'The Bear's Culinary Producer Says Her Work Was 'Super Healing' After Real-Life Family Trauma

As part of the 50 Food Faves package, PEOPLE named our top tastemakers — including Selena Gomez, Eric Adjepong, The Bear's Courtney Storer and more — who made an impact on the culinary world with their cooking and creativity in 2022. Meet Storer below, and for the full list, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

For Courtney Storer, the story of FX's The Bear is deeply personal.

The 38-year-old chef is the culinary producer on the hit show set in her hometown of Chicago, which depicts the chaotic nature of working in a restaurant, intermixed with the burden of generational trauma. Written and created by her brother Christopher Storer, it's no coincidence the show mirrors their own family.

"I grew up in a very big Italian family at first, but my parents went through a really bad divorce. There's a lot of trauma in our family. So I would say that big family got really small, really fast," Courtney tells PEOPLE.

In an interview with Esquire in July, Christopher echoed her statement, saying their "household was kind of gnarly" and that mental illness and addiction were prominent in their family.

"My sister and I growing up—our households —we had a bunch of dysfunction, and it was weird. She lived with my mom for a while, and I lived with my dad for a while, and there was a little bit of estrangement even though we loved each other. And food was the thing that brought us back," he told the outlet.

Courtney also turned to food as a solo coping mechanism. "I fell in love with food at a young age to kind of recreate a lot of memories that I had with my big family on my own. I started to cook a little bit younger than a lot of people. At nine or 10, I was buying groceries," she says.

At 15 years old, Courtney began working at a local Italian spot and found family in the owners and fellow staff. But it wasn't until she was 26 after a run in corporate America that she decided to return to her roots and go to culinary school.

Followed by intense training in top Paris restaurants, Courtney unexpectedly moved to Los Angeles to live with her brother. "I was really broke and needed support. Chris and I have a difficult family situation. So we've been learning how to support one another and be there for each other," she adds.

From there, she began working at popular L.A. spots, including Jon & Vinny's, where she worked for nearly seven years, eventually climbing the ranks to head chef.

Clocking in grueling hours, Courtney says Christopher had a front-row seat to the back-of-house life, visiting her every weekend and multiple times a week to see how she was holding up. "There's a lot of our story in The Bear," she says.

To the Storer siblings, it was a natural decision that Courtney would consult on everything culinary in the show, given her background, emotionally and professionally. As a specialized producer on a show that encapsulates the restaurant world, she had lots of creative authority.

"In kitchens, it's a dance. It feels literally like choreography. It feels like everyone has a position and you have to play it," she says. "There were a lot of moments where it was just looking at movement in the kitchen and what actually looks realistic."

Some of her producing involved careful attention to tedious details. Think: setting up a cutting board properly or teaching the actors how to chop as seasoned chefs would. She and chef Matty Matheson, who plays handyman Neil on the show and serves as a producer, dove into the nitty gritty of cooking, too.

"Every single time there was a food shot, we were cooking," she says. "We were working to show flame and heat and things in process rather than just this beauty shot all the time — raw meat or the messy kitchen, an egg crack."

She's also the one responsible for all of the "yes, chef" references throughout The Bear. "The reason that I think it's helpful is it's non-binary. Anyone can be called chef," says Courtney. "Everybody's job is integral. So, 'Yes Chef' is kind of stating everybody's important. You're just as important as I am,"

When it came to teaching the actors how to cook, luckily Jermey Allen White (Carmy), Ayo Edebiri (Sydney) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Richie) came in with some experience. "Jeremy cooks a little bit, but he definitely learned more throughout this process," she says. Edebiri, who plays Sydney — an eager, young chef who helps Carmy helm The Beef restaurant — actually joined Courtney in the kitchen in L.A. before filming in Chicago; but their cooking sessions transcended basic techniques.

"She really got to see how I move, how I navigate in a space, how I prep things, how I prioritize. I talked a lot to her about confidence, carrying my shoulders, how I move, to kind of get respect or have this position of leadership," she says. "I think I was always really tiny in a space, and I could feel really small and I had to find ways to use my voice to get attention. So we spent a lot of time on that."

Accurately portraying her experience as a woman working in busy restaurants was important for the veteran chef. "I remember using [a clipboard] and the cooks being like, 'This f---ing chick.' And I'd be like, 'Yep, yep. We're going to be organized today.' And everyone giving an eye roll," she recalls.

Similarly, Sydney is seen clutching a clipboard throughout scenes of The Bear as she fights to assert her voice.

"There's a lot of suppression that can happen with women in kitchens sometimes because you can be underestimated," she says. "I always gravitated towards women in the kitchen because I didn't see it often."

When asked, Courtney agrees that the FX hit is her brother's ode to her and her gutsy career. Even the main recipes in the show, like the family spaghetti that's so integral to the final scene, have personal connections to the Storer siblings.

"That spaghetti is a recipe Chris used to make for me all the time, which is really sweet. It's a Marcella Hazan recipe," she says. "Chris would make me spaghetti usually on Sundays. I would be burnt out…and that was always the one we made."

The chicken piccata featured in The Bear also stems from their real life. "It's actually what Chris and I make on Thanksgiving instead of turkey," she says. "We like to reestablish Thanksgiving traditions."

Ultimately, creating The Bear brought the siblings closer. "Coming from trauma, it's been super healing for both of us to learn how to navigate even doing this work together," says Courtney. "It was definitely therapeutic. As they teach you in therapy, it's corrective experiences — to create memories together about food that were joyful."