To feel that sad that basic cooking skills are dying out

I’ll put my hand up. I can’t cook rice. I even bugger up the boil in the bag stuff. And I can’t fry an egg without bursting the yolk. But I can look up a recipe and follow it.

Never heard of this! It is bizarre that you have decided that the OP is not saying what they really mean, based on this!

Ways of learning to cook change as well as how people cook. My young adult children and their friends learn how to cook on youtube or other social media and follow whatever chef/cook they like. they dont necessarily want to cook what I cook etc and want to do their own thing when they need to. When I grew up we had cookbooks, your mum/family and the cookingshows, it is so different now.

Three years as a penniless undergrad taught me how to eat at very little cost. In the 80s, student loans didn't exist so students needed either generous parents or, like me, a part time (very low paid) job.

I used to buy a 10kg sack of rice each term from the indian supermarket, and then everything else came from Brixton market on a Saturday afternoon when they were packing up.

Ackee or callaloo, pigs trotters or mixed fish, being sold off cheap but it mostly tasted good. My ds would be horrified. 😁

Everyone I know can cook, though some can’t cook well and some can’t be arsed. I think you can learn from watching telly or the internet or books, so if people don’t know there must be a barrier that is stopping them, eg neglect, extreme poverty, or learning difficulties. I don’t think any of those things are more prevalent today than in the 70s, so I don’t agree it’s something that’s happening now more often.

Seems pretty judgey. How do you know basic cooking skills are dying out? Do you know everyone? My family cook just fine.

I wouldn’t call it sad it just seems like how the times are and I personally don’t tag it with any particular emotion (because I don’t care tbh!).

With people being so busy with everything pressure to cook can be the last thing anyone needs. Even with myself, toddler DD and DH, we opt to throw easier stuff together rather than proper cooking. It’s not that we can’t do it and neither DH or I learned from our parents. But we can follow a recipe or video easy enough like many others can too.

(I would not bother boiling rice though - even a rice cooker takes ages. Microwave rice is so good and fast btw).

People are too busy ordering takeaways today.
Yanbu.

My mum didn't teach us to cook but thankfully I did three years of Home Economics at school, which taught me the basics.

Then I went to university with three cheap saucepans, a knife, some mismatched crockery and a cook book (pre-internet). God knows how I didn't starve. Or get rickets. 😁

These days I am positively expert compared to my dm. I cook from scratch every night, can turn out a meal in 15 mins if necessary, have a reasonable knowledge of nutrition and can always conjure up something from the cupboard. My ds is far better fed than we ever were.

I recently managed to feed a vegetarian exchange student for a whole week, despite having no warning that she was vegetarian. 😊

Who cares.

I buy frozen mash because it’s cheaper, easier and saves peeling spuds. I know on MN anyone who isn’t considered a Stepford wife level of homemaker should be self flagellating but in the real world normal people DGAF and accept everyone is different.

Also why is ‘proper cooking’ only relevant to cheap meals? I make a cracking beef wellington and spend a bloody fortune on the ingredients is that not proper cooking?

I didn't learn any cooking until high school in 1976, when we had to do Home Eco classes. Never learned anything useful in them, and the teacher was one of those bullying types who expected beginners to be almost expert. I hate cooking (as did my mother and grandmother), and it'd be bad luck if I liked it, because I have only a microwave oven and no space for preparation. ETA I find cooking stressful - if you get it wrong and it's inedible you've wasted all that food and still have nothing to eat. I don't need that sort of pressure.

Meals are provided at the retirement village where I live, which suits me extremely well.

I get what you mean, but I do think there’s a difference between being able to follow a recipe and being able to cook.

My DH didn’t really cook at all until he met me, nor did he grow up in a family who cooked. He can follow a recipe, of course. I don’t think he can really cook, though. Present him with a random Wednesday where someone ran out of time to go shopping and he wouldn’t be able to look at what’s there and make it into a decent meal. He doesn’t know how to make a sauce, or how long to cook a bit of meat and at what temperature, which isn’t the temperature in the book because our oven is hotter, when to season and what to use. In my mind being able to cook means you understand how it works, can see where something might go tits up and rescue it if it does etc. I’m an unremarkable cook but a competent one. I think OP is right that there aren’t that many of us and it’s a useful skill. Saves money and makes eating healthily but not boringly much easier.

i’d love to see kids taught to cook in school, but it’s not something I can get too worked up about. I can turn 3 chicken thighs and a tin of tomatoes into a dinner but there’s lots of other equally useful things I can’t do and can’t be bothered to learn.

Is cooking not like so many other skills that were previously handed down person to person in that now anyone with an interest can search the internet and get multiple tutorials on anything at all - from how to make beans on toast to how to make gourmet dishes from across the globe. I think you might be sad at the lack of interest. Only difference between good and bad cooks in today's world is interest surely.

As someone who is a self confessed dreadful cook, I agree! DH is a professional chef and I’ve learned lots from him. It’s great. I look forward to our children learning too.

Yes, 10 mins peeling and chopping before boiling/ steaming for 25 mins before another 5 mins of mashing is somewhat faffy and messy. Tasty, fairly simple, but too time consuming for many people to produce after work and between evening activities.
If I'm doing potatoes, I'll tend to microwave and oven cook jacket potatoes because it requires less attention and generates less washing up.

The least competent cook I knew was my great-grandma. The development of M&S ready meals revolutionised her diet from bland cold salads and soggy over-cooked, salty vegetables. Culinary skills in my family have improved and diversified through the generations.

I wasn't taught to cook much, but I like good food so I just followed recipes and I think I'm pretty good now. I assume most people will teach themselves if they want to.

I have a Delia book which is only about 20 years old, but I do notice it makes assumptions about things she assumes you know. Like, it says "make the pastry", whereas a modern book would probably describe this in more detail.

I wasn’t particularly taught to cook by my mother however we were presented with meals cooked at home from scratch each day, including full Sunday roast, so I left home with the expectation that this was what I would provide for my family. I was really keen on baking from about age 12 onwards (which my mother had no interest in) so I did experiment a bit with that.

I think the problem is the precedence that is set at home. Generally, if fast food, beige food and takeaway is seen as the norm growing up it is likely to be what is provided going forward. I was 20 and at university when I had my first takeaway. I was watching a video last night where the family ate takeaway for 2 or 3 meals a day and the 5 month old was gumming on a hamburger whilst clutching a chip. It’s all they will know.

I agree, I wasn’t taught by my parents and had to teach myself everything I know… in the age of the internet there’s no excuse to not know anything these days. Every library has a computer… it’s more about wanting to do it or not, and not wanting to is a valid stance also (maybe not the healthiest, but valid even still)

I can relate to this, the problem is with the 9-5 week, when it was envisaged there was one member of the family doing that and another taking on all the housework, laundry cooking, childcare etc, while not working or working part time, now we are expecting to both be working while trying to squeeze everything in, so even if we have the skills to cook healthily and from scratch we struggle for time with all the many things it takes to run a family 😔 working from home has helped many I think, but that also robs is of other coping mechanisms and resources that keep us mentally well. It's fucking relentless

On here just the other day loads of people were saying on a thread that making mashed potatoes were too much of a faff to bother cooking, ffs just peeling, boiling & mashing too much effort?

Ummm… I don’t think I was the one being agist?! I was countering the OPs generalization with a generalization of my own, to point out how ridiculous it was.

What are you basing this opinion on?

It affects us all, the culture of not cooking from scratch and eating processed foods is causing much of the health crisis we are experiencing, it also affects food availability and what drives restaurants etc in their trends. We would all benefit as a society if there was a systemic approach to healthy eating

Is this at Primary? I don't think my DD did any cooking in Primary but never known a Secondary where the DC don't bring the ingredients in from home.

I love TikTok for recipes and cooking videos! Visual, simple, straight to the point. I’ve learnt so much from there.

Pet hate is those blogs where you have to scroll through their life story before getting to the recipe 😂