I learned to cook on MasterChef
Pussycat Dolls singer Kimberly Wyatt tells Prudence Wade that winning shocked everyone, including herself
AS A Celebrity MasterChef winner, you might assume Pussycat Doll Kimberly Wyatt has always loved cooking. You’d be wrong.
“I was never one to be in the kitchen, I didn’t really know how to cook for myself until MasterChef,” she said.
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.
She said: “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 she 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, US, said: “I learned barbecuing growing up – we did lots of barbecues, meats, rubs, smoking, things like that.”
Kimberly would also help her mum in the kitchen and sell baked goods to raise money for her dance costumes and competitions.
Fast forward to today and she lives in the UK with her model husband Max Rogers and their children – Willow, five, Maple, three, and 10-month-old Senna.
With her kids at different ages and having varying preferences, she struggles to cook one meal for everyone but she’s not about to do individual dinners.
She said: “I’m a MasterChef winner but cooking five different meals every day for every meal – I don’t think I’ve got it in me.”
Instead, she has a hack for minimising the amount of work she has to do, while keeping everyone happy.
She said: “I try to find meals and recipes I can cook for Max and me, with all the spices, but cut those meals shorter for each kid depending on the spice and what they’re into.”
For a normal night with the family, a meal would be chana masala with white fish. Kimberly said: “I’d do garbanzo beans and smush them for Senna. I’ll add a bit more for the girls, then put in the spices and the 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 she finds herself in that position, she gets inspiration from the app Readly, which has access to more than 5000 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 she has perfected juggling her family, food and keeping things fresh but like so many parents, she’s encountered struggles this year.
As we’re chatting on the phone, Kimberly has to stop to deal with her five-year-old, who wants to cut her own hair. She said: “Cooking is lovely on the days when it’s therapeutic and you can just enjoy cutting a knife through tomatoes and whatnot but there are the days when everybody’s fighting and upset, and you just want to get through it and get into bed.”
Kimberly’s big focus is sustainability and meat-free meals. She said: “We’ve been trying to grow as much of our produce as we can. 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.
“It gives them a better awareness of their own food and where it comes from.”
And, she said with a laugh: “Hopefully one day I’ll get more gratitude for it.”
For more cooking inspiration, visit readly.com