Hetty Lui McKinnon | |
|---|---|
| Born | Sydney, Australia |
| Occupation |
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| Subject | Vegetarian/Plant-based/Vegan cookbooks |
| Notable works | Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds |
| Notable awards | James Beard Foundation Award |
Hetty Lui McKinnon is anAustralian Chinesevegetarian/plant-based/vegan cookbook author, recipe developer,food writer, andJames Beard Award finalist and winner. She has written five cookbooks with the fifth,Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds winning the James Beard Award for Vegetable Focused Cooking in 2024.
McKinnon was born in Sydney to Chinese immigrant parents fromGuangdong, China.[1] Her father immigrated in the late 50s and her mother arrived in the early 1960s.[2] She has two siblings and is the youngest sibling.[3]
McKinnon's father worked at theFlemington Markets as an importer and exporter of bananas.[4] He broughtfresh produce back for his family, which had a huge influence on McKinnon's later cooking.[4] McKinnon's father died in 1989, when she was 15 years old.[4][5]
McKinnon's Australian upbringing and cross-cultural experiences profoundly shaped her. She recalls feeling like a minority outside of her home while also growing up in a traditional Chinese household.[6] McKinnon has stated that food was central to her family, calling it a "common language."[6] Although McKinnon grew up eating her mother'sCantonese food, she did not really cook in her childhood.[6]
When she was a 15-year-old high school student, McKinnon's career advisor dissuaded her from becoming a journalist, and encouraged her to studypublic relations instead.[6]
In the early 2000s, McKinnon moved to London because her husband got a job there.[1] She got a job at a PR agency.[1] McKinnon resided there for four years before moving back to Sydney with her husband.[1]
After her move back to Sydney, McKinnon was freelancing for a PR agency, but found herself gravitating towards cooking. When Mckinnon would put her children down for their naps, she would cook throughYotam Ottolenghi's first cookbook.[1] She credits this as a major turning point that helped her fall in love with cooking, learn practical techniques, and layer flavors.[1]
In 2011, McKinnon founded Arthur Street Kitchen, a community kitchen making salads that highlight local produce, in Sydney'sSurry Hills neighborhood.[4] She made salads and sweets out of her home kitchen and delivered them by bike throughout the neighborhood.[1] The menu would rotate, ranging from salads she had been making for years to ones inspired by classic dishes.[7] McKinnon emailed out a weekly menu to subscribers that featured two salads a day, making deliveries on Thursday and Friday for up to forty people.[7]
In 2017, McKinnon began publishing a multicultural food magazine calledThe Peddler Journal.[1]
In 2018, McKinnon began a monthly column onABC Everyday.[8] She is also a regular contributor to New York Times Cooking, The Washington Post, Bon Appetit, and Epicurious.[9]
After about a year, McKinnon decided to write a cookbook.[1] McKinnon was inspired by people asking for her salad recipes, which taught her to develop and write recipes.[1] She met the book's photographer, Luisa Brimble, during an interview with Broadsheet magazine, a Sydney-based magazine.[1] In 2013, McKinnon self-publishedCommunity, which was initially just supposed to be for Arthur Street Kitchen's subscribers.[1] However, after a feature in the Australian website The Design Files, McKinnon sold out of cookbooks.[1] A publisher atPan Macmillan saw her cookbook and published it throughout Australia, where it sold upwards of 80,000 copies.[1]
In 2015, McKinnon moved to New York City'sCarroll Gardens.[1] There, she wrote her second book,Neighborhood, over the course of three months.[1]
Her third cookbook,Family, focuses on "vegetarian comfort food."[1] She was inspired by the crowd-pleasing meals she cooked for her children, which were much more kid-friendly than the salads she made for Arthur Street Kitchen.[1]
Her fourth cookbook,To Asia, with Love, came out in 2020.[10] McKinnon shot all the photos for this book.[2] The book features easy Asian recipes and draws heavy influence from her experience as athird culture kid.[11] In interviews, McKinnon discussed how this cookbook was a way for her to reclaim her Chinese Australian heritage and celebrate Asian food culture.[11]
McKinnon credits her fifth cookbook,Tenderheart, as a means of processing the emotions around her father's death.[5] Originally, she planned to write the cookbook about her favorite vegetables, but felt gravitated to write about her father.[3] Many of the recipes in the book incorporate foods that he loved, like garlic chile oil, adobo, and tater tots.[12]
| Year | Awards and Honors | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | James Beard Foundation Award | James Beard Foundation Award: Vegetable Focused Cooking forTenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds.[13] |
| 2022 | Finalist (nominated) | James Beard Foundation Award: Vegetable Focused Cooking forTo Asia, with Love: Everyday Asian Recipes and Stories from the Heart.[14] |
| 2019 | Best Illustrated Book of the Year | Australian Book Industry Awards forFamily: New Vegetarian Comfort Foods to Nourish Every Day.[15] |
| 2015 | Best Illustrated Book of the Year (Shortlisted) | Australian Book Industry Awards forCommunity.[16] |
McKinnon has been vegetarian since she was 19 years old.[4] In an interview, she stated that she had a general dislike of meat and went fully vegetarian once she started university.[4]
McKinnon has three children.[1][17]
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