Advertisement

TV chef Delia Smith lets her husband cook, ‘if he sticks to the recipe’

<span>Photograph: John Sibley/Action Images via Reuters</span>
Photograph: John Sibley/Action Images via Reuters

For more than five decades, Delia Smith has taught several generations to cook countless recipes with her no-nonsense approach. But Britain’s first superstar TV chef has now admitted she lets her husband do the cooking.

Smith, 80, rarely cooks at home, leaving the journalist Michael Wynn Jones, her husband of 50 years, to hover over the stove while she goes “to the end of the garden”.

She told the Times she does not criticise her husband’s efforts “if he sticks to the recipe” – a fitting instruction from a woman who has sold more than 21m cookbooks.

Related: Happy 80th birthday, Delia Smith! 10 lessons she has taught us – from eggs to lemon zesters

“It’s a question of keeping out of the way, because if I’m in the kitchen, I can’t help going and turning the heat down or stirring,” she said.

When asked if any meddling would result in her husband yelling “get out of my kitchen”, she replied: “That’s Michael. That’s why I go down to the end of the garden.”

Smith, who spent her career bringing simple cooking into the homes of millions of Britons, once famously instructed people on the best way to boil an egg. Wynn Jones, she says, does use her recipes when cooking for them both.

It is fair to say – perhaps in part due to her love of Norwich City football club – that her life in general has moved away from cooking. She has not published any new cookbooks since 2009 and her last TV series was 11 years ago.

After her last programme, she announced she would instead be offering her recipes on her website Delia Online, which remains popular.

Aside from home-cooked meals, Smith is often found eating at Norwich Yellows Bar & Grill, her restaurant at Carrow Road, the home of Norwich City – which she and Wynn Jones became majority shareholders of in 1997.

In the interview, she also offered her opinions on the government’s plans to tax sugar and salt in an effort to tackle obesity.

She said: “I think putting tax on sugar and putting tax on salt is wrong because both are natural foods. What I would whack the tax on is chocolate bars and, you know, crisps, salted peanuts, things that have too much salt. Actually, I don’t think they do. I don’t think crisps and peanuts are the problem. I think the problem with salt and the problem with sugar is food that comes from a factory.”

“But I also have my own philosophy, which I will never change, and that is that sugar is a natural food but it’s refined, so you have to keep it to the minimum. If you took a piece of sugar cane, it would take you a week to get through it.”

She added that some food just cannot be cooked without salt. “Oh God, you can’t cook potatoes without any salt. No way,” she said.