reports had reported that Maliha selected a team of 36 individuals who will help her achieve her target.
In a shift of 12 hours, she works with nine assistants, who help her prepare recipes as she cooks at the main cooking area.
“After 12 hours, the nine assistants go to rest and I’m joined by a team of another nine. They will be inter-changing in every shift,” she says.
Maliha prepared approximately 400 recipes, that enabled her to achieve her victory.
The Guinness Book of World Records is a reference book published annually, listing world records of human achievements and the extremes of the natural world.
In 2018, Maliha was also nominated to participate in the 72-hour cooking challenge. However, she says she could not get enough financial support locally to support her bid.
“From friends and relatives, I could only raise Sh15,000. That was not enough for the preparations to allow me to cook for 72 hours. I wrote to Guinness Book and informed them of my challenges and they allowed me to pull out,” she says.
In December 2018, she re-applied to be featured in this year’s(2019) competition.
“I wrote my application in December to Guinness Book and they responded in April this year that my 75-hour bid had gone through,” Maliha affirmed.
She got support from an organization in the company that helped in supplying cooking oil and other things needed for her recipes, whereas a gas company agreed to supply her with cooking gas.
