Five ways to cook more with your friends

Friendship + food = fabulous. That's facts.

Cooking with friends takes sharing food together next-level. Credit: FilippoBacci/Getty Images

--- The Cook Up with Adam Liaw airs weeknights at 7pm on SBS Food (Ch.33). All episodes are available anytime on SBS On Demand. ---

Sharing a meal with friends has been a staple of the good life across cultures since, well, probably forever. So it's little wonder that healthy food and connecting with others have been found to be two cornerstones for living a long, healthy life.

Want to know another of those cornerstones? Purpose. Blue Zones research has found that knowing your value and what brings you joy is critical to healthy longevity.

The best way to bring all of this together is not just eating with friends and family, but cooking together too. The shared purpose of putting a meal together before relaxing around the table to linger over your efforts is a satisfying feeling.

Here are five ways you can bring your friends together to cook a meal or two... or hopefully many.

Recipe swap party

A recipe swap is an excellent jumping-off point for a small group of friends. The idea is that each guest brings along a favourite recipe and the ingredients needed to make it. Then you cook the dishes together.

Sharing your treasured recipes is like sharing a part of yourself. Credit: Jamie Atlas/Getty Images/Tetra images RF

The beauty of this is that while the recipe may be unfamiliar to most in the group, it will be a cherished, often-made dish for the recipe owner. So they can talk the rest of the group through it, sharing their tips and tricks along the way.

At the end of a marathon cooking session, you all get to sit down to eat and marvel at how accomplished you are at cooking. Then you get to take the recipe home to find out that may not be the case after all...

The supper club

Annette Davison, water quality scientist and founder of OneStreet, is part of a supper club known as The Foodie Group. The members are all in the water, science or engineering line of work and they came together nine years ago after seeing a similar club in action.

"We wanted a piece of that!" says Annette.

There are nine members in the group - eight based in Sydney and one lone traveller in Melbourne. They get together every six to eight weeks for a themed gathering.

The themes have been as varied as the group, whose age range spans 40 years from 30s to 70s. 'Offaly Good' was a hit ("No prizes for guessing what that one was," Annette says drily). Others have been 'Are You Game' and a random 'Lego Batman Movie' night.

Annette Davison (far right) and The Foodie Group supper club. The club has become so close they were all attendants at Annette's wedding a few years ago. Credit: Supplied

They also take turns hosting the events, with the host's family joining in the fun and up to three more special guests invited along. Understandably, there's a long queue of special guests lined up.

If you want to start your own supper club, world-renowned chef Asma Khan (who started her lauded career by hosting supper clubs around her dining table), says to make sure it's a passion project. "You should only do this if it brings you great joy," she said on The Cook Up.

And keep it simple: "No one is coming there to have a kind of three-star Michelin experience," notes Asma. "They're coming there to eat the food, to listen to the stories. The stories are very important."

Those shared stories have enriched the lives of The Foodie Group in immeasurable ways. "We have been through thick and thin through our time together, including two divorces, three children, several passings, several 'big' birthdays, and one wedding," says Annette. "If it wasn't for this group, life would have been so much harder to navigate."

Cookbook dinner party

One way to kick your supper club off is to throw a cookbook dinner party and see how it goes. Choose a favourite cookbook and ask your guests to pick what dishes they'd like to see on the table. A couple of entrees, mains and dessert options will be perfect.

A cookbook dinner party is basically a world expedition of food. Source: SBS / SBS Food

Then it's a matter of deciding whether you'll each prepare a dish to bring along to the gathering (see 'supper club' above), or do all the cooking together before your meal (see 'recipe swap' above), or simply cook the meals yourself. Either way, choosing what's on the dinner party menu is extremely bonding...

A few favourites to get you started:

Yiayia Next Door - for old-school Greek meals that are dripping with kindness.

Ottolenghi Simple - because it's Ottolenghi, so you know it's going to turn out just fine.

Under Coconut Skies - Yasmin Newman's love letter to Filipino food will send you all on a tropical holiday.

The annual event

If it's shared cooking and a giant meal to follow that you're after, you can't go wrong with putting an event in the calendar and sharing it with friends each year. That event may be one you randomly choose to honour, or it may hold deep connection for you or someone else in your group.

For Nicole Bradley, it's definitely the latter. As an American ex-pat who had always adored celebrating Thanksgiving with her family, bringing her friends together each year was essential when she moved to Australia over 20 years ago.

Nicole Bradley (far right) and her Australian 'framily' celebrating Thanksgiving 2022. Credit: Georgie Gilchrest

"We all go away for the weekend, cook an enormous meal together and enjoy spending time," says Nicole. "It nourishes the soul to all stand around the island bench creating our contribution to the meal while totally engrossed in the topic of conversation of the moment."

Over time, the Thanksgiving friends Nicole brought together became her 'framily' - or friends who become family, an important connection for anyone living abroad.

"We have been doing this for years and I am happy to say it is a highlight of the year for a whole new generation of my Australian framily," says Nicole.

The random Tuesday

One of the things that often stands in the way of cooking and sharing a meal together is time. But the fact is, we've all gotta eat, every night of the week.

The sooner we shuck off the notion that a 'dinner party' needs to be fancy or even planned, the better. Rather, phone a friend and agree to get together and cook Tuesday's dinner side by side. It's a brilliant way to make the daily drudge of cooking something you'll look forward to instead.

Take turns hosting so you share the shopping and cost load, and then just go for it. Make the same kind of food you'd usually make on a Tuesday. A 10-minute one-pot chicken dish? Eggs, potato and peas? Spaghetti? Yep, that will do. Set the table the same way you always set the table, plonk the food down and there you go - a random Tuesday instantly made terrific.