It uses a pure-Ruby, domain-specific language (DSL) for writing system configuration "recipes".

These recipes (which can be grouped together as a "cookbook" for easier management) describe a series of resources that should be in a particular state: packages that should be installed, services that should be running, or files that should be written.

[citation needed] Traditionally, Chef was used to manage Linux but later versions add support for Microsoft Windows.

Jacob showed Chef to Jesse Robbins, who saw its potential after running operations at Amazon.

They founded a new company (Opscode) with Barry Steinglass, Nathen Haneysmith, and Joshua Timberman to turn Chef into a product.

[17] In response, the Cinc project began releasing Apache 2.0 licensed binaries of several Chef products.

[18] In 2019, it was discovered by a journalist that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was paying Chef approximately $95,000 per year for a software license.

On September 8, 2020, Progress announced the acquisition of Chef,[24][25][26] with an intended final date in October.