Ben Lebus

My name is Ben Lebus and I am the founder of MOB Kitchen.

When I moved into my first house with my four best mates at university, I relished the opportunity to cook in my own kitchen. However, I quickly saw that this enthusiasm was not shared by my friends. The boys, Paddy and Chester, would cook bacon sarnies and pesto pasta five nights a week. The rest of the time they would buy a ready-made soup from the local shop. I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why they lacked the confidence in the kitchen to cook a proper meal.

Something needed to be done. I wanted to prove that you didn’t have to be rich or talented to cook a healthy, delicious meal. So I started to write a blog with a series of recipes that would feed us all for under a tenner. In my final year at university, I filmed 20 of the recipes to share online. I came up with the name MOB Kitchen and launched the channel in August 2016.

So, what exactly is MOB Kitchen? When I was at university, young people weren’t cooking. T

he phrases ‘I can’t be bothered’ or ‘It’s too expensive’ were commonplace in the student kitchen. Across the social media sites on which we spent all of our time, there were no relevant and accessible videos showing us that cooking healthy, delicious food is easy and affordable and fun.

We needed a site to show us that by using simple, everyday ingredients in the right way, we could cook for our housemates, colleagues and friends without any fuss. Before MOB Kitchen, this simply did not exist. With real prices, real food, real imperfections and real music, MOB Kitchen provided the answer. MOB Kitchen is a movement away from the take-away, away from processed food, and back into the kitchen. Thousands of students, young professionals and families across the country cook our recipes every week, which is why it is time to present to you the first MOB Kitchen book.