AIBU to make a roast when my daughter asked me not to?

Your daughter is being unreasonable and you shouldn't be questioning yourself.

Except about the chicken needing to be cooked. The whole point of freezing it is you can eat it whenever suits you. Just defrost it for 24 hours. Regardless of expiry date. If you want to be super careful, just don't freeze for longer than a month.

If I was the daughter I'd be miffed that I'd asked my Mum not to make something and despite agreeing not to, she made the roast dinner anyway using a feeble excuse about needing to use the chicken. There are lots of recipes for chicken other than roast dinners and OP could have made a chicken and pasta bake. Did OP ask her daughter if she actually wanted a pasta bake or did she just go and, yet again, cook what she wanted without taking her daughter's feelings into consideration. Everyone on this thread is criticising OP's daughter but I reckon there's a big back story to this. I do wonder if OP has a history of ignoring her daughter's wishes and doing whatever she wants while making excuses at the same time.

Whaaaat? Freezer dates mean nothing, John Snow.

I’m with the minority here that can see why the daughter might potentially be upset. We don’t have enough information to really know what the crux of the problem might be, and maybe the daughter really is just an entitled brat as so many have branded her. But family dynamics can be weird and something seemingly simple like a meal can be loaded with subtext and deeper meaning!

I think that if I had expressed a preference to my mum not to have one particular thing for lunch, and she’d agreed not to make it, and then I turned up and she’d made that one thing for everyone else but whipped up a quick alternative (I love a pasta bake but that’s like an easy student meal) for me to eat while everyone tucked into the main event I’d feel a bit cheated. I know people will say I’m being ridiculous but there could definitely be some potential undertones to that depending on the overall family dynamic.

This is the most surreal thread I have ever seen in all the years I've dabbled in MN. Twenty pages of theorising about a bloody (potentially) frozen chicken. It's an outbreak of mass insanity. No, OP of course you're not being U!

Do we have an update yet as to why a frozen chicken might go off. Despite being frozen? There seem to be two other things on menu. My kids would love that lol

Freezing advice being given is incorrect.
Products deep frozen keep perfectly well for many months if not years, and certainly don't require using after a month.
DYOR before posting totally wrong information because it's unhelpful.

Daughter is 22 and not 2.ffs !
Get a grip

Or... if your family want you to cook for them, they need to eat what you cook, or go hungry.

Sounds like she wanted to share a family meal that wasn’t a roast. Not sit eating pasta bake feeling like she wasn’t considered.

You can do other meals with a whole chicken… even just roasting it in spices and brown sugar or marinading in herbs and serving with macaroni cheese and greens cooked with bacon. Or turning it into chicken wraps etc.

So do you believe an adult child's every whim should be pandered to?

I don't understand this. Chicken in the freezer will last for ages. Also there are many other things you can cook with a whole chicken that is not a roast meal. Maybe you could have come up with a meal together using the chicken.

I’m literally howling at this comment as I’ve got homemade soup in my freezer that has probably been there from the dawn of time.
It is now a bespoke antique item.

You can??? 🤯

Why are you freezing it then? That’s the whole
poibt of the freezer to keep it fine longer.

Yes.

You just have to cook it for longer :)

https://improvisedlife.com/2018/03/16/how-to-roast-a-frozen-chicken-its-terrific/

https://cookthestory.com/cook-whole-chicken-frozen/

She’s 22 not 12. Tell her to do her own bloody cooking if she doesn’t like it??

Amazing! 🙌

My 13yo is capable of cooking for herself if she doesn't like what I'm cooking.

I suggest your dd grows up a bit, you aren't her servant!

I think the used by date issue is a red herring - you'd be completely legitimate to make a roast dinner just because you fancied one!

The only thing we know that the chicken was in, is in date.

I voted YABU purely because you agreed not to do a roast, but then cooked a roast (because a frozen chicken needed to be used by the use by date?!?!).

I think she may have been fine if you had said from the start you were doing a roast, rather then going back on what you agreed.

It's up to you when you feel you need to use things in the freezer but theres no point in freezing food if you want to use it by the use by date. Unless you bought a frozen chicken??? Which then would have been there for months anyway?

Ok this is very helpful! I didn’t know this would work - excellent ❤️

I’m not saying she should be pandered to her every whim I’m just saying perhaps this is why she seems upset aka it’s not about the roast it’s about not feeling considered or heard maybe.

Equally I don’t think it would have hurt to go along with what her daughter wanted when all she asked was can they eat something other than roast. Not everytime but op doesn’t say she’s ever made this request before.

If she's this sensitive to something this trivial, she's got some growing up to do imo. It's giving snowflake, to me anyway.

I think there are a lot of variables that go into determining whether you perceive this as ‘trivial’ or not. Our own upbringings, cultural backgrounds and general relationships with food, cooking and family probably play a part in how we see this.

For some people, preparing and serving food for others, especially family, can be a huge point of pride and laden with deeper meaning. I’m thinking of my friends with Indian or Italian mothers and grandmothers, for example, who would spend days in the kitchen preparing for their kids coming over for a family lunch and would be utterly horrified at the thought of anyone going hungry or not having something they liked to eat!

My own mum is very much someone who shows her love through cooking and feeding people and take tremendous pride in it, and she is also extremely passive-aggressive so if she cooked something after specifically being asked not to then I know it would absolutely, 100% be a calculated move on her part 😂

But not everyone has that kind of relationship with food or those kind of family dynamics. In my husband’s (probably much more normal) family a roast really would just be a roast, and anyone being upset about it would be met with utter incredulity.