By Casey Neill
Home cooking queen Steph De Sousa is on a mission to inspire home cooks with budget-friendly, flavour-packed recipes.
So what does a family meal look like for the MasterChef Australia alum and mum of four?
“It depends on who’s around and what’s happening, but there’s nothing nicer than having your whole family around the table,” she said.
“If we’re all home together, we all sit at the family dinner table together.
“We have a ‘no phones at the table’ rule. I just love that face-to-face talk.”
Steph’s eldest child is now 30 and her youngest is in Year 11, but memories of cooking with one or more of them watching on from a bar stool at the kitchen bench are still fresh in her mind.
“They were always around cooking,” she said.
“I never forced it on them. They quite often would want to make something or help, but it happened a bit organically.
“One thing we used to do when they were early teenagers is a MasterChef competition once a month.
“It was a really fun way to get them into it. It was really hard to judge, though!”
Weekend cookups helped Steph to keep her tribe fed throughout the week.
“I used to be one of those parents with nothing packaged, everything fresh and fancy,” she laughed.
“That was probably with my first two kids. That slowly deteriorated.
“My first kids, they were sandwich kids. It was pretty easy to make a sandwich or a salad roll.
“My third doesn’t like sandwiches, but he’s great at eating leftovers. He would take a thermos.”
She recommended setting the lunch box bar low.
“School’s a long time. Start the way you need to go on,” she said.
“Keep it simple.
“Most of the time, they don’t eat a lot anyway.
“When they’re little, so much comes home. They’re in a hurry, they want to go and play.”
After school, Steph followed the same principle.
“My kids were mad on popcorn. I’d serve a fruit plate with popcorn, those kinds of things,” she said.
“I would usually have something like pancakes in the fridge. I’d make a big batch of pancakes at the beginning of the week.
“Sayos or Saladas with Vegemite and cheese and a glass of milk. They’re old school but they’ve stayed around for a reason.”
Cooking dinner was – and remains – Steph’s favourite part of the day.
“It’s a bit like meditation for me,” she said.
“You’re really mindful. You lose the rest of the world.”
The only time Steph lost her cooking mojo was after her first appearance on MasterChef, in 2019.
“For about three months, I didn’t want to cook,” she said.
“I was really burnt out. I’d invested so much into it. I was exhausted.
“I just wasn’t feeling creative and it just wasn’t fun.”
She let herself rest and slowly built up her kitchen time, and recommended non-cooks wanting to increase their skills take the same gradual approach.
“A lot of people haven’t grown up around cooking or with a cook,” she said.
“Start with recipes and cook one or two things regularly, maybe once a week, and get them under your belt.
“Try and add one thing once a week or once a fortnight.
“And cook once, eat twice. Make double what you need, whack it in the freezer.”
This year Steph returned to the MasterChef franchise for its Back to Win series with 2.5 million social media followers, a best-selling cookbook, her own TV show, and a successful website under her belt.
“When they asked me, I did hesitate,” she said.
“I thought ‘last time I really wanted to change my life with it’. I didn’t want to go back to my old job.
“This time I’ve got nothing to lose. I want to go back and have fun. Those cameras aren’t scary anymore.
“This has just happened by accident. I’d never planned on being a content creator.
“I have two or three people come up to me every day and tell me they cook my recipes and I enjoy it.
“It’s such a privilege to have people cook my recipes.”
Steph is sharing 60 new recipes in her latest book, Easy Dinner Queen, which hit shelves in April.
The one-pan dinners, tray bakes, slow cooker meals, and sweets and treats are all budget-friendly, fuss-free, and “on the table in a flash”.
“They’re things that I cook for my family at home,” Steph said.
“They’re all versions of recipes I’ve cooked for a long time.
“We take them into the Women’s Weekly Test Kitchen, so someone else then cooks them to make sure they’re right.”
Steph hopes Easy Dinner Queen will follow in the footsteps of her first cookbook, Air Fryer Queen.
It’s no surprise she talked up the gadget when we asked her if an air fryer was worth the money and, more importantly, the bench space – but she did make a compelling argument.
“I think anybody with kids will find an air fryer so incredibly useful,” she said.
“It’s so quick.
“You reduce the temperature by 20 degrees and reduce the time by one half to one third.
“Think about that time you can save. That time is so incredibly precious.
“It’s a really sustainable, energy-efficient option, too.”
