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James Strawbridge is a chef based in Cornwall, a bestselling author, food photographer, sustainable living expert, and son of TV Presenter Dick Strawbridge.
The driving force behind Strawbridge Kitchen, James works for a wide range of food and drink brands, photographing food items for books and websites, creates new recipes in his development kitchen, and works alongside his wife to promote sustainable food.
Contact Great British Speakers today to book sustainable chef James Strawbridge for your next event.
Whilst a lover of all foods, James Strawbridge is passionate about ensuring our produce is as sustainable as possible. He is an environmental activist and a Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) ambassador promoting sustainable seafood in the UK.
A keen writer, James has written for major publications, including Cornwall Life, Countryfile, Country Smallholding, Edible Garden, and Home Farmer magazines. He is also the author of several cookbooks, some written solely by him and some alongside his father Dick Strawbridge.
– Made at Home: Eggs and Poultry (2012) – Everything you need to know about raising poultry for eggs. This made the Amazon ‘Home Farming’ bestsellers list.
– Made at Home: Preserves (2012) – This book aims to help you make the most of seasonal produce and enjoy it all year round.
– Made at Home: Curing and Smoking (2012) – A guide on how to cure and smoke produce, including hams, cheeses and oysters.
– Made at Home: Vegetables (2012) – A guide to growing vegetables and ideas for cooking your home produce.
– Made at Home: Cheese and Dairy (2013) – How to make homemade cheese and other dairy products.
– Made at Home: Breads (2013) – Provides inspiration for making bread.
– Smoked Food: A Manual for Home Smoking (2019) – A manual that guides through every stage of smoking and curing food.
– Practical Self-Sufficiency: The Complete Guide to Sustainable Living Today (2020) – A guide on how to live self-sufficiently. This made Amazon’s ‘Sustainable and Green Architecture’ bestseller list.
– The Artisan Kitchen: The Science, Practice and Possibilities (2020) – How to reconnect with a more mindful enjoyment of cooking.
– The Complete Vegetable Cookbook: A Seasonal, Zero-Waste Guide to Cooking with Vegetables (2021) – A guide on preparing, storing, and cooking fresh seasonal vegetables.
– Salt and the Art of Seasoning: From Curing to Charring and Baking to Brining, Techniques and Recipes to Help You Achieve Extraordinary Flavours (2023) – Understanding how to use salt in your dishes to elevate your flavours.
James has many strings to his bow. As well as being a successful chef and author, he offers services including food photography from his own Cornish studio, art direction and content creation, food styling for magazines and other publications, market research into food trends, and he is a learned home economist. He was a sustainability manager in Fiji, an eco-consultant for The Lost Gardens of Heligan, and runs his own catering company, James Cooks.
James and his family are keen to promote a sustainable life, from food to way of living. Their farm Newhouse appeared in the series, It’s Not Easy Being Green, which showed the family converting the farm into a modern eco-friendly home using solar panels, wind turbines, waterwheels, solar tubs, and organic planting. They also ran courses at the farm to demonstrate how to live an eco-friendlier life. He has always had this love of environmentalism, and in 2007 he worked with the charity education programme WasteBusters to help encourage children to think more about the environmental issues surrounding waste, including food waste.
Whilst television is not his primary career, James has appeared on shows including Celebrity Masterchef (2010), Escape to the Chateau (2019), and Strawbridge Over the Drawbridge (2022), in which he visits country houses to learn about their culinary history. Alongside his father, he presented The Re-Inventors (2006), where they aimed to ‘re-invent’ past inventions, and The Hungry Sailors (2012), where they sailed the Cornish coast, visiting local food producers.
CLIENTS: AMI, British Pie Awards, Clarks UK Ltd, Co-Op, Cornish Sea Salt, Davidstow Cheddar, DK, the Final Straw, Finnebrogue, Fowey Shellfish Co, Froneri, Hub Box, Kelly’s of Cornwall, the Lost Gardens of Heligan, Love Food Hate Waste, Ocean Fish, Old El Paso, P&O Ferries, Sainsburys, St Austell Brewery, St Ewe Free Range Eggs, Tregothnan, Trewithen Dairy, Truffle Hunter, Waitrose Food.
