What food did you think you didn't like because you'd only had it cooked badly?

[caroleanboneparte]

Inspired by tonight's trifle.

I hated trifle growing up.

Then had one made using a celebrity chef recipe about 10 years ago now look forward to it every Christmas.

DM 'offered' to make trifle this year. It's bogging. Tinned fruit. Dry sponge. There's hardly any sweetness at all. Think she's used made up custard.

So many other examples:
Red peppers
Macaroni cheese
Tzatziki
Most veg
Lasagne
Omelettes
Cheesecake

after seeing the title thread I came on to say sprouts! Add chilli, lemon, Parmesan and/or bacon and OMG amazing! Not the hideous boiledness of my childhood…

Beef, both a joint of beef or steak. To say that my Mom cooked it well done would be a huge understatement.

I had sprouts fresh off the stalk today and they were so much nicer than the usual ones!

Beetroot. Served at school lunch. Dry, warm small cubes. Absolutely horrible.

Didn’t try it again until I was in my 50s - and I love it! Pickled, roasted, raw. Lovely stuff.

Cabbage.

My late DM used to boil the shit out of it and then chop it into mush.

I thought I didn’t like tea until I left home. My parents only drink Earl Grey and I hate bergamot. Breakfast tea was a revaluation to me.

Cabbage.
Sprouts.
Broccoli.
Most forms of fish.
Steak
Crackling (was cooked properly but was always removed from the pork and tasken back into the kitchen)
Curry.

Roast potatoes. Goose fat makes such a difference.

Scrambled eggs, butter is needed!

Beef. As a child we were served up ridiculously overcooked, dry, tough bits of roast topside. It was almost inedible, so I quite reasonably decided I didn’t like beef. Them when I was a teenager I stayed over at a friend’s house and her mum served rib of beef, cooked medium rare. Once I got my head around eating meat which wasn’t dark brown, it was an absolute revelation. So succulent, so tasty. 😋

Spinach. My mum boiled it and it was always huge leaves and gritty. Now we grow it and pick it small, the DCs who are a bit weird in their vegetable tastes anyway eat it raw with balsamic and I even like it a bit

Almost Everything.

Sometimes a child is not a faddy/picky eater/has issues or phobias of food or texture or is suffering from a disorder - sometimes it's because the parent is, quite simply, a shit cook.

I didn’t anything hot with tomato, even bolognaise, or carrots or mushroom. Ate them out of politeness at other peoples houses and just figured I was having such a nice time I didn’t mind that it was bad. And my gran put sugar in her tomato based sauces so that must have been why I liked them.
then I discovered you can more than warm them through! A soft carrot was the weirdest thing. If it’s just me I’ll quite often cook the shit out if my veg and mash it up which I’m guessing is what everyone else is avoiding.

I never thought I could enjoy eating liver, but fresh lambs liver seared so its cooked but just pink inside is delicious. And a couple of tablespoons of cooked & sieved chicken liver is my secret ingredient in spag bol.

Rice, my Mum would undercook it so it was still hard and very crunchy and serve it in a pool of water. So it was horrible and made anything else on the plate soggy.
I had normal rice at a friends hoise and was blown away.

Risotto. X

Most veg - especially broccoli though. My parents can't get their heads around the fact I eat so much of it now. That's because it hasn't been boiled for 3 days before serving

Also spaghetti carbonara - a thing of beauty when not drowned in a heavy cream sauce.

Most of the things my mum cooked blergh! She cut onions up into massive chunks so they ended up as soggy big lumps..I decided I hated onion but i now like it.

Dumplings. When I was about 21 we went to my aunty's house for a family meal. My heart sank when she said it was beef stew and dumplings as the only ones I'd ever had were for school dinners, which were chewy, tasteless blobs of flour and water paste. I couldn't believe it when she served up delicious, crusty on the outside, light as a feather on the inside dumplings.

@BadgerFace do you put them in the oven raw or par boil them first? I've never tried them roasted. I thought that I hated beetroot (only ever having had the stuff from a jar) but tried roasted beetroot and it's lovely!

Yeah sprouts spring to mind! Today we had them shredded & cooked in brown butter..everyone loved them, in fact I'd say they were the star of the show!

My mum is generally a really good cook, but she can't cook brown rice, thought I hated it for years til I had it properly cooked in it's delicious fluffiness, and lamb. I don't know what she did to lamb but as a child I just remember it being fatty and greasy and tasteless with lumps of fat in the gravy, absolutely foul. One of my favourite meats now.

And tofu, a friend cooked it at uni, it was horrible, then tried it at a little veggie cafe where I'd never had a bad meal and now I love it 😋

Most vegetables - I'd only had them boiled to mush, and often out of a tin.
Scrambled eggs - had it the first time very undercooked, texture was disgusting.

I've met many people (my Grandparents included) who claim to hate steak, but would only have it very well done. Well; there's the problem...

I've gone the other way with a few things - notably scallops. I used to love them but had them so badly cooked and rubbery once that it put me off for years, I've only just recently started trying them again.

Nothing. Both mum and dad were good cooks. There are combinations I wont ever do though.

Pan-fried liver.
Banana and raisins with rice and curry

My Mum taught cooking so her food is generally good but some things that were new and foreign in 1970s rural Scotland were, em, interesting. When she first cooked courgettes she boiled them and that was not a success. Jars of pasteurised pesto are an abomination. And her traditional 1960s style curry is hideous.