WHEN we think of cooking programmes, the usual image conjured up is of supremely talented chefs making the most difficult of recipes look effortless. Kitchen Criminals, however, is a cooking show about people who certainly don't know their onions.

The premise is relatively simple - top chefs Angela Hartnett and John Burton Race have toured the country looking for those they think are suitably terrible cooks. After rounding up the worst offenders, they will go to boot camp, where the Michelin-starred duo will pass on their knowledge in the hope of changing their team from culinary disasters to culinary masters.

By the end of the series, each chef will select one team member who will go forward to a taste test, where they must cook a posh three-course meal and pass it off to a judging panel as the work of a professional.

"It's great to see someone getting so enthusiastic about food," says Hartnett of the person she nominated for the final round. "It was great to mentor them and get them going. I must feel like Simon Cowell feels on The X Factor. But with a lower waistband, maybe."

But how bad could the contestants have been before Hartnett and Burton Race got their mitts on them? We're constantly being told we're a nation of food lovers, so a simple pasta dish shouldn't be too much trouble for anyone. Right? Wrong, as Hartnett soon realised when filming began.

"I was a bit delusional beforehand, in that I thought everyone lived a Guardian sort of lifestyle of obsessing about food, or that everyone read the Observer Food Monthly and copied recipes and things like that. Turns out that was a load of tosh," she laughs.

"The fact is the majority of people in this country do not cook well, they live on snacks, takeaways and ready meals.

"The series isn't so much about teaching someone how to be a Michelin-starred chef, it's much more simple in that we teach them how to cook the basics."

So how bad are we talking? Do these people make omelettes that don't look that pretty? Do they systematically burn everything they cook? Sadly, it's much worse than that.

"I did a game with my team when I asked them to tell me the worst thing they'd ever eaten," Hartnett continues. "Someone was telling me they'd had a pre-cooked jacket potato, which I didn't think was too bad - a potato they'd cooked previously and then eaten cold, I thought. What they actually meant was it was pre-cooked when they bought it from the supermarket, and already loaded with cheese and butter. All they had to do was heat it in the microwave. My mouth hit the floor, I couldn't believe it."

Can't we all be forgiven the odd bit of convenience food, though? Surely even top chefs indulge in such things?

"Of course. The team asked me what the worst thing I'd ever had was, and I confessed it was a crisp sandwich. I thought it was bad, but compared to that potato it was like cooking a meal - at least I had to butter the bread and arrange the crisps. Despite some of us not cooking the best food for ourselves, we are increasingly more interested in food.

"The problem is people say it's too hard to cook, or that they don't have the time," Hartnett says. "We need to take the mysticism out of food. I did a demonstration a while ago where I made really simple dishes. You can see people looking at me thinking 'God, she's a Michelin-starred chef, how the hell can she do something so simple?'.

"That's what people need to understand - food doesn't have to be complicated and elaborate. For me, simplicity is far more exciting."

Even if you're not overly familiar with Hartnett's work, you'll definitely recognise her from another TV programme. She was head chef in one of the kitchens during the first series of Hell's Kitchen, working alongside her mentor, Gordon Ramsay.

Their working relationship is a close one, with Hartnett installed as head chef at The Connaught, and she also launched the fiery Scot's Verre restaurant in Dubai and La Boca Ratan in Florida, which specialises in her beloved Italian cuisine (Hartnett's grandmother was Italian).

She represented Wales in the heats of Great British Menu and has also reported for Tonight With Trevor McDonald. Amazingly in the middle of all that, she managed to put a book together, Angela Hartnett's Cucina - Three Generations Of Italian Family Cooking, which combined her favourite recipes, along with those passed down to her mother from her grandmother.

"Doing TV and other work is not my priority," she confesses. "I love cooking in restaurants, I like being a restaurateur. I do enjoy the luxury of being able to do a book, write articles and do other things, but ultimately, I don't want to become 'TV Chef Angela Hartnett'."

A staggering percentage of chefs and their brigades are men, and fuelled by that, there are horror stories about how difficult an industry it is for women to crack, and of terrible treatment females in the kitchen receive.

"The stories aren't true," she counters. "Everyone always thinks I've been terrorised, subjected to sexist abuse and all the rest of it. Being a woman in a male industry can work to your advantage because there are so few of you.

"Naturally, you stand out," she continues. "People look at you very differently, but to me, being a woman in a kitchen has done nothing but assist me, it certainly hasn't hindered me."

With only weeks to go before the refurbished Connaught restaurant which bears her name reopens, and on the eve of the television series in which she stars being broadcast, it's difficult to disagree.

* Kitchen Criminals begins on Monday on BBC2 at 6.30pm