To feel that sad that basic cooking skills are dying out

I can cook from scratch but I don't have the time everyday. DH on the other hand is a terrible cook was never taught and would live on ready meals. I do try and batch cook when I don cook from scratch.

Both me and DH work long hours. Can leave at lastest either of us leave the house is 7.30 and earliest home is 6.30/7. When I get home cooking is the last thing I want to do. So anything for quick easy meals is a win. By the time I'm showered and changed (don't have the cleanest of jobs) it can be 8pm then bed for 10.30.

Most people nowadays choose convenience foods to allow them to have a life.

For anyone who WANTS to cook, there is far more available online and on TV than there has ever been. When I was young, we were either taught by parents (I was taught to bake but not cook) or learn at school (limited but I learned enough to get me going). I never ever used any seasoning, other than salt and pepper, when I was younger.

Through watching TV cooks and cooking shows (Saturday Kitchen is brilliant - other shows are available), I used so many different herbs, spices, sauces, vinegars, oils etc etc. I wasn't taught at home or school to use any of them.

If people can't cook, it's because they don't want to, see the (obvious) need to or pleasure in. It's certainly not because the information isn't out there.

My DD has only had 2 cookery lessons but they did make the food from scratch.

So if one's parents didn't teach, what's to stop someone learning? Just get a cookbook and start, and get on to YouTube too.
My mother was a fantastic cook, but as she went to boarding school and when at home had 7 bothers and sisters they weren't allowed in the kitchen. She lived before marriage in a bedsit (1950s) with rudimentary cooking facilities. So she didn't learn to cook til she got married. Bought the Constance Spry cookbook and off she went.
My kids can cook. My son taught himself from 13, and my daughter just thinks what something is supposed to taste like and recreates it. She has a flair for it, as my mother and her father did.
But if you can read you can cook.

So the premise of your AIBU is that the people who attend your project for people who can't cook, can't cook.

I think this is no more widespread than 10, 20, 30 or more years ago. The 80s in particular went mad for convenience foods. Microwaves, ready meals, all sorts.

Now we have endless YouTube channels teaching us cooking from around the world rather than pricy hardback cookbooks, domestic science lessons and whatever your parents could show you. If you want to learn to cook, the answers are sitting on your phone.

There are quite a lot of elderly widowed men living on toast and jam because they never learnt to cook. It's not a new thing.
Also I am not sure of Britain's cooking traditions.
During the industrial revolution and after many working class people who had no cooking facilities would have lived on bread from the baker and what they could buy off the street, rural people would have done better eating what they could grow but it would have been mixed whatever we have stew most of the time.

I find often people who say they can't cook are over thinking things. So "slice finely"...just slice it. No one is going to come round with a ruler and tell you off if it's a millimetre out. The taste won't change.

Cooking IS taught at school!

So why are you here starting a thread about people being shit at cooking if you are working with people to help them?

Not very nice is it?

"Aibu to tell you how I believe I'm better than other people?"

I wasn't taught to cook though I think I saw enough to get the idea. When we were first married my parents came over one Sunday and I did a roast chicken and the works, apparently my mother never stopped saying how amazed she had been that I could do that! I tended to work on the idea If you can read, you can cook.

I can't cook and I'm sad about it too. I love eating healthy, tasty meals but I just can't plan and cook. I wish I had the skills. I can make rice and pasta, the two things my mum would let me do as a child!

I think it's undervalued as it's stereotyped as a female skill and the world is sexist.

That’s really not the case. Many say chop, either finely or coarsely.

I’m incapable, it’s not because I’m letting the skill go by me or not trying, I am just no conditioned to cook- my cooking instincts are horrible- I will ALWAYS lean the wrong way, take it out to early, leave it in too long, cut things the wrong way, I take direction wrong. I’m on cooking Fb groups, I have cook books etc but most things are either meh or very very wrong!!! It’s not because the world has gone wrong, I have 4 kids and cook most days but it’s awful and when dh wfh he’ll bail me out.

I think a lot of people can still cook...it's just that they are cooking different things and in different ways. We have access to more variety of foods than our grandparents did and knowledge of different cuisines. I get inspiration for recipes from Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. A young person today is more likely to make a burrito or poke bowl than to stew meat/offal for a pie.

My dd is at uni, in catered accommodation. She can't really cook yet - tbh she's not really interested. I wasn't at her age either. No doubt she'll learn when she wants/needs to, like I did. Honestly, it's not rocket science. These skills aren't 'lost'. Anyone can follow recipes and learn! I'm a good cook. Nobody taught me.

My 15 year old son can cook a hell of a lot better than my 76 year old mother.

I think most people could do at least basic stuff but lots choose not to because there is a much wider range of pre prepared food available than there used to be.
I was a child in the 70s and whilst my mum was very good at what she did, we had a far less varied diet than my children do now. We did have some convenience foods - fish fingers, findus crispy pancakes etc even then but a lot of what my Mum did was cooked from scratch and was time consuming. She always made her own pies from scratch, we had home made sponge puddings, stews that simmered on the stove all day and so on. But she was a SAHM and we were far less busy - no after school activities for me and my siblings - so she had time for it. I could cook more or less everything she did, but I don't really have the time or inclination to be honest. I'd much rather do a stir fry or quick pasta dish, though I do use my slow cooker quite a lot and I do a proper roast dinner most weeks.
I have only met one person in recent years who was genuinely completely clueless about cooking - a University friend of my DD's. Lovely girl,very bright but lacking in "normal" life skills. She had been at boarding school since 11 and had all her meals prepared, laundry done etc , then in the holidays her Mum had basically waited on her hand and foot, I guess because she missed her and wanted holidats to be fun. My DD did have to teach her things like how to make a cup of tea, how to boil pasta and how to use a washing machine. She picked it up quick enough of course but when DD first met her she really couldn't do anything domestic. But I think that's unusual.

I agree with you in a way. There are loads of recipe books and instagrams and tv cooks but everyone would benefit from learning how to meal plan, cook simple meals and basically manage meals for a house. It should be mandatory at school along with understanding tax, doing simple house diy and learning how to manage a household generally. It would level the playing field I think,

But I don’t think it’s the single answer to poverty or people eating better though. It’s much more complex than that.

I am a great cook. I can bake none too shabbily too. I love feeding family/friends great meals. But omg I loathe cooking. We seriously need an Autochef!

If I lived alone I'd never cook another thing! I'd eat cereal & toast and French crusty bread with president butter.

I don't really know anyone who can't cook but I know a few who just really don't want to.

Ooh a Ninja as well.

(And this is another thing... the right equipment is so important to being able to cook!)

I can't get my head round people saying they can't cook. My mum was an OK cook, she didn't teach me that much though. I really began to learn to cook when I went to uni, starting with basic things like Spag bol made using a jar of sauce.

If you can't cook then you can learn. Saying your mum didn't teach you is just an excuse- not may people learn all their cooking skills as a child- it's a skill that develops the more you do it.

For me, cooking is one of those skills you acquire with age and the older and more experienced you get the better you get.

If you can't cook it's because you don't want to learn. Anyone with a reasonable intelligence can follow a recipe.

The mumsnet 'big pot of soup' got a mention

'Massive salad' yet to come