Sam Gates

Food writer Sam Gates has cooked everywhere from local schools to the African bush. She’s catered for cub scouts, run cookery classes for corporate teams and charities in the UK and South Africa, and taught everyone from world-weary teenagers to the local Women’s Institute how to make their own sushi.

Sam worked in TV before landing her dream job as marketing director of the UK’s first food channel, working with fantastic chefs all day before racing home to cook and write her own recipes. After leaving, she started her own marketing company, with BBC Food, BBC Radio and small food producers among her first clients.

In 2015, cooking and writing happily came together when her first book, Food for your Brood: cooking for the people you love, was published by Penguin Random Struik, and she was a contributor to the wonderful ‘Royal Marsden Cancer Cookbook’. Sam also worked for Liz Earle Wellbeing magazine, creating features on Easter feasts, Bonfire treats, Weekday suppers and Traybakes and Pies.

Her second book, The Tin and Traybake Cookbook, published in 2018, is a warm, refreshingly honest family cookbook, packed full of delicious, ruthlessly tested recipes. The Tin and Traybake Cookbook was featured in national newspapers, magazines and radio stations, and is now on its third reprint.

Sam has been batch cooking since she was a frugal student, and now as a working mum to a hungry family (and even hungrier rescue dog) it’s become a way of life. Juggling family, work, life and cooking was the inspiration behind her third book, The Batch Cook Book, and its budget-friendly, low-waste recipes. The book is packed with fresh ideas, from preparing key ingredients to whipping up perfectly portioned meals for simple suppers and bold, big-hearted feasts for friends and family. It's a book for every cook, packed with ideas for seasonal gluts, how to rouse bleary-eyed teenagers with wafts of cinnamon at breakfast and filling your freezer with sweet treats, takeaway toasties, luscious lasagnes and hearty stews.

The Batch Cook Book was photographed during lockdown 2020, which meant that sourcing ingredients and props was more challenging, but thanks to previous recipe tests, the freezer was full of delicious ready-meals!

Within a few days of publication The Batch Cook Book had an Amazon bestseller tag, and Huff Post, the Daily Express, Daily Mirror and BBC Good Food magazine featured recipes, as well as The Guardian, who said it ‘redefined the concept of batch cooking’. The Yorkshire Post included it in its favourite cookbooks of 2020.

Sam’s fourth book, The Green Batch Cook Book, came out in 2022 and turns the batch cook spotlight onto vegetarian and vegan recipes. It’s a collection of mouth-watering make ahead dishes that harness the dazzling colours and fresh flavours of fruit and vegetables. It’s vibrant, veggie-packed and full of life.

Sam is a member of The Guild of Food Writers and also works as a marketing consultant and recipe writer, but above all, she loves to cook and feed the people she loves, which she does at any opportunity!

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Website: www.samgatesfood.co.uk