Nigella Lawson has hit out at reality TV cooking shows – and insisted she’s "not an expert" cook.
The 58-year-old celebrity chef – who has featured on several TV cookery shows, including ‘The Taste’, ‘Nigella: At My Table’ and ‘Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen’ – believes some programmes are made in a way that leave viewers "fraught at home".
She said: "We do live in a landscape dominated by a lot of those reality TV cooking shows, and people think they are meant to be pretending that their home kitchen and table is a restaurant kitchen or table and they should be producing food that requires a great deal of technique and is plated individually.
"That would make anyone get fraught at home. I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t want to do that.
"What is it that makes cooking important? It’s a contract between people."
Nigella insists she is "not an expert cook" but people assume she is because of her numerous appearances on TV shows.
She said: "There’s nothing like being on television to make people think you’re an expert, even though anyone watching me cook on television can tell I’m not an expert.
"I feel this notion of expertise is a dangerous one because it somehow invalidates … the person at home has got his or her own views about what goes with what. Taste is very subjective."
The TV presenter admitted she includes her "lousy chopping" on her programmes to make cooking look more realistic on TV, instead of appearing "flawless".
Speaking on podcast ‘Salt + Spine’, she added: "What’s affected people in a way that I find unhelpful is television, more than anything else. Which is why I feel it’s important that I make television programmes with my lousy chopping and so forth.
"One, because people see everything looking so flawless on TV.
"But also I think because it takes away the notion that you have to do things quite a lot."
Nigella Lawson: I’m not an expert cook
