Peter Sidwell

Hi, I’m Peter Sidwell, and welcome to my kitchen!

You’ve probably heard me say that a lot if you already watch my online show, Peter Sidwell’s Kitchen, but if you’re new, here's how we got here…

My cooking journey started back when I was a teenager. I’d always been a hard worker, with both a paper and milk round starting off my mornings, but I stepped into my first professional kitchen aged 14 when I got a job at the local pub. I was struggling a bit with school at the time and my mum was keen to keep me out of trouble, so spending my weekends cutting carrots and buttering bread for prawn cocktails was one way to avoid it. It wasn’t the most exciting start, but from there I enrolled at Beverley Catering College (which also meant I avoided the army). While my dyslexia might have prevented me from acing the written work, it helped me flow in the kitchen - smelling, touching and tasting the ingredients was second nature to me. Getting stuck in was how I learnt best.

My first job in a proper serious kitchen was at the Ambassador Hotel in York, which is where I met one of my first mentors: Patrick Smith. I always say the four chefs you work with in your early years make up a quarter of you as a chef, and Patrick’s influence has been the foundation of my learning. He took me under his wing and taught me all about food, ingredients, and cooking at a higher level. Having grown up with a sergeant major for a dad, I was no stranger to the militant feel of a serious kitchen, and I threw myself into it. From delis to markets, and England to Italy, I became fascinated by ingredients and what I could do with them.

But you quickly climb the ladder as a chef, and as I moved up in kitchens I soon realised it was time to become my own teacher. Aged 25, my wife Emma and I took a risk and sold everything we owned to move to the Lake District and set up our own café and deli, Good Taste. This was the inspiration for my self-published debut cookbook Simply Good Taste, full of all the recipes I loved cooking for our customers. Its 5,000-copy print run sold out in 6 months.

From there, things really started to take off. I managed to blag a TV deal with Channel 4, filming Lakes on a Plate around my new home, the Lake District. I was headhunted for ITV’s Britain’s Best Bakery alongside Mich Turner, and I secured a 3-book deal with Simon and Schuster. Life got really busy really fast, and I was chuffed to be getting paid to do what I loved best - cooking, sharing recipes, and chatting to people about food.

After a while, and with two young kids in tow, stretching myself between our home in the Lakes, London TV studios, and our family business became a lot to juggle. At the end of the day, I wanted to cook and I wanted to be a proper dad to my kids. I realised I had to do something different in order to be there for them, so we sold the café and I set up work from home (way before it became the done thing). Cooking for me is a lifestyle, not a job, and I knew I needed something that worked with my life and family. When we built our new family home back in 2020, I built a studio kitchen alongside our family one, and this became a creative hub for all my recipe testing. After a few years dabbling in live shows across the country, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and through this adversity, Peter Sidwell’s Kitchen was born. It was the type of show I’d always wanted to make - ingredient-led cooking and a space where I could chat with my audience, kind of like I used to chat to my customers at the café, or to audience members in live demos. Just cooking, like most people do, day to day.

The kitchen is my happy place - no matter where on the map it is - and cooking has always come naturally to me. As much as I was taught technique and followed structure, I’ve always been led by taste, creativity, and intuition. The ingredients have always been my guide, not the recipe, and I’ve searched for new and exciting ones all across the world. From a couple of bottles of Poppy wine from California to a suitcase full of buffalo mozzarella from Campagna (leave the clothes, take the cheese), I can’t make it onto a plane without a taste of wherever I’ve just visited. Travel makes the best chefs, and we’re lucky that the melting pot of the UK invites so many ambitious and parameter-breaking takes on flavour.

And that’s exactly where my career has led me: to my online show and to this, an honest book of recipes that I’ve loved to create and love to cook. Recipes that come from innovation as well as tradition. The ones that inspire new flavour combinations and make people ask “How’d you come up with that?”. In the UK, real home cooking is eclectic - it’s Curry Night on a Tuesday, Epic Lasagna on a Friday, and Butternut Squash Soup on a cloudy weekend. There’s no better feeling than enjoying home-cooked food with your friends and family (even when you’re dealing with unbothered teenagers). I cook to make people happy - to get people excited - and I’ll never tire of the smiles a simple Sunday sourdough can produce.