First up, let’s take a moment to be thankful for these invariably well-intentioned offers of help in the kitchen. How wonderfully generous of friends and family! Keeping this in mind when telling them you’d rather not have their help is vital if you don’t want to cause offence.

Personally, it has taken 25 years of marriage to persuade my mother-in-law that we want her to sit back and relax when we’re cooking, and I do acknowledge that it can be hard for some people to sit there doing nothing while others slave. Even if I ain’t afflicted like that!

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Friends and family should understand the boundaries of the kitchen. It’s great to make the offer to help when someone else is making you a meal, and so, if the help that’s being offered is something out of the kitchen – like laying the table, emptying the bins or opening the wine – you need to accept this without complaint. Similarly, it needs to be understood that most home cooks have set processes (AKA, ‘the way I do things’) in their own kitchen. Having someone else in there may not only not help; even worse, it can be distracting.

This rule goes double when you’ve been asked to bring something. For example, if it’s a potato gratin, it needs to arrive pre-cooked, unless you’ve already checked ahead of time to make sure there will be ample spare oven space on the day. If it’s a fruit salad or a cheese board, this needs to be prepped back at your place. It can be an imposition if you want to cut up fruit in the kitchen, or clutter up much-
needed bench space when someone is trying to plate up.

Also, bring everything you need with you. No cook wants to be scrabbling around looking for an extra cheese board, or finding you extra virgin olive oil and honey for your vinaigrette when they’re trying to concentrate on the multiple facets of the main meal.

As for dilemma of stopping family and friends from coming in and ‘helping out’ in the kitchen, you have to be firm. Tell them thank you, but that this meal you’re preparing is for you to spoil them, and that you’d love them to just take a drink and relax. Tell them this would make you happy. Never give them a ‘why’; never feel that you need to justify your decision. If you do give them a reason ‘why’ you don’t want their help, this will just give them something to argue about, negotiate over or take offence to. Just shoo them out! If they are persistent in their efforts and you need to get a little tougher, why not suggest that you’d love their help later, when it comes time for the washing up?

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