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.
Lovely sounding recipes. simple and true
Hi,
I have taken your ‘Slow-Cooking’ Beef Short Ribs with Rich Gravy recipe and yesterday I cooked 1.88kg that I divided into 5 portions. I have a slightly different angle but try to calculate the kcals as well.
Started with 1.88kg, after 8 hours this reduced down to 1.25kg, with 634g of beef, 312g of bones and 305g of fat and gristle. Means 34% meat from 1.9kg Beef Short Ribs. 5 individual servings of 125g meat.
Can I send you a ‘pdf’ or and ‘odt’ ? It will explain my ideas? I always keep my recipes as a ‘Word/odt’ version that I update as required.
Kind regards Andrew Winton
Have made the fish pie several times, though this time added 500 g of leeks, chopped capers, half a teaspoon of whole grain mustard and the usual love. Wow. That gave it a little something that I hadn’t expected. I think it was even better than the last time! And the Cajun chicken is a regular recipe as well… I love “it’s all about dinner” and of course the fabulous website! Keep up the good work!
Hi Nicky, I love your recipes you are my go to place whenever I want to try something new because I know they all work! You’ve expanded my curry cooking no end! Thank you for all the recipes you both share, very grateful for you both x
Hi,
I can across your site when searching for crispy beef and wow it was brilliant. I’ve now book marked several dishes to try (satay tonight) the cooking guides are excellent especially the reminder ingredients when you come to each point. Thank you both for your excellent work.
Hi Nicky. Saw your article and recipes in Olive. Liked them so bought your book Quick & Easy. Nice book, good ideas and recipes.
Like you I like a cookbook. Don’t want stuff on my tablet.
I’m not a YouTuber so will look at your newsletters. Bruce
I love cooking, and eating, and I like things that don’t take an age to prepare or use lots of ingredients. I’m not easy to please and I’m harsh critic. So when I say this is fabulous, I really mean it! I used an organic apple juice instead of cider.
Are Thai or bird’s eye chiles to hot for the Pork Belly Bo Buns?
Could please clarify a recipe for me. I made your Crockpot Beef Short Ribs with Rich Gravy and am hoping you can give me the poundage of “4 meaty beef short ribs”. We loved the recipe and the delicious flavors, but there seemed to be at least 6 cups of gravy. We hope to make this recipe for 10 people this Saturday, March 9,2024.
Thank You
Kathryn Schutte
Hi Kathryn, the ones I normally find at the butchers are between 450g-550g each. So 4 would be 1.8kg (3.9lb) – 2.2kg (4.9lb). It is quite a lot of meat per person, but looks impressive when serving it up 🙂
It does make quite a lot of gravy, so of course you can reduce the amount to suit your needs. Hope you enjoy!
Thank You!
Since the first recipe I found and cooked, I’ve been hooked on following Nicky Corbishly. The recipes are so well written and explained. I’ve never had a failure. I bought the first book and I’m waiting, with anticipation, for the arrival of the new one.
My husband and I love curries and all the recipes I’ve cooked have been fabulous, better than going to a restaurant.
Thank you, Nicky and Chris.