Chef Chuck Sansone’s pristine all-white kitchen — fully accessible and complete with state-of-the-art, stainless steel appliances — comes to life on Thanksgiving morning before most people are out of bed. He makes sure to schedule his caregivers extra early that day so he can be in the kitchen at 7 a.m.

By 8 a.m., six burners on his roll-under, commercial-grade range top are fired up, and he has pots bubbling with a variety of sauces and gravies. Seated in front of the range top, Sansone looks like the maestro of a culinary symphony as he masterfully tends to each pot, blending ingredients and spices in a perfectly timed and harmonious fashion.

His massive kitchen, which includes an enormous 5-by-15-foot island with a white granite countertop, is the heart of the home he and his wife, Lisa, share. It’s Sansone’s happy place.

With nearly 30 family members counting on him to host and cook Thanksgiving dinner, Sansone’s celebration this year will be a far cry from his first one after his spinal cord injury. “I was still doing inpatient rehab. I was given a day pass to leave the hospital for a few hours, so my wife and in-laws picked me up, and we went to a casino for dinner,” says Sansone.

As a former corporate executive chef with clients that included General Motors and Fiat Chrysler, Sansone, 59, is no stranger to cooking for big groups. After being paralyzed in a 2015 car accident, Sansone, who was trained to cook from scratch, had to rebuild his life from scratch. Now a paraplegic, he remains committed to the craft of cooking and sharing delicious food. He also enjoys teaching other wheelchair users how they, too, can become maestros in the kitchen.

A Life in the Kitchen

Sansone’s earliest memories of being in the kitchen are of his Italian grandmother, who lived with his family. “When my grandmother was cooking, I’d ask her what she put in it and she would say, ‘I put a little extra love into it,’” he says. “To this day, that is a big part of my cooking. When someone takes that first bite of something I made, I look for that smile or a reaction that they taste the extra love I put into it.”

He got his start in the food and hospitality industry when he was just 14 years old, working as a busboy at a catering hall. Every chance he got, he would make his way into the kitchen and offer to help the chefs. His tenacity paid off. “When one of the chefs quit, they hired me to cook, and I haven’t stopped since,” he says.

Despite never going to culinary school, by the time Sansone was 19, he was the head chef at an upscale restaurant in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. “I was really fortunate to have had a European apprenticeship. I had a German, Italian and French chef mentor me and teach me everything about the business,” he says. “I lived, ate and slept food. Early in my career, I always had one full-time job and two part-time jobs, so I could constantly learn.”

Sansone’s work ethic was something his family instilled in him at a very young age. “I was always taught the value of hard work and to give 110%. Prior to my accident, I never missed a day of work,” says Sansone. After his accident, he approached his recovery the same way, giving full effort during therapy sessions and always pushing himself to do more.

The Able Chef

During Sansone’s inpatient rehab at Detroit’s Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan, a recreational therapist asked him about his hobbies. He told her he liked to cook. It wasn’t long before the therapists recruited him to teach cooking classes for the other patients. Doing so gave Sansone a new outlook and mission — not to mention, a new name: The Able Chef. “I want to show people that whatever your disability is, you can still get in the kitchen and cook,” says Sansone.

However, having a disability has changed Sansone’s approach to cooking. He used to cook everything from scratch, but because cooking from a wheelchair takes more time and energy, his cooking tutorials now focus on one-pot dishes or using a pressure cooker to speed up cooking-time and cleanup. He’ll also use items like leftovers, frozen vegetables, precooked meats and store-bought sauces that he can add his own spices to, to help cut down on time and food prep. He focuses on shortcuts that make life easier for disabled people but still taste delicious.

Sansone says a big misconception many disabled people have is that you need to use your hands to cook. For those who have limited or no grip strength, he suggests investing in adaptive aids, like specially designed food-prep boards, jar openers, and adaptive knives and cooking utensils.

Chef’s Menu

You would think having a chef in the family would be a huge perk, especially at Thanksgiving, but Sansone’s mother at one point actually banned him from making Thanksgiving dinner. “My mom said my menu was getting too fancy,” he says. “I would make a soufflé or a chutney — turns out my family wanted a traditional Thanksgiving with instant mashed potatoes.”

Luckily, these days Sansone’s Thanksgiving cooking privileges have been reinstated. As chef, he always likes to challenge himself and try something new, so this year he is making a roasted turducken: a deboned duck, stuffed into a deboned chicken, that is then stuffed into a deboned turkey. Outside of North America the dish is commonly known as a three-bird roast.

Sansone also likes to blend cultures when designing his menu. He is Italian and Lisa is Armenian. Every holiday meal, including Thanksgiving, has to include a pasta dish — a nod to his Italian roots — and “borek,” a staple in many Armenian households. Borek is made of a thin, flaky dough, such as filo, stuffed with cheese. It’s similar to spinach pie, without the spinach.

The menu will also feature many Thanksgiving classics — though a bit elevated, to meet his standards — including cranberries, baked sweet potatoes, a green bean casserole and roasted Brussels sprouts with pancetta, each plated and garnished as if it came out of a Michelin-starred restaurant.   

To add to the array of homemade desserts, Sansone will make his mother’s apple Bundt cake. His mother passed away five years ago, and making her famous cake is a way of having her with the family on Thanksgiving.

Lisa is his partner in life and in the kitchen. She grew up in her family’s catering business, so she knows her way around a kitchen and often serves as Sansone’s sous-chef, helping to shop for ingredients, doing food prep and serving.  

When guests finally sit down to eat around 5 p.m., Sansone has been in the kitchen 10 hours. “By the time I’ve prepared all the appetizers and the meal, I have already tasted everything and I’m no longer hungry. I like to stay in the kitchen and watch people enjoy my food. That is what I love. My wife thinks I never get to enjoy the party, but I do, just in a different way.”

Like most people, Sansone’s favorite part of Thanksgiving is the leftovers. “I always make extra, number one, so we never run out of food for the guests, but also to have plenty of leftovers. With the leftovers, I love to eat cold turkey-breast sandwiches, or I’ll make a turkey salad or turkey tetrazzini,” he says.

As for what Sansone is thankful for this Thanksgiving, he says he is grateful to be alive and still have a purpose. Through teaching others with disabilities to cook, he hopes to help them find their purpose too.

For more recipes and cooking tips, check out Sansone’s “What’s for Dinner Wednesday” videos. Follow him on Instagram at @TheAbleChef.