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, and I run Kitchen Sanctuary with my husband Chris.
I started this website in 2014 after spending 14 years in the corporate world, and I managed to get Chris to join me full time on the blog 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.
- We 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!
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 published a book – Seriously Good Salads – which is all about making salads into a full meal. It’s not a diet book.
- 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 just 2 weeks ahead of time and only broke the news to the kids when we got to the airport).
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’m actually Nik’s toyboy. She’s 3 years older than me 😘
- 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)).
- The studio kitchen you see in our videos (and the wall and shelves behind me on my picture above) was built by me. My Dad’s a builder – he built our kitchen extension and I built everything inside it.
- I love football (soccer) and am the assistant coach for my son’s team.
- I’m a planner too and love a good process, especially if I can automate it 😉
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 WONT find on Kitchen Sanctuary ❌
❌ Lots of sponsored posts. I very rarely write sponsored posts on my blog (a handful a year) 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 you won’t find me using chicken/mushroom soup as a sauce, relying on cake mixes or cool whip.
❌ 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.
Some of our personal favourites:
- 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:
We are also on social media too, 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 are sharing step by step recipe videos on YouTube with new videos going live twice a week 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 and Facebook
Interested in learning how we create content?
Are you interested in learning how we take mouthwatering photos, want to understand how we make money and how we work through the challenges of blogging?
Did you know we also have a second blog called Living the Blog.
Chris and I both have such a passion for blogging. It’s totally changed our lives and we’re so thankful that our full-time job is something that we love. Living the Blog is where we help other people by showing them what we do and how we do it.
It includes lots on info on finding work, Food Styling and Photography, Video Production, income reports (a little un-British to talk about our earnings, but we learned so much from reading other peoples income reports), blogging schedules and how our blog grew from day 1.
My wife and I fancied a Chinese take-away this evening, but with this heat we couldn’t be bothered to get in the car and fetch it. So, I typed ‘sweet and sour chicken’ into Google and found your recipe. I followed it to the letter, OMG, this is a great recipe, tangy, fresh, clean, we loved it. Usually when I shallow fry chicken I haven’t used cornflour, what a wonder, our chicken was crisp, tender and perfectly cooked.
Well done, this is a beyond restaurant quality recipe, absolutely delicious!!
My husband and I love cooking and eating! We discovered your Youtube Channel while looking for a Lamb Bhuna recipe. we Made your recipe and loved it. We have since made many of your recipes and all have been great.
We are interested in knowing what type of stove you have in your Kitchen. The door sliding underneath the oven fascinates us! lol
Gladys
Hi Gladys, so glad you and your husband are enjoying the recipes! The oven is a Neff Slide and Hide oven. As far as I’m aware, it’s only available in Europe though. It’s such a great invention isn’t it!
I’m a 66, an confirmed introvert INSJ ,
You are singing my tune!, I dislike offal, after a lifetime of rejecting fish I am trying again as I believe my palate is changing. Thank you for a great website. I have linked your Facebook and Instagramme addresses. What attracted me to your site was your fondant potatoes. I have been recently widowed and have little cooking experience . As an ex butcher and provisions manager, my food hygiene knowledge has kept me out of A&E with food poisoning .
Just enjoyed eight of your videos, very inspiring. Thanks
Hi I’ve tried making Chris’ chilli con carne which is now a family friends favourite. Will be trying other recipes
Hi Nicky
Great channel !! Curious do you recommend ENSO knives? Looks like that is what you use…
Also…
I’m the co-founder of a company you might have seen… Chosen Foods… we produce over 80% of the worlds Avocado Oil… our clean label products include oil, mayo’s dressing, sprays etc… send me your address and I’ll get a large care package to you..
Cheers
Hello again. Sorry i forgot to say, thank you for helping me with using Imperial measurements and Fahrenheit. It’s hard when i have to google everything and when the recipe has twenty ingredients and convert that lot, i forget what i was cooking! Thanks again.
PS. I was from the UK (Suffolk)
Hello, I have been looking for years for a great cooking ideas and videos. Bingo!, thank god i found you. I work in a gold mine and don’t get much time after work to make any food, let alone great food. Wow great food site. Keep it up and thank you.
I’ve used your recipes before and have enjoyed them. I’m looking forward to the steak pie which I will make this weekend with venison. I live in Georgia, USA, and have a comment about two countries divided by a common language: the first couple of times you said to “let the onions soften” what I heard was “let the onions suffer.” I couldn’t figure out why we would want the onions to suffer.
Hi Nicky and Chris,
As soon as I heard your accent I knew this was going to be good. Whist I live in Australia, I was born and raised in Stoke on Trent.
I’m looking forward to trying your recipes. The first one I tried was your rissoles and herb and garlic creamy sauce. Yum.
Keep up the great work.
Regards
Stan
Coffs Harbour Australia
Hi,
I’m really interested in what you do, creating, your recipes and talking about them on my Instagram page (not a massive social media fan , but food blogging feels more relatable and real)