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After the success of last season's cooking challenge, Sainsbury's is returning to the X-Factor house to root out more hidden culinary talents.

Last year, the edible efforts of the X-Factor finalists attracted 1.2 million views online. This year, the supermarket's resident chefs, the Try Team, will once again make weekly visits to the X-Factor kitchen to get the contestants cooking fun and healthy dishes, to fortify them for the approaching finals. They will also film accompanying recipe videos enabling viewers to cook-along at home.

So far, the housemates have tried their hands at shepherd's pie and trifle.

Sainsbury's is also harnessing a variety of other tools to get the nation cooking. As well as recipe tip cards in-store, the supermarket has also recently launched a Twitter cookalong for busy people trying to think of what to have for dinner. In the morning, the Twitter feed announces a recipe and a list of ingredients ready for six o'clock when the cookalong begins, issuing step by step preparation and cooking instructions in real-time.

A spokesman for Sainsbury's said: 'The idea of these schemes is to inspire people to get cooking and to show them any which way that it can be interesting, healthy and fun. 

'X-Factor is superbly popular. So this partnership helps us reach a massive audience of very, very engaged viewers. 

'It's also a younger audience and we had a debate online back in June about whether anyone will be cooking in 2030. We had a live webcast and Jamie Oliver was one of the panellists. What we found was that people want to cook but that there are a number of barriers getting in the way. One is time, another is faff - getting all the ingredients, doing the preparation - and another is knowledge.

'With these initiatives we want to show people that food is your friend and can be very simple, and that's another reason why the partnership with Jamie Oliver is so fitting - simple food is what he's all about too.'

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