Gordon Ramsay is opening up about his life as a dad!

Even though he’s best known for his profanity-laced outbursts on Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen, the 56-year-old celebrity chef put his sensitive side on display during a recent interview.

Keep reading to find out more…

Gordon, who shares five children: Megan, 25, twins Jack and Holly, 23, Matilda, 21, and Oscar, 4, with his wife Tana, told People that “The kids have brought the most emotion out of me.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it? Because everyone thinks, ‘God, you must be an absolute ass to be at home with.’ [But] Tana’s super fierce, an ex-Montessori school teacher. So I’m the softie,” he continued.

Gordon also reflected on how his own experience as a child contributes to how he approaches fatherhood.

“Growing up, I never had a father figure. Everything I was witnessing at the time was from an alcoholic father, so I knew I had to take the opposites,” he said. “From that, there was the pressure to get out of the environment [I was] in.”

Gordon expressed that he is proud of his children’s success as four of them begin their adult lives.

“Jack’s a Royal Marine commando, off defending the country in some of the most extreme conditions,” he said. “Megan’s an incredible police officer. Holly’s gone into fashion. Tilly’s studying at university for her degree. Tana and I came from a family with no degrees.”

Still, Gordon admitted that he sometimes finds the role of a father challenging, but emphasized the importance of patience.

“My job as a dad is to come up with a solution to their problems. That’s the most important role of a dad,” he said. “But boy, that’s f—ing hard with five kids, five problems, 25 a week, a hundred a month—that’s a lot of solution fixing.”

If you missed it, we ranked every episode of Gordon Ramsay‘s Hell’s Kitchen according to audience scores!