Household Cook Job Description for Philippine Families (2026)

TL;DR: A household cook plans the week's menu with you, does the marketing, cooks the set meals, packs baon, and keeps the kitchen clean. That is kasambahay work, so the wage order floor applies: ₱7,800 a month in NCR from 7 February 2026, and Wage Order NCR-DW-06 names cook in its coverage list. Most families pay a good cook well above that. The moment you send that cook to the family carinderia, a different minimum wage applies.

Search "cook job description" and you get a restaurant template. Mise en place, stations, a chef de partie reporting to a sous chef, portion control against food cost targets. None of that describes a family cook, the person who asks your mother whether she wants tinola or sinigang tonight, then works out whether the budget stretches to both.

A household cook is a kasambahay who happens to cook. That single fact settles the pay floor, the rest days, the contract, and the government contributions. Everything else is scope, and scope is where families get burned.

What a household cook actually does in a week

The job is bigger than cooking. Most of the skill sits in the two hours before anything hits a pan.

Menu planning comes first. A cook who is good at this asks what the family is eating this week, checks what is already in the ref, and builds around it. That conversation happens once a week, usually Sunday night, and it saves more money than any amount of clever cooking.

Then marketing. Palengke for fish, meat and vegetables, supermarket for pantry and dairy. This is the part families worry about, and the fix is boring: agree a weekly budget, hand it over in cash or through a card, and ask for receipts. A cook who brings back receipts and change without being chased is worth paying more.

Then the cooking itself, on your household's real rhythm, with cleaning folded in as they go. A kitchen wiped down at 2pm is a kitchen that can produce dinner at 6pm.

| How often | What the cook handles | | ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Every day | Breakfast, packed baon, lunch, merienda, dinner. Washing up, wiping counters and stove, taking out kitchen waste, checking what runs out tomorrow. | | Two or three times a week | Palengke and supermarket marketing, receipts and change returned, produce washed and stored, meat and fish portioned and frozen. | | Weekly | Menu planning with the family, ref and freezer clean-out, checking dates on pantry stock, deep clean of stove, range hood and sink. | | Monthly | Full inventory against the shopping list, restocking rice, oil, condiments and cleaning supplies, descaling the kettle and rice cooker. | | As it comes up | Guests, birthdays, fiesta cooking, hospital or office food deliveries for a family member, packed meals for a trip. |

Print that table, cross out what does not apply to your house, and you have most of a job description. Then browse cooks who already work near you and see whether the scope you wrote is one person's job or two.

What is not in the job unless you write it in and pay for it

A cook is not a general helper, and scope creep is how good cooks end up resigning at week six.

Cleaning the rest of the house is not cook work. Neither is laundry, ironing, bathrooms, or mopping bedrooms. The kitchen and the dining area are the cook's territory. If you need the whole house covered, you are hiring an all-around helper, and the job, the pay and the person are different. Our all-around domestic helper job description covers that role, and it is the honest choice when your real need is a house that runs, not food that is good.

Childcare is not cook work either. A cook who is also watching a toddler is doing two jobs badly and one of them involves knives and boiling oil. If you need both, hire two people or hire a yaya and accept simpler food.

Cooking for money is the boundary that matters legally. Meals for a family business, food sold at your sari-sari store, catering trays for a paying client: all of that is commercial work.

Cooking for the family business is a different minimum wage

Section 22 of RA 10361 is short and blunt. No domestic worker shall be assigned to work in a commercial, industrial or agricultural enterprise at a wage rate lower than that provided for agricultural or nonagricultural workers, and in such cases the domestic worker shall be paid the applicable minimum wage.

Put a number on that. In NCR the daily minimum for non-agriculture workers is ₱755 under Wage Order NCR-27, effective 25 July 2026, with a second tranche to ₱780 on 20 January 2027, per the RTWPB-NCR board page. Twenty-six days at ₱755 comes to ₱19,630. The kasambahay floor for the same month is ₱7,800. So a cook you quietly redirect to the family carinderia is being underpaid by a wide margin, and the exposure is yours, not theirs.

Food eaten by your household is domestic work. Food someone pays for is a business, and it needs its own rate and its own hours. Do not blur the two because the kitchen is the same kitchen.

Live-in or stay-out, and what the day really looks like

A cook's day splits naturally, which is why the live-in and stay-out choice matters more here than for other roles.

A stay-out cook arrives before breakfast or in the late morning, does the marketing, cooks lunch and dinner, cleans down, and goes home. If your household eats at 7pm and your cook commutes an hour, that is a long day and you should expect to pay for it.

A live-in cook can work the split that suits the house. Early breakfast and baon, marketing, lunch, a real break through the afternoon heat, then merienda and dinner. That break is not a favour. It is how the rest rules work in practice.

Live-in carries obligations. Section 6 of RA 10361 requires at least three adequate meals a day and humane sleeping arrangements that ensure safety. For a cook that means one specific thing: the person who cooks your food also eats it, and the marketing budget has to include them. Families who forget end up with a cook quietly eating rice and leftovers, which is illegal and a fast way to lose a good hire.

Hours, rest days, and the rule most job posts get wrong

The kasambahay rules do not set an 8-hour working day. They set an 8-hour rest day. Section 20 gives an aggregate daily rest period of eight hours per day, and the word aggregate is doing real work there. For a cook with a split schedule, the afternoon gap counts toward it.

Section 21 gives at least 24 consecutive hours of rest a week. You and the cook agree the rest day in writing, and you respect their preference when it is based on religious grounds. The law also lets you agree in writing to offset a day of absence against a rest day, to waive a particular rest day in return for an equivalent day's pay, or to accumulate rest days up to five. Write down which of these you are using before it comes up.

After one year of service, Section 29 adds five days of paid service incentive leave a year. It does not carry over and it is not convertible to cash.

Two mistakes to avoid. Do not post "flexible hours" and mean "available whenever we are hungry". And do not schedule the rest day on the one day you always have guests, then act surprised when it never happens. Pick a real day. The full Kasambahay Law walkthrough covers the rest of the employer obligations.

What to pay a household cook in 2026

Start at the legal floor. The NWPC summary of current monthly minimum wages for domestic workers, as of 9 July 2026, puts NCR at ₱7,800 from 7 February 2026, Central Visayas at ₱7,000, MIMAROPA at ₱7,000, Davao Region at ₱6,500, and BARMM at ₱5,500. Regional figures move whenever a board issues a new order, so check yours rather than assuming. Our regional kasambahay minimum wage guide tracks the current numbers.

Nobody good works at the floor. Market ranges below are estimates from the helpers.ph estimator, not legal minimums.

| Location | Estimated monthly range, live-out cook | | ----------------------- | -------------------------------------- | | Makati, BGC, Taguig | ₱9,100 to ₱15,600 | | Manila and Quezon City | ₱8,400 to ₱14,400 | | Cebu | ₱7,400 to ₱12,600 | | Davao | ₱7,000 to ₱12,000 | | Other provincial cities | ₱6,400 to ₱11,000 |

For comparison, Indeed reports an average cook salary of ₱16,427 a month across 1,400 reported salaries, updated 13 August 2026, and JobStreet's cook listings show Makati City averaging ₱21,750 in September 2026. Read those as commercial kitchen numbers. They tell you what a trained cook can earn elsewhere, which is exactly the competition you face when you try to keep a good one.

Section 6 of Wage Order NCR-DW-06 says household employers and domestic workers may voluntarily agree to a competency-based pay scheme above the applicable minimum. That is your licence to pay for skill instead of haggling. Price your own household with the salary calculator before you post.

Skills, and how to test them in one paid trial day

Interviews reward people who talk well about food. Trial days reward people who cook well. Run a trial and pay for it.

Give the candidate your actual weekly budget for two meals and your family's real preferences, including the one thing nobody eats. Ask them to plan it, do the marketing, cook lunch and dinner, and hand back receipts and change. You are watching four things: whether the food tastes like your house eats, whether the budget held, whether the kitchen was clean at the end, and whether they asked questions instead of guessing.

Add a menu-planning exercise on paper. Seven dinners, a fixed weekly budget, one person who cannot eat pork, and a Wednesday when three extra guests arrive. A cook who reuses Monday's boiled chicken in Tuesday's sopas is thinking about money without being told to.

Then three food-safety questions with no trick to them. How do you store raw chicken in a ref that also holds cooked ulam. What do you do with rice left in the rice cooker overnight. How do you clean a chopping board between raw fish and vegetables. You are listening for habits, not vocabulary.

On certificates: TESDA Cookery NC II sits in the Tourism Sector for hotel and restaurant work and runs 316 nominal hours, covering stocks and sauces, appetizers, meat, seafood and desserts. Useful, but built for a commercial kitchen. If you want a domestic-work qualification instead, read our NC II guide for domestic work. Either way the trial day tells you more.

Food safety, allergies, and diets you cannot improvise

If someone in the house has a medical diet, the doctor's instructions are the source of truth, not the cook's judgment and not yours. A lola on hypertension medication and a parent managing diabetes need specific limits, and a cook should be told those limits in writing, in a language they read comfortably, and told to ask before substituting an ingredient. "Less salt" is not an instruction. A named list of what to avoid is.

Allergies go on paper too. Tape the list inside a kitchen cabinet, name the ingredient and the person, and include the hidden sources, since shrimp paste and fish sauce turn up in dishes nobody expects. Tell the cook what to do if something is eaten by accident, including who to call.

Basic hygiene is not negotiable and it is cheap to specify: raw meat and fish stored below cooked food, separate boards for raw and ready-to-eat, handwashing between tasks, and leftovers refrigerated rather than left on the counter through a Manila afternoon. Section 19 of RA 10361 puts the duty to safeguard health and safety on the employer, so give the cook the equipment to do this. A working ref, a thermometer, decent knives, and enough boards.

Put it in writing, then register with the barangay

Section 11 of RA 10361 requires a written employment contract before work starts, in a language both of you understand, with a copy for the cook. It must cover duties and responsibilities, period of employment, compensation, authorized deductions, hours of work and proportionate additional payment, rest days and allowable leaves, board, lodging and medical attention, any deployment expenses, any loan agreement, and termination.

Two more obligations people skip. Section 26 requires a pay slip every payday showing the amount paid in cash and any deductions, kept for three years. Section 30 covers the cook under SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG after one month of service, with the employer shouldering the premiums, except that a worker earning ₱5,000 or more a month pays a proportionate share. At ₱7,800 in NCR, that share applies.

Section 17 then puts a reportorial duty on you. Register every domestic worker you employ in the Registry of Domestic Workers at the barangay where you live. Keep the signed contract where you can find it, and start from our kasambahay contract template instead of a blank page.

A household cook job description you can copy

Adapt the bracketed parts and post it.

Position: Household cook (kusinera or kusinero), [live-in or stay-out], [city].

Household: [number] adults and [number] children. [Note any medical diets, allergies, or food nobody eats.]

Schedule: [Days], [start time] to [end time], with a break from [time] to [time]. Rest day every [day], agreed in writing. Aggregate daily rest of at least 8 hours and 24 consecutive hours of rest each week, per RA 10361.

Core duties:

• [ ] Plan the weekly menu with the family and adjust for guests
• [ ] Do palengke and supermarket marketing on a ₱[amount] weekly budget, return receipts and change
• [ ] Cook breakfast, lunch, merienda and dinner; pack baon for [number] people
• [ ] Store, portion and rotate meat, fish and produce safely
• [ ] Clean the kitchen, stove, range hood, ref and dining area daily
• [ ] Keep a running list of pantry stock to replenish
• [ ] Follow the written diet and allergy list without substituting ingredients unasked

Occasional duties: [guest meals, birthdays, fiesta cooking, packed meals for travel].

Not included: cleaning bedrooms and bathrooms, laundry and ironing, childcare, driving, and any cooking for a business or for sale.

Pay and benefits: ₱[amount] a month, paid in cash [twice monthly or monthly] with a pay slip. SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG registered from month one. 13th month pay. Five days paid service incentive leave after one year. [Meals and accommodation for live-in.]

Requirements: can cook [Filipino home cooking, plus any cuisine you need], can plan a week's meals to a budget, safe food handling habits, honest with money, comfortable with [any pets or household rules].

To apply: [how to reach you, and the trial day arrangement].

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the duties and responsibilities of a household cook in the Philippines?

A household cook plans the week's menu with the family, does the palengke and supermarket marketing against an agreed budget, cooks the set meals, packs baon, keeps the kitchen and ref clean, and tracks what needs restocking. Special diets, entertaining, and fiesta cooking are add-ons you write into the contract. Cleaning the rest of the house and childcare are separate jobs.

How much should I pay a household cook in 2026?

The floor is the kasambahay wage order for your region, which is ₱7,800 a month in NCR from 7 February 2026 under Wage Order NCR-DW-06. Most families in Metro Manila pay a skilled cook above that floor, and the helpers.ph estimator puts a live-out cook at roughly ₱8,400 to ₱15,600 in Metro Manila. Section 6 of the same wage order lets you and the cook agree a competency-based rate above the minimum.

Is a household cook covered by the kasambahay minimum wage?

Yes. Wage Order NCR-DW-06 lists cook by name in its coverage section, alongside general househelp, yaya, gardener and laundry person, whether live-in or live-out. RA 10361 uses the same list in its definition of a domestic worker. Family drivers and service providers are the ones excluded, not cooks.

Can I ask my cook to cook for my carinderia or catering orders?

Not at the kasambahay rate. Section 22 of RA 10361 says no domestic worker may be assigned to work in a commercial, industrial or agricultural enterprise at a wage lower than the rate for those workers, and that the applicable minimum wage must be paid. In NCR the non-agriculture daily minimum is ₱755 under Wage Order NCR-27, effective 25 July 2026, rising to ₱780 on 20 January 2027. Selling food your household cook made is a business, so price it as one.

Does a household cook need TESDA Cookery NC II?

No. Cookery NC II is packaged under the Tourism Sector for hotel and restaurant kitchens and runs 316 nominal hours, so it teaches stocks, sauces, garde manger and plating rather than home ulam for six people on a fixed budget. It is a real signal of discipline and food hygiene, and a cook who holds it can usually command commercial pay. Judge the trial day, not the certificate.

Hire a cook who already cooks the way your family eats

The families who keep a cook for years are the ones who wrote the scope down, paid above the floor, protected the rest day, and never asked the cook to run the food stall on the side. That is most of it.

Write your version of the job description above, price it against your city, then browse cooks in your area and shortlist three for a paid trial day. When you are ready to post the job and message candidates directly, create a family account.