Georgina Dent is not your standard winner of this award, which has tended to go to ambitious types who have run a kitchen before they're 30. Georgina – Georgie, to her friends – is different. She is still just 19 and you will definitely not have heard of her. That said, a lot of very big name chefs have. They include Marcus Wareing, Phil Howard and Angela Hartnett. "She's a brilliant youngster who got involved," says Hartnett, who met Georgie when she came for an unpaid "stage" at Hartnett's restaurant Murano. "I desperately want her to work for me." Ashley Palmer-Watts, head chef of Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, where she also did a stint, agrees. "She was absorbing as much knowledge as she could. She had a hunger for learning."

Georgie is currently chef de partie at Nathan Outlaw's eponymous restaurant in Rock, Cornwall. "She was 15 when she walked through the back door and asked us for a job," Outlaw says. He gave her a trial and realised she was the real thing. The moment she left school at 16 she became part of his team. "She shows up more experienced chefs We have to keep moving her around so she doesn't get bored.."

For her part, Georgie, who was born in London but moved to Cornwall in 2007, attributes her fascination with cooking to her mother, a hotel chef turned catering lecturer who encouraged her choice of career. "I didn't really enjoy school," Georgie says simply. Weren't there cooking lessons there? "Yes there were, but they were terrible. Learning how to make fruit salad wasn't my thing." This, after all, is a girl who was bugging her parents to take her to Taste of London when she was just 12, so she could meet her chef idols.

Happily, the school understood they had little to teach Georgie about food. While she did stay long enough to get her GCSEs, eventually she was only there three days a week. "One day a week I studied for catering qualifications at a local college, the other I worked in the kitchens of a local hotel but that was short-lived. I'd watched a lot of food TV and read a lot of cookbooks and they just weren't doing the thing I was interested in." Instead she set her sights on Nathan Outlaw's Michelin-starred kitchen. "Working with Nathan is brilliant," she says. "I want to stay here for a few more years because there's so much to learn." It's that commitment which is so refreshing; as she herself says, too many young cooks are desperate to run their own kitchens. "They don't realise that being a head chef is so much paperwork and management." What she wants to do is cook.

"Every January when we close, Georgie shoots off to do stages," says Outlaw. "This year she spent five days with Sat Bains. Before that it was Marcus Wareing. I ran into Marcus at an event recently and the first thing he asked me was when is Georgie going to come to London." So is she really that much better than many others? Yes, he says. She is. "This is a girl who puts the hours in. The fact is it's still harder for women in this business. She has to work harder than the boys to make an impact."

What matters to Georgie, though, is the food. So what kind of cooking does she like? "I like keeping it simple," she says. "I like using ingredients in a way that shows them off to their best. That's what I like about working with Nathan." For his part, Outlaw recognises that he won't be able to hold on to her forever. "Eventually I'm going to lose her. That's the way it has to be. This award is going to be a superb springboard for her."

For now, though, Georgie has other stuff on her mind. When she was called to the phone for this interview she was at a crucial stage in making the restaurant's daily bread. Recently she spent three nights working in the St John Bakery in London and it's become her latest obsession. Our young chef of the year has to go. The bread oven is calling.

Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, St Endoc Hotel, Rock, Cornwall PL27 6LA; 01208 862 737