As a Celebrity MasterChef winner, you might assume Pussycat Doll Kimberly Wyatt has always loved cooking.
However, this is simply not true.
"I was never one to be in the kitchen, I didn’t really know how to cook for myself until MasterChef," Wyatt confesses. Her first child, Willow, was four-months-old at the time, and the singer signed up because she wanted to gain a bit of kitchen confidence, in order to cook for her family.
"I threw myself into the deep end doing MasterChef, and learned so much along the way – my goal was to get through the first round, so to have come out a winner was beyond my wildest dreams."
Although Wyatt wasn’t particularly interested in cooking before her winning stint on the BBC show in 2015, she had a few skills up her sleeve. The 38-year-old from Missouri says: "I learned barbecuing growing up – we did lots of barbecues, meats, rubs, smoking – things like that."
And when she wasn’t grilling meat, Wyatt says she would help her mother in the kitchen and "sell baked goods to raise money for my costumes and competitions as a dancer".
Fast forward to today, and Wyatt lives in the UK with her model husband Max Rogers and their three children: Willow, five, Maple, three, and Senna, 10 months. With her kids at different ages and having varying preferences, Wyatt struggles to cook one meal for everyone – but she’s not about to do individual dinners.
"I’m good, I’m a MasterChef winner, but cooking five different meals every day for every meal – I don’t think I’ve got that in me," she says with a laugh.
Instead, Wyatt has a sneaky hack for minimising the amount of work she has to do, while also keeping everyone happy. "I try to find meals and recipes I can cook for Max and I, with all the spices, but cut those meals shorter for each kid – depending on the spice and what they’re into," she explains.
So, what does that look like on a normal night with the family? A classic meal would be chana masala with white fish, Wyatt says: "I’d do garbanzo beans and smush them up for Senna, then I’ll add a little bit more for the girls, then put in the spices and the white fish for Max and me."
If you are cooking every day, it can be easy to fall into a rut of making the same dishes over and over. When Wyatt finds herself in that position, she finds inspiration from the app Readly which has access to over 5,000 magazines, with the dancer saying you can "explore new recipes, methods and ingredients to help revive your love for cooking in the kitchen".
It sounds like Wyatt has perfected juggling her family, food and keeping things fresh, but like so many parents, she’s encountered struggles this year. While we’re chatting on the phone, Wyatt has to briefly stop chatting to deal with her five-year-old, who has decided to cut her own hair…
"Cooking is lovely on the days when it’s therapeutic and you can just enjoy cutting a knife through tomatoes and whatnot," she says, "but there are the days when everybody’s fighting and upset, and you just want to get through it and get into bed."
Wyatt is clearly in charge of food in the household, but she cooks with her kids as much as possible. And a big focus is sustainability and meat-free meals: "We’ve been trying to grow as much of our produce as we can," she says. "We’ve got a long way to go, but we’ve got a few bits that we do, and are getting the kids in the garden watering the plants, picking it, growing it and bringing it in. I think it gives them a better awareness of their own food and where it comes from."
And with a cheeky laugh, Wyatt adds: "And hopefully one day, I’ll get more gratitude for it!"
Kimberly Wyatt discovers new recipes through digital magazine app Readly. For more inspiration, visit readly.com
