Welcome to Kitchen Sanctuary where we strive to bring you beautiful recipes and food tutorials that are easy to follow. We’re all about delicious family-friendly food.
Hi I’m Nicky, I’m a Sunday Times Best Selling author, award-winning recipe developer and food photographer, based in Devon, in the UK.
I started this website in 2014 after spending 14 years in the corporate world, and I managed to get my husband, Chris, to join me full-time in 2017.
I’ve always loved being in the kitchen and I started cooking from a young age – inspired by my Dad, who spent part of his childhood in Singapore, and my Mum who taught me how to make a roast dinner at the age of 11.
I’m a firm believer in sitting the family down at the table as often as possible for a nice home-cooked meal and a catch-up on the day. I generally cook quick and simple recipes during the week, saving the more complex or time-consuming cooking (as well as a bit of baking) for the weekend.
Why Choose Kitchen Sanctuary?
- Our site is full of easy to follow family-friendly recipes.
- All our recipes are tried and tested (multiple times!) before we publish them.
- Chris and I are both big foodies and LOVE to cook.
- We treat Kitchen Sanctuary as our cookbook, everything you find is the food we love to cook and eat.
- We run a cooking show on YouTube to show you how to make the recipes.
- We are based in the UK but also provide Imperial US measurements where we can.
- We listen, we read every comment!
My Cookbooks
I published my first cookbook ‘Seriously Good Salads‘ back in 2019, with the aim of proving that salads don’t have to be boring. It’s not a diet book. This book continues to be sold today and has more than 350 positive reviews on Amazon.
In 2022 published my second cookbook ‘It’s All About Dinner‘ featuring a big selection of the most popular and favourited recipes on Kitchen Sanctuary. This achieved ‘Sunday Times Best Seller’ in its first week of publication and has over 700 positive reviews on Amazon.
My third cookbook ‘Quick & Easy‘ was published in 2024. I wrote this to help you cook fantastic dinner recipes in 30 minutes or less. It’s already received almost 250 positive reviews!
If you’ve bought one of my books and/or left an Amazon review on one of my books, then thank you! It’s helps so much!
What you WILL find on Kitchen Sanctuary ✔
Lots of delicious family friendly recipes like:
✅ Comfort food recipes such as: Chicken and Bacon Pasta Bake, Creamy Chicken Puff Pie, Spaghetti Bolognese and Steak Diane Casserole
✅ Asian inspired recipes: Sesame Chicken, Stick Chinese Pork Belly, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Sesame Prawn Toast and more
✅ Curries: Like my slow cooked Beef Massaman Curry, Chicken Jalfrezi, Thai Green Curry, Chicken Madras and many more.
✅ British classics such as: Lancashire hotpot, Toad in the Hole, Roast Beef Dinner, Yorkshire Puddings & Cottage Pie
✅ Back to basics tutorials including: How to boil rice, how to roast a chicken, how to make rich gravy and how to make pasta.
What you WON’T find on Kitchen Sanctuary ❌
❌ Lots of sponsored posts. I very rarely write sponsored posts on my blog and when I do, it’s only with brands that I truly use and love.
❌ Overly technical or complicated recipes. I’m a busy mum of two, I haven’t got time for all that nonsense.
❌ Recipes that include lots of packaged goods. I’ll sometimes include the occasional curry paste, I do use pre-made pastry and I do like to add a stock cube here and there for added flavour, but the majority of most of my recipes are from scratch.
❌ Healthy recipes that are lacking in flavour. I’ve got a few lighter recipes on the blog that I sometimes post when my jeans are getting too tight, but I NEVER sacrifice on flavour. If it doesn’t satisfy, I don’t want anything to do with it.
My recipes have featured in:
Fun Facts About Nicky:
- I’ve always got food on my mind, and I’m constantly in the kitchen testing recipes for Kitchen Sanctuary or whipping up something delicious for the family.
- I’m a total introvert, but I do come out of my shell every now and then – like the time I won the Neff Cookaholic competition by competing on stage. I won BTW 🙂
- I’ve written and/or created content for many brands, websites and magazines including Neff, Brit + Co, The Telegraph, Superfood Magazine, The Vegetarian Society and Beautiful Home and Life Magazine.
- I HATE offal. I’ve only ever eaten it to be polite.
- My favourite treat is a Cadbury chocolate Easter egg that’s been refrigerated to chocolate-cracking perfection. I’ve been known to buy Easter eggs for all of my family, then eat them all and have to buy them again.
- I’m a bit of a food magazine and recipe book addict, so you’ll find some recipes on here that have caught my eye (I’ll always let you know the source) as well as lots of my own creations.
- I love lists, schedules and time plans. But I also love a bit of spontaneity – like the time we booked a surprise trip to Disney and only broke the news to the kids when we got to the airport (they thought we were going on a work trip to Germany).
Fun Facts About Chris:
- I used to work in a restaurant from a young age and LOVE cooking and eating OBVIOUSLY.
- I’m a tech geek and love anything to do with photo and video.
- Photography has been one of my passions for my whole adult life, I really enjoy travel, street and landscape photography the most.
- I once cycled from one side of the UK to the other in a coast-to-coast ride with my mate Lee – fuelled by pints of beer and Snickers bars.
- I managed a multi-million $ budget and teams of people across 4 continents in my last role in the corporate world. Now even the cats don’t answer to me (but I can live with it since I get to stay home with my beautiful wife all day (brownie points for me)).
- I designed and built each of the kitchen studios you see in our videos (three so far!). My dad’s a builder, so he taught me.
- My mum taught me to cook. She was head chef at a country inn for many years, and I used to be her kitchen assistant and also worked front of house (mum’s now part of our social media team).
- I love football (soccer) and am coach for my son’s team.
- I’m a planner too and love a good process, especially if I can automate it 😉
Some of our personal favourite recipes:
- Sesame Chicken – it’s a long time reader favourite and I 100% agree with you guys.
- Spaghetti Bolognese – always on rotation at home.
- Roast Beef dinner with a huge batch of Yorkshire Puddings, Roast Potatoes and a swimming pool (well almost) of amazing gravy.
- Creamy chicken puff pie – it’s got to have a pastry base too. That’s a real pie.
- Chicken Madras – a reader requested recipe that I absolutely LOVE served with some homemade chapatis.
- Sweet and Sour Chicken with loads of homemade fried rice
- Beef Stroganoff – the ultimate date night dinner
- Chris’s Chilli Con Carne – I love it when he cooks (it helps that his Mum used to be a chef, and he worked in a restaurant so he knows his stuff)
- Lancashire Hotpot – a simple Northern classic, that despite having minimal ingredients, tastes eyeball rollingingly delicious
- Sticky Chinese Pork Belly – melt in your mouth heaven.
What’s popular now:
These recipes are super popular right now:
Social Media Channels
We’re also on social media. Our favourite platforms are:
Instagram < we share some behind the scenes and other things on our stories so that’s a great place to get to know is more.
YouTube < We share step-by-step recipe videos on YouTube with new videos going live weekly, so be sure to subscribe and hit the little bell icon so you get notified every time we publish a new video.
You can also find us on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and Punchfork
Hello!
I’m Beau, the solo developer behind CookCart, a free app that saves recipes from websites and turns them into grocery lists.
Would you be open to me featuring your recipes in my promotional videos on an ongoing basis? Each video would open with clips of one of your recipes (food only, not you), then show it being imported from your website into CookCart. I’d credit you with a link to your site in every video and post.
Thanks for considering it!
Beau Thomas
Hi Beau,
Thanks for getting in touch and for your interest in featuring Kitchen Sanctuary recipes.
I’ve had a look at CookCart, and whilst I can see how it could be useful for home cooks, we’re not interested in collaborating with recipe-importing apps.
As a recipe website, we rely on readers visiting our site to access our recipes, so we’re careful about promoting services that allow recipes to be viewed and followed entirely within another app.
You’re essentially asking us to provide our food footage and the credibility of an established recipe website to help promote an app that could ultimately reduce traffic to that very website.
For those reasons, we do not give permission for our recipes or video footage to be used in your promotional content.
Thanks Nicky
Hi regarding the Christmas fruit cake, what is mixed spice? Also what dryed fruits do you use and recommend. I have never liked fruit cake before as i dont liked those red and green candied cherry and stuff but yours sounded different and I like dryed fruit. So if you have time can you let me know. I live in SC idk the UK measurements. Ty in advance.
Hi Laura,
The recipe gives cup measurements alongside the grams, so you can follow it with US measures. Mixed spice is a UK spice blend, usually cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, and pumpkin pie spice works well as a swap. The recipe uses 400g (2 2/3 cups) of mixed dried fruit (a mix of raisins, sultanas and currants), plus dried cranberries and glacé cherries. If you’re not keen on candied cherries, We haven’t tested it without them, but you could swap them for extra dried fruit. Here’s the recipe: https://www.kitchensanctuary.com/november-is-the-time-to-make-your-christmas-cake/
Thanks Chris & Nicky
Hi Nicky, I followed your xmas cake exactly, but when I tried to slide it off the cake tim base, it fell apart. Any suggestions for next time? Thanks
Hi John, I’m sorry to hear that. The cake needs to cool completely in the tin before you take it out, and it’s much easier to lift out if the tin is lined with baking parchment, with the sides sitting about 2 inches above the tin. It’s also worth checking that a skewer comes out clean at the end of baking, as a cake that isn’t quite cooked through is more fragile. Do let me know when you took it out of the tin and I can help work out what happened.
Thanks Chris & Nicky
Hi Nicky & Chris
I absolutely love your recipes & try a few now & then. They always turn out delicious. How lovely that you work together as a couple & you obviously know what you are doing .
You might allready have my email but i have been absent for awhile , Now getting back into it.
Thank you for all your hard work .
Hugs Wilma
Hi Wilma, thank you so much, what a lovely message! We’re so glad you’re enjoying the recipes, and welcome back.
Thanks Chris & Nicky
I’ve been watching you for a long time on you tube and love your meals and how you show how to cook them I’m not signed up to you tube so I couldn’t comment but they all look amazing thank you very much