Cooking queen Nigella Lawson: ‘I hate food snobs’

SUPERSTAR TV cook Nigella­ Lawson can’t stand food snobs. She hates the people who insist on making everything from scratch and the domestic goddess admits she uses instant stuff as a timesaver and said the purists need to take a chill pill.

SUPERSTAR TV cook Nigella­ Lawson can’t stand food snobs.

The sort who sniff at supermarket chicken stock cubes, insisting stock must always be made from scratch using free-range chooks raised on an organic farm at Byron Bay.

The Domestic Goddess admits to using the instant stuff as a timesaver and said the purists need to take a chill pill.

“I hate food snobbery, it almost makes me want to just eat plastic bread and plastic cheese when people start being so purist and looking down at people,” Ms Lawson said.

“Food is used too often as a status symbol. It’s the idea that people feel, ‘I’m better than you because I do this thing to my food and you don’t’.”

Nigella Lawson hates food snobs — and insists they need to take a chill pill. Picture: Phil Hillyard

The 58-year-old sees herself as a journalist who writes cookbooks, but she has embraced social media and manages her own accounts, posting images, recipe links and replying to as many people as possible.

“I do quite like the fact that it’s a very direct way of communicating,” she said.

“It wouldn’t feel right if someone else was doing everything, that would give me a strange sense of dislocation.”

She likes voyeuristic platforms such as Instagram — “I enjoy seeing what other people eat too” — but doesn’t believe it’s an accurate portrayal of how we eat.

“There are certain things that do well on Instagram which probably look better than they taste and certain things take a back seat because they don’t photograph so well,” Ms Lawson said.

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The British TV chef has graced our screens for many years. Picture: Supplied

For example, brown and beige foods, like stews, don’t look appetising but taste wonderful while intricately adorned dishes may garner likes, but who wants to eat them?

“In order for a cake to do well (on Instagram) they’ve got so much icing that the idea of actually eating one gives me a headache just thinking about it,” she said.

What Ms Lawson finds most amusing is that even social media stars aspire to be a success in the analog world.

It’s believed she filmed some scenes for MasterChef, as well as taking in what Australia has to offer. Picture: Supplied

“The interesting thing is people can have millions of followers on Instagram and yet they always end up wanting to write a book,” she said.

“Everyone always thinks the book will be over, but no, it means an awful lot to people­.”

Ms Lawson may have visited Australia to film MasterChef in Melbourne, but she is having a love affair with Sydney. She nominated Bondi’s Icebergs as her favourite restaurant in the world, and said being onstage at the Sydney Opera House was “the biggest thrill of my life”.