Food
Julie Goodwin Family Favourite
The former MasterChef winner talks to Myffy Rigby about cooking as a love language, and always staying true to style.
Julie Goodwin truly believes in the healing power of food. "The communion we share over food could heal the world," says the passionate home cook. She also believes many of the world's current ills could be solved with a potluck. "If world leaders each brought a dish that meant something to them, put it in the middle of the table, talking about the food, then hashed out what they needed to hash out... you tell me that wouldn't go better."
Australians came to know and love Julie Goodwin during her tenure on the first season of MasterChef back in 2009, quickly becoming the country's most beloved TV mum. Her nurturing personality and approachable, recognisable dishes (garlic roast chicken, lemon cupcakes, passionfruit puddle pie) won her the show.
She walked into the MasterChef kitchen as a former youth worker and mum of three, and walked out as a household name with $100,000 in her pocket, which she used to partially fund her Central Coast cooking school, Julie's Place.
Since then, she's published seven cookbooks, featured on radio, competed on Dancing With the Stars, and penned regular cooking columns, all in the pressure cooker that is the Australian media.
JULIE GOODWIN'S BRAVE NEW WORLD
In 2024, she published Your Time Starts Now - a brutally honest memoir documenting her long, hard battle with depression. Recently, she started a new monthly column for Australian Women's Weekly called 'Julie's Family Favourites', featuring dishes from her childhood or fed to her family as they grew up. "And now that I'm a grandmother, of course, the things my little four-year.old granddaughter likes to eat." She's also working on a new cookbook focused on easy weeknight dinners. Goodwin's somewhat of a pioneer. Before the first season idea who Marco Pierre White was.
They probably couldn't pronounce veloute. And "service"? That's a tennis term. The food media landscape changed virtually overnight once the show aired. Suddenly, people were talking about "plating up" and "tasting menus". The interest in chefs skyrocketed. Restaurant reservations became impossible to get - people were just so much more engaged with the subject matter.
Cooking for chefs at the top of their game would be a lesson in terror for a lot of home cooks, but not Goodwin. "I had three little boys at home and a business to run. We didn't eat out," she says. "I had no idea who any of them were." She learned a lot from them all the same. "The privilege of being shoulder to shoulder with those guys and having them say to me, "try it this way, keep an eye on that, make sure you're tasting, tidy as you go": all the advice was invaluable. And I still carry it with me." She may have cooked for guest chefs Jacques Reymond, Curtis Stone, Cheong Liew and Martin Boetz but Margaret Fulton "AM was the highlight for Goodwin.
The legendary, late author and doyenne of Australian home cooking was one of the first to introduce the average Aussie cook to the flavours of other cultures. She remains a hero to Goodwin to this day. "Everybody had her cookbook in their kitchen. And she said something when she was on my season of MasterChef that resonated with me, and I still love," says Goodwin. "She said, "when you make nice things for people to eat, they will love you. Even the dog will love you if you make it something nice". That is a philosophy to live by."
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