In this age of dining out and frozen meals, has the art of cooking faded away? Carol Duncan doesn’t believe so.

Carol Duncan, an Auburn native and graduate of Auburn University has a huge passion for cooking. She has cooked all of her life, but began cooking seriously in junior high school with her sister when her mother went back to work. “We started gradually cooking dinner for her every night,” states Duncan.


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In 2002, Duncan realized that her passion for cooking was so strong that she wanted to make a career out of it. She saw an ad for the United States Personal Chef Association (USPCA), and decided to look into becoming a personal chef. After much thought, she enrolled in a week-long program in Atlanta, which taught her how to set up a personal chef business.

For the past eight years, Carol Duncan’s personal chef business, Savory Solutions, has blossomed into a thriving business. Savory Solutions provides patrons a personal chef service in which a personalized menu is created for each client, and on the cook date, all of the meals are prepared at the client’s home and are packaged and labeled with simple heating directions.

Due to the current state of the economy, many families have been forced to cut back on many luxuries, one of which could be a personal chef service. In order to tend to her clients during this economic downturn, Duncan has started a new sector of her business called “Crockpot Wednesdays.” This service allows clients to have a meal prepared on a Wednesday morning in their crock-pot and ready for them when they come home from a busy day at work.

“It sort of takes into account the economy now and people not wanting to spend as much money.” states Duncan.

Each week has a different menu and a certain number of spots available for clients to purchase.
For Carol Duncan, cooking is not just her career, but also her passion.

“The feeling of taking something simple and making it fantastic is my favorite part,” she says.

Her favorite dish to cook is something she has never cooked before. She enjoys trying new recipes and experimenting with different spices.

The best advice Duncan gives for a beginning cook is to seek out tried and true resources to learn from. She recommends watching television chefs such as Alton Brown, Sarah Moulton and Ina Garten. Finding a classic cooking book such as “The Joy of Cooking” is also a great idea for starting out.

In a world of fast food, pre-packaged, processed meals, Carol Duncan finds it relaxing and enjoyable to take fresh ingredients and make them into something sensational to the taste buds.