DH put a full chicken in a cold oven

[Pinkkahori]

Our oven is old, it takes a while to heat up. DH just told me that he forgot to preheat the oven today so he put the chicken in to a cold oven. He didn't allow any additional cooking time.
I didn't eat it but he and the kids did.
I'm worried about the possibility of food poisoning.
Does everyone preheat their oven?
Is it likely to be a problem?

I don't usually preheat, but I add additional cooking time,

I do preheat my oven, however, I don't eat meat, so can't help there sorry. I'm shocked at the amount of people who don't preheat their own before cooking anything, let alone meat.

Hopefully they won't get sick from it being underdone. I know you know how to cook a chicken, but since your dh is apparently clueless I would pick up a digital meat thermometer.

I didn't see the chicken at all so I don't know how it looked.

Also he didn't check the juices so he doesn't actually know if it was cooked.

I know how to cook a chicken and how to check if it's done.

And yet, between two grown adults, you can't cook a roast chicken?

Buy a meat thermometer and check the weight/cooking times.

PS. You can safely cook a whole chicken in a slow cooker, it just needs to be cooked to the proper temperature.

It's an ongoing issue since I went back to work. He's working from home, I'm not. I think he should make an effort to put the dinner on, on the 2 evenings I'm in late. He doesn't want to make the effort.

Well there's your problem.

This potentially raw chicken story was his little way of telling you that he doesn't want to cook.

Strategic incompetence in other words.

Can you get the carcass out of the bin and check it? You only have his word for it that the chicken was possibly raw in the middle. It's odd that he would have risked making himself sick too if he had undercooked it. It's odder still that he felt compelled to tell you what a silly fool he was.

Could he have possibly invented a little story in which he presented himself to you as someone who can't be trusted with the most basic of all cooking skills (bunging a chicken into a hot oven and checking the juices after 90 minutes isn't exactly labour intensive cooking) but actually what happened is he is perfectly well able to roast a chicken, and roasted one just fine today, but he just doesn't want to be the one doing the cooking?

I would continue to insist he cooks on days when you know you'll be late. Call his bluff in other words. If he makes anyone sick then tear him a new arsehole.

Is there a chance he just struggles with knowing what to cook and how if he’s new to it?! That he’s not trying to be an asshole? Surely if he was deliberately doing this to wind OP up then he would have left the undercooked chicken out for her to see. Sounds like he only mentioned that it wasn’t nice because he was asked.

Why is a man who can’t be bothered to cook and/or clearly incapable even roasting a chicken?! Takes a fair bit of confidence to know when they’re cooked through. Plus the faff of carving it.

Can you look into something like gousto for those two days he needs to cook? Gives him step by step instructions.

I’m not convinced in what’s going on here OP but agree with the poster that said this:
You can't have it both ways. If you want him to cook, he gets to cook his way. If you want every meal to be cooked how you would do it, then you need to cook.

If none of them are sick then crisis averted! I’m sure he didn’t try to poison himself and your children intentionally - and get a new oven!

Get the carcass out of the bin and check if it was actually undercooked or cooked through.

If it's undercooked then the issue is he doesn't know how to check if meat is cooked properly

If it's not undercooked then he just doesn't know how to cook the chicken well and has wasted a lot of food and money.

Maybe roast chicken should not be on his two day cooking rota - what can he cook properly - schedule that in for his days.

Well, he’s done a perfect job of making sure he never has to cook a chicken again.

DH is useless at cooking, when I went back to work when DS was little I bought an instant pot and taught him how to make a chilli and a chicken stew in very little time using mostly frozen/convenience ingredients. He did the same “strategic incompetence” so I wrote down the instructions.
He still cooks one of those each week. It’s not exciting but it just lightens the load for me on my late finish.

Hes brilliant at lots of other household things btw and does all the washing and ironing before I get my first Mumsnet LTB

You adjust the cooking time. Tbh I never look at the cooking time on the packet - I'll just cook it until it's done using a meat thermometer.

I'm also shocked by the food waste! He could have shredded it and added it to a risotto or something another day.

He threw it out because he didn't want the OP to see he had cooked it perfectly well. Then he made up the story about undercooking it to make the OP freak out and stop asking him to cook.

He just thinks cooking is somehow beneath his dignity as a man.

Absolutely dreadful to waste the chicken by just throwing it away. Why not make soup or chicken and leek lasagne or something? FFS.

A meat thermometer would have been the ideal way to check. I always use it for poultry.

Some ovens just don't really need the preheat any more. I always used to but with the one we have now it only takes about 2 mins to be up to temperature so wouldn't make much difference. I always check by cutting into it anyway to make doubly sure. Looks like he just doesn't want to cook and is making a point.

I’m too tight to preheat my oven, especially after the recent energy price hikes. I tend to let the meat sit in a turned off, but still hot, oven for an extra 10 minutes at the end of cooking time instead. Your DH is a nob for wasting meat rather than making sure it was cooked properly before serving.

A man who doesn’t want to cook gives his kids beans on toast or egg and soldiers or chicken nuggets. He doesn’t roast a chicken…. Surely?!

I sometimes wonder if I live in a parallel universe because I can find other conclusions outside of him being so manipulative that he’ll try and get out of cooking for his family by failing to preheat an oven deliberately in order to feed his children raw meat (or make up a story to that affect).

They would have known with chicken.and they wouldn't have eaten it.it bleeds.and looks totally different uncooked.

It probably more time out of the fridge and in your trolley when you pick it up at the supermarket 🤷‍♀️ I wouldn’t worry about it.

*spends more time

A man who doesn’t want to cook gives his kids beans on toast or egg and soldiers or chicken nuggets. He doesn’t roast a chicken…. Surely?!

I wondered that too @ReeseWitherfork . I never cook a roast cause i find it so stressful. Dh finds it much easier than a lot of the cooking I love.

Why did DH choose to do roast chicken??

I never preheat the oven either. it's more energy efficient that way.

but I do use a meat thermometer idf I cook a big piece of meat to make sure it's cooked through.

Clearly the issue is a deliberately incompetent DH and not waiting for the oven to heat up.

But, I don't bother to wait for the oven to heat up, I adjust the cooking time too.

This may be a leap, but do you think he actually fed the kids any chicken at all?

After your updates the thought that came to me is he is telling you all this to fuck with you. If most of it is in the bin all he had to do was cut a few bits off and you'd never know if they were eaten or in the bin too, but have the stress/mental load of worrying they'll get sick, and will for future meals he deals with.

He could have served it up, sat down and before they ate told them it doesn't taste nice and thrown it before they had any/more than a mouthful.

I watch too much TV

The problem is not the cold oven!
The problem is your DH has no idea how to cook a chicken! 🤮