Nigella Lawson told a reporter that she has a "conflict-averse" personality in an interview recorded weeks before she gave evidence during the acrimonious fraud trial of two former assistants.
Lawson, who returns to British TV in the new year in The Taste on Channel 4, told Radio Times she is "not terribly confrontational" and uses "food to bring harmony".
The interview was conducted six weeks before allegations that she took drugs were made in the trial of Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo, who were cleared of unauthorised spending of £685,000 on household credit card and taxi accounts.
Lawson made headlines after being forced to admit her use of cocaine and cannabis in the three-week trial, in which her art dealer ex-husband was labelled a menacing bully.
During the interview to promote The Taste – described as MasterChef meets The Voice – Lawson relished the show's focus on food over the personality-obsessed formats of most reality TV programmes.
"What I liked, not being terribly confrontational as a person, is that because you taste everything blind, you're never making any judgments on a person and you're just talking about the food," she said. "So much of reality TV is the theatre of humiliation or in some sense the culture of the breast-heaving backstory, so to have a food competition that is actually about the food is … rather pleasant."
Since the trial, Lawson has criticised the "deeply disturbing" process of being a prosecution witness, which she said resulted in a "ridiculous sideshow" focusing on her drug-taking instead of the criminal trial.
Scotland Yard subsequently said it would review evidence in relation to her admission of drug-taking.
Lawson talked to the Radio Times alongside her co-judges on The Taste, chefs Ludo Lefebvre and Anthony Bourdain.
Asked about the difference between professional chefs and home cooks like herself, Lawson said she is conflict-averse and uses cookery to bring harmony.
"What I would say – and this is not about the food, it is about the personality – is that, as a general rule, chefs are conflict-driven, they are perfectionist, they are risk-takers," she said. "Whereas home cooks tend to be conflict-averse – well, I am – not necessarily risk-takers, and we seek to use food to bring harmony, for whatever reason."
Lawson has previously said she was "not happy" about only hosting a dinner party once every two years in the Eaton Square house she shared with Saatchi during their marriage.
How UK audiences react to The Taste in the wake of the court case will become clear following its debut on 7 January.
The show has already run for a season in the US. It started strongly, with more than 6 million watching the opener, but the audience had halved by the final episode.
Trailers for the second series aired on US network ABC during the fraud trial in the UK.