Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To not want to eat any more of DH’s “experimental” cooking

170 replies

Aydel · 06/10/2024 22:37

DH took early retirement, and I’m still working full time in a full on job with a long commute as we’re waiting for our home to be renovated.

I suggested that DH take on more of the housework and particularly cooking dinner. I have literally hundreds of cook books that he can use either to follow a recipe or for inspiration. He said he prefers to “experiment” according to what is in the fridge.

So far he has produced:

A sausage and lentil casserole that he decided to flavour with cinnamon sticks and cloves. It was vile and inedible and a waste of ingredients.

A dish of kidney beans cooked in tomato sauce. He cooked the dry beans directly in the sauce, without soaking them. They were hard and inedible, and potentially poisonous. I didn’t eat them.

Tonight he had made chicken in a Mexican chilli sauce with potato wedges and a salad. This had the potential to be nice but he decided to mix it all together in a sort of “salade tiède”, except the chicken and potatoes were too hot and the lettuce sort of melted and disappeared. And there was too much sauce, so it was a big sloppy mess.

I didn’t take tonight’s meal well. I’d been travelling for work and had been travelling all day. I told him it would have been fine if he had served everything separately but the big bowl of slop was a step too far. I said I was tired of his experimenting and all I wanted was a decent meal, and could he please just follow a recipe for once. He’s now retired, hurt, to lick his wounds, and is being huffy. I don’t think this is strategic incompetence so that I take back all the cooking, but how bloody difficult is it to produce an edible meal?

OP posts:
Yelloworangetomato · 09/10/2024 05:54

Aydel · 08/10/2024 23:01

@RachelGreep87 yes, I have over 500 cook books, including in French, German, Polish, Romanian, Dutch and Spanish. I’ve been collecting them for years.

I forgot the worst meal of all, which was salmon poached in soya milk. It was supposed to be poached in coconut milk with chillies, ginger, garlic and lemongrass. It contained chilli powder and nothing else. DD actually cried. For those who don’t think the cloves and cinnamon in sausages and lentils sounds too bad, the cloves overpowered everything as there were about 12 in it.

The cloves aren't the problem it's the cinnamon with sausages!! It's a sweet spice, it can go with savoury but on only in very carefully controlled circumstance!

I'm going back to read this thread properly, I need to know if he think this is acceptable and you're just too fussy

Original poster
Aydel · 08/10/2024 23:01

@RachelGreep87 yes, I have over 500 cook books, including in French, German, Polish, Romanian, Dutch and Spanish. I’ve been collecting them for years.

I forgot the worst meal of all, which was salmon poached in soya milk. It was supposed to be poached in coconut milk with chillies, ginger, garlic and lemongrass. It contained chilli powder and nothing else. DD actually cried. For those who don’t think the cloves and cinnamon in sausages and lentils sounds too bad, the cloves overpowered everything as there were about 12 in it.

OP posts:
wowzelcat · 08/10/2024 22:51

Ah…the joys of bloke cookery where any ingredient can serve any purpose. Hello Fresh to the rescue!

Menopausalmutha · 08/10/2024 22:44

Get him to order a meal box where he has the recipes and ingredients in front of him!
They are increasingly becoming a value for money way of cooking in the light of increased food prices imo.Plus you get massive discounts as a new customer.

Laura95167 · 08/10/2024 21:11

Is this weaponised incompetence?

angela1952 · 08/10/2024 20:36

Tauranga · 06/10/2024 22:43

My son is like this, I said it takes many people many years to work out that the best cakes are a particular ratio of ingredients, stop thinking you are better than history and follow instructions from generations! I think this can be applied to savoury recipes too, eg the classics such as chilli or tagliatelle or lasagne or cottage pie...basically the same recipe, with a few minor tweaks!

Yes, my oldest DD used to try to make cakes without recipes, mostly just turned out like tough biscuits. My DS makes a lot of food he believes is healthy which are mainly undercooked vegetables and a little over-cooked meat or fish, I dread going there for a meal. He’s 45.

Crikeyalmighty · 08/10/2024 20:17

May I suggest he goes back to the non experimental stuff

eastegg · 08/10/2024 20:13

GingerMaineCoon · 06/10/2024 22:51

My recommendation is to take a nice photo of each meal, keep a note of the 'recipes', then when you have a good selection create a self published book on Amazon entitled:

"Recipes for encouraging a speedy divorce"

It'll be a Christmas 2025 bestseller

This is fantastic!

midgetastic · 08/10/2024 20:00

Clove and cinnamon sound like Moroccan flavors to me - all that was missing was a few apricots

And wilted lettuce is a thing

The13thFairy · 08/10/2024 19:58

It really is strategic incompetence. This has to be done really well or you'd be on to it in no time. When it is very well done ~ and your husband has put some real time, skill and effort into it ~ the man comes across as just a bit of a bumbler. Now you know.

coxesorangepippin · 08/10/2024 18:33

I didn’t take tonight’s meal well

^

I'm sorry but this is so funny

DisabledDemon · 08/10/2024 18:31

Thankfully, when I was laid up with a broken hip, my husband took over the household duties and followed recipes - otherwise I think war would have broken out. However, he did follow them and produced some really nice tagines and curries. The recipes are there for a reason!

echt · 07/10/2024 23:43

Is the not following recipes by some men associated with not asking for directions when driving in a new place? Now I think of it, with phone apps does this happen at all now?

Nicebloomers · 07/10/2024 21:50

Oh ladies, just think how far we could go in life with just a modicum of the confidence of these Poundland Gordon Ramseys. We’d have collectively taken over the world by now.

whatisforteamum · 07/10/2024 16:30

My DH couldn't cook when I met him as his df did it all so he started with basics then when I worked eves w ends he cooked for the dcs.
We got a temp probe and I drummed in basic dos and don't s.
He cooks a mean roast now.
I agree get your DH hello fresh boxes for a bit or the recipe cards that are seasonal in Waitrose.
Maybe more expensive but it's it's edible you are winning.

WhereYouLeftIt · 07/10/2024 16:15

username7891 · 06/10/2024 23:33

Cooking course for Christmas?

Yes! This!

BlastedPimples · 07/10/2024 13:02

My ex used to 'experiment' with cooking too. I hated it. Always rank.

Just use the recipe books and stop trying to be bloody clever all the time.

EdgeOfSixty · 07/10/2024 12:42

WitcheryDivine · 06/10/2024 23:01

So many men seem to feel that recipes are beneath their dignity. Or that every meal is an exciting opportunity to show their prowess as a cutting edge culinary master.

I wish more of them would understand things like:

  • a quick delicious meal is a good meal
  • you probably need to make some cheap meals to balance out the ones where you use all the fancy ingredients
  • hungry people after a long day don't want you to do unnatural things to a chicken with cloves, they just want pasta and sauce probably

To give you some hope my husband is a reformed Fancy Mealer and now makes ordinary lovely meals like a pro. We may have had Some Talks along the way.

I think many men don't bother to read the instructions for anything.
Not following recipes is not surprising. They think they know best.

User1836484645R · 07/10/2024 11:14

beef and pear sounds so awful and like something my DH would do.

My husband does a lovely lamb and pear casserole.

Caerulea · 07/10/2024 11:12

AtomicBlondeRose · 07/10/2024 09:57

I will defend Marmite for umami as it’s my secret ingredient but literally half a teaspoon! Not ladled in and you shouldn’t be able to discern it. Like a square of dark chocolate in chilli.

Yeah I'm quite surprised (by which I mean it hurts my soul) by the anti-marmite sentiment, it's a very good addition in the right amount.

I also use coffee (& cocoa powder) in my chilli

independencefreedom · 07/10/2024 11:06

Daijoubudesu · 07/10/2024 09:43

My husband is a very experimental cook. He looks at recipes online and then comes up with his own version. It's never just one teaspoon of spice. Sometimes it's amazing (although I daren't ask what's it), sometimes awful. These are the particularly memorable ones:

Bolognese with fish sauce in it for that umami flavour.
Bolognese with marmite in it for that umami flavour.
Bolognese with half a bottle of bbq sauce in it. The secret ingredient which made it so "good".
Sausage and apple recipe became beef and pear casserole because we didn't have sausages, nor did we have apples.

He thinks he's an amazing cook. He tells everyone that he's better than me although I do about 90% of the cooking.

I wonder about his thought process until his mother came to stay. I'd just given birth and was given a salami, hummus, raw haloumi sandwich with some herbs(?) from the garden on mouldy bread.

I recognise that thought process all too well - beef and pear sounds so awful and like something my DH would do. He's generally lovely but if we ever split up, the preening, arrogant, 'I don't need a recipe', unskilled and yet super touchy to criticism approach to cooking will be a contributory factor.

AroundTheGarden · 07/10/2024 10:29

I think it sounds so frustrating.

Before we had DC, DH liked to make very rich foods. I always had stomach issues for hours afterwards as the food would be drenched in fatty oils and taste greasy.

With DC being little we don’t have time for this type of cooking. My stomach hasn’t been better!

AtomicBlondeRose · 07/10/2024 09:57

I will defend Marmite for umami as it’s my secret ingredient but literally half a teaspoon! Not ladled in and you shouldn’t be able to discern it. Like a square of dark chocolate in chilli.

Blondeshavemorefun · 07/10/2024 09:55

Tell him Bluntly to stop experimenting and just cook a nice meal

Leave recipe books out for him

Ans did he eat any of those meals?

GrumpyInsomniac · 07/10/2024 09:53

@Daijoubudesu yes, I think something similar happens in DH’s brain. He reads or sees something about how a certain ingredient can be used effectively - this one great hack type stuff is frankly dangerous if he sees it - and then tries to apply it everywhere without understanding the context.

This is how we ended up with him making me tortellini tossed with extra virgin olive oil, Parma ham, cantaloupe and cucumber when I was pregnant and suffering with HG some 18 years ago. We’ve also had the marmite for umami. See also Henderson’s relish in lots of things. He is aphantasic and I think that also plays a role as if he can’t visualise something, it is probably hard to imagine how flavours might work - or not.