Christina Hendricks Says She Has a Habit of 'Trying to Impress' While Cooking: 'I Outdo Myself'

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Christina Hendricks tends to overdo it in the kitchen.

PEOPLE caught up with the Mad Men alumna on Thursday at the Good Eggs launch event in Santa Monica, California, where she revealed she's hoping to scale things back moving forward when she's preparing food.

"I love cooking, I am a foodie," Hendricks, 46, said. "When I was in my twenties, I was so excited to learn how to cook and I taught myself how to cook. But I was always trying to sort of outdo myself; I would do all these really complicated Thomas Keller recipes that took three days. And I used to always get Gourmet and Bon Appétit and I would just be inspired by whatever I read."

Lately, though, Hendricks has "done less and less and less" with her recipes, and is hoping to continue down that path.

She explained that the dinner put on by Good Eggs, the online grocery service that delivers to families throughout the Bay Area and Los Angeles, inspired her.

"What I like about tonight is that it doesn't have to be a four hour process," Hendricks remarked. "Just fresh ingredients and just grill a piece of fish with great vegetables, and it's just as delicious. So, that's what I'm looking forward to: convincing myself to get back into just doing a simple, quick, fresh kind of cook rather than trying to impress myself."

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Just how elaborate were Hendricks' meals?

"I would say the last thing I cooked... probably three weeks ago, I had a big Sunday roast. I made a traditional beef roast with vegetables, a nice fennel salad, and Yorkshire puddings," Hendricks said, explaining she cooked the latter — a British delicacy — specifically for one of her British guests. "One of our guests was Jake Scott, who is Ridley Scott's son, and I wanted to make sure he had a proper Yorkshire pudding so he gave me his mom's recipe and I made that for him."

Hendricks also made dessert, a chocolate pots de crème.

"I don't love chocolate, but I like things that are creamy," she said. "I'm usually a fruit and cream kind of person, but chocolate pots de crème is a crowd pleaser."

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Of course, being a foodie means Hendricks loves to watch her fair share of food competition shows, though one reigns supreme for her.

"I've been watching Top Chef for 12 years or something like that," she said. "I'm obsessed, it's always been my favorite. I still haven't watched The Great British Baking Show and I tried to get into Iron Chef and stuff like that, I just like the sort of more personal feeling of Top Chef. It's like a more well-rounded show."