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.
Hi Nicky,
Just baked your artisan bread and it came out great (first time bread baker)! What size proving basket would you recommend for this recipe?
Thank you,
Rich
Hi, found you on YouTube and tried your recipes, just loved them, easy to follow, I share your recipes with my brother in Spain, I decided to buy your latest book, got it this week, I love it, one of the best books I’ve got thanks Nikki and Chris, Maria x
Thank you so much for buying the book and making and sharing my recipes xx
Hi Nicky, I am looking at your book right now …. It is wonderful. Just like having you here with me in my kitchen. I have made many recipes from it . Thai red chicken was the last one. I am working my way through it, the other cookbooks (ah except Dozer’s cook book …(!! Aka Nagi, ) called Dinner) just sit adorning my shelves. …. Thank you so much.
Two things, which you may not be allowed to,answer, pls cld you tell my the make of your little food processor that you used to chop up the onions etc to make the paste .. yours seemed like a good little work horse, and also I like your little single gas hob …!, in fact I do like every thing about your test kitchen. !
Thank you
again. Maggie
Thank you so much Maggie 🙂
I also love Nagi’s book!
We don’t use the little gas hob anymore – as we’re in a different kitchen, but I believe it was a NJ portable gas stove. I think it was this one: NJ NGB-S1 Indoor Portable Gas Stove (it should show up if you google it).
As for the food processor, we’ve used various ones in different videos, so it depends which recipe video it was from.
My current favourite that I use a lot is a tiny 830ml KitchenAid mini food chopper. I also use the Bosch ErgoMaster Series 4 quite a lot (it’s an immersion blender that has a whisk and food processor attachment).
Hi Nicky,
Thanks for this wonderful site! I have bought your book and I gave a copy to my Mum too.
I originally found your site when I was looking for a recipe for a beef massaman curry. Wow! That’s what got me inspired to try more.
What I love about your recipes is that they always turn out exactly as you show them in the videos. Everything is very easy to follow. I’m working my way through all your curry recipes now and they have all been amazing. Why would I ever want to order a takeaway again?
Your beef bourguignon is also a game changer. I have done it now a few times when we’ve had people over and evryone has been really impressed.
Move over Delia Smith? I think so.
Well done to both you and Chris!
Kind regards,
Paul
Thank you Paul, I’m really glad you’re enjoying the recipes 🙂
Hi Nicky,
I’m loving the look of your recipes, and looking forward to trying some at Christmas. The recipe you have for turkey you mention it isn’t for a buffet turkey, do you have one for a buffet? I’m doing 2 turkeys, one full and one buffet and would love to know what to do differently to each.
Many thanks in advance
Aileen
Can you create a category for “low calorie meals”?
I am looking to cook meals that are roughly 500 calories, and searching through is a little hard.
Love your meals!
Hi Fiona, generally my recipes aren’t particularly low calorie, but I do have a small section with lower calorie recipes in there https://www.kitchensanctuary.com/category/skinny-eats/
I really enjoy this site it`s my favourite. All the recipes are real food for real people. I want to make it all! I so appreciate your straight to the job approach with short clear instructions, after all who wants to watch potatoes being peeled then sliced then rinsed then cut up before being put on to cook etc!! think we know how to do the basics.
thankyou for being the opposite and keeping it simple but clear.
Hi nicky can you please give me more chicken curries recipes using your gravy sauce
I love your recipes, but the website drives me mad. I am using an iPad. If I try and cook looking at the recipe, it keeps jumping up and down as adds open and close. And sometimes jumps right back to the top. “Pin” has no effect.
Any advice?
Hi Keith, if you click on the Print recipe button at the top of the page, it will open a new page with just the ingredients and method on there. Hope that helps.
Hi Nicky.
I had a lot of recipes saved in the favourites/my recipes section. This seems to have disappeared and I don’t want to lose all them all. I looked at the button to pin a recipe but this takes you to Pinterest. No doubt you need to open an account with them and I am not willing to share my personal details with an insecure website who will no doubt divulge them to anyone who pays them. We have recently had our details hacked into from a supposedly secure financial company so no way will I trust someone like pinterest. Can the favourites section be reinstated please ?
Many thanks ,
Chris.
Just wanted to say Thank You. I not only enjoy all your recipes but also truly appreciate how you write up your recipes with all the quantities of the ingredients within the cooking instructions. There’s no flipping back and forth between the directions and the ingredients. It makes it so much easier for me to not only cook but enjoy cooking. Once again, thank you.