Is it ok to be bad at cooking?

[Dice3]

I have no natural ability or finesse.

I hate cooking but I do try and I can bang stuff in the oven and there’s a few meals I can cook from scratch that I do well but with anything new I don’t have the natural ability and it takes several times of getting a dish wrong or a bit wrong before I can do it to decent level.

I read stuff on here about husbands who “can’t cook” and I think god am I comparable?

I am dyspraxic so I struggle with fine motor skills so I find cooking so frustrating and I struggle if there are different timings to keep track of (not blaming that on dyspraxia). Find it overwhelming.

Also find planning meals for a week overwhelming. Even for that day…

I’m an academic and very much ‘in the mind person’. Good with work, money, and I’m good at laundry and I’m tidy so I am good at the rest of the ‘household’ stuff.

My husband is a great cook and enjoys so he takes on most of the cooking thankfully
but I annoy myself sometimes!!!

Anyone else the same?

I agree that people that say they can't cook actually mean they won't cook. You don't have to be Nigella, but being able to cook something reasonably nutritious to feed yourself and your family is a life skill.

It sounds like you actually do cook though OP, even if you don't enjoy it? That seems fine. I'm not a fancy cook.... jacket potatoes are a regular in our house, tonight was fajitas and we eat a lot of pasta dishes. I am competent enough and that's fine.

Same!! So tedious isn't it? I try to make it more fun by putting on podcast/music/Netflix and having a glass of fine.

If I was single I would live on beans on toast / pasta with a jar sauce / salads 😀

I am grateful to my husband as he cooks a lot and also he has taught me some basic recipes (making a pasta sauce for example) which aren't that hard when I have done them many times.

Like pp said being able to cook basic and nutritious meals is a basic life skill and there's a lot of pre-chopped vegetables available to make life easier for you if you're struggling with motor skills.

I've got a mean range of 1-2 pot dishes and am not a cheffy cook at all.

The problem with the husbands on here who apparently "can't cook" is that there's usually a level of weaponised incompetence. They could cook and would manage just fine living on their own. It's just easier to pretend they can't or deliberately make such a shit job of it that their wife steps in and decides it's easier for them to do it.

No, it’s not ok. If you can read well enough to be an academic, you can cook.

I read an interview with Anthea Turner when she finished her stint on Blue Peter. They asked what is the most useful thing you've learned from your time on BP? She said getting all the ingredients ready before you actually start cooking - takes a lot of the stress out of it. And she is 100% right!

Also cheat wherever you can - frozen veg, tins, ready sauces, whatever. There's no medals for cooking 100% from scratch.

I disagree with podcasts or music - I really need to concentrate!

Im actually quite a good cook, but I absolutely HATE it. Its just so boring and time consuming and all ends up down the toilet anyway.
The best thing about living alone is never hearing that dreaded phrase: 'What's for dinner?'. And the fact I can eat the same thing five days running and nobody complains

Can you make eggs a couple of ways?
Can you cook pasta? Potatoes? Cous cous or rice?
Can you grill some salmon or chicken?
Make Bolognese or curry with the help of a jar of sauce?
Can you make cheese on toast? And heat up soup? Make a bacon sandwich?
Microwave a meal? Make porridge?
Put together a salad?

I really don't think you need to be a good cook. However there is a difference between not being able to cook well, or cook complex meals. But being able to feed yourself and ideally others as well is a life skill that would be frustrating for others if you cannot meet and make things difficult for you.

I can cook a wide range of balanced, healthy, nutritious meals. However, I have never had a great sense of taste so they don't have that balance which really makes the most of a meal.

It matters if it means that someone else is disproportionately shouldering the burden or the household finances are suffering because you're relying on expensive ready meals or takeaways or health is suffering because you're eating a very processed diet.

But of you're doing other household labour, or you can afford healthy ready made food it might not be so bad.

However, consider what would happen if your DH couldn't cook for some reason. Wouldn't it be better if you could make a few healthy simple dishes so you could step in if needed?

We're competent at simple meals in this house. Every now and again DH or I will have a fit of enthusiasm and spend an afternoon attempting something new and if it works out we might add it to our regular meals. We're well into middle age and have safely got 4 children to adulthood doing it like this.
Tip @Dice3 is to prepare a meal in good time. I hate cooking at dinner time, unless it's putting a jacket potato. If I'm going to make bolognaise or curry, or chop veg or make soup or whatever, I'm much better off doing it in the morning. Preferably in batches so there is food available on days that neither of us want to think about it.
Simple is nutritious and you don't need a huge repertoire 😊

Yes this sort of thing!

Whenever people say they ‘can’t’ cook, I’m tempted to ask (in suitably fake-concerned tones) whether they can read. Because anyone of normal intelligence can surely follow simple recipes - if they want to.
(I would recommend Delia’s How to Cook BTW since it doesn’t assume that you already have a clue.)

IMO it’s much more usually a case of plain CBA. Which is OK, if you don’t mind admitting it.

Op I think there is a huge difference between you and some of the dps that are mention here. You are not a natural cook and don't overly enjoy it but you do your best and try and try again to get it right. Your mistakes are that, mistakes.

There are many dps here who are natural cooks and do not try or don't mother to try or to learn from their mistakes on purpose so they can say that they cannot cook so they are not going to do their share.

I recommend Victoria Foulger on youtube. She cooks for her family which includes 3 teens and her meals are very straightforward and tasty and certainly do-able. She does meals of the week videos and has encouraged me to expand my repertoire but to also not feel guilty when I can't put a gourmet meal on the table every night.

I really like her videos. She is really engaging.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPerGlcC4oww8rWloyjPzog

@CloudyAgain thank you very much I will give that a look

Throw veg and chicken thighs in a roasting tray
mix through some pre-bought seasoning (peri-peri / Jamaican / Morrocan etc...)
and put in oven for 40min.
The maagi cooking bags are also good in many flavours

I think quite often we see cooking as if it is meant to be a long laborious task and somehow we are made to feel we are cheating by doing something that requires very little effort.
We need to get out of that mindset. It's fine to use sauces, mixes, semi-prepared meals etc..

You could watch videos of recipes. You don't need to produce Michelin star food. Look at the BBC food website, lots of ideas there for easy meals.
I don't consider myself a great cook but I recently did a plaice and mushroom dish, from watching Jane Neville's video. It was easy and absolutely delicious.

I can cook basic meals but I’ve little confidence and less flair. I find it frustrating that if I’m cooking something and it’s lacking I can’t just think ‘ that needs a bit of x adding’. Consequently I don’t like cooking because I’m not confident that the results will be worth the effort.

Not many people have "natural ability" to cook.

You learn by following recipes (properly, not just leaving random stuff out because you cba to pop to the shop)

Over time and practice you build up your ability and develop skills, so eventually you're able to taste things and think "it needs X" and to adapt recipes to your own tastes.

I don't accept that people "can't cook".

I keep repeating this on threads because it's massively underconsidered.

Cooking in the home, one meal at a time for one family at a time, is wildly irregular from the historical norm, and even from the global norm today.

For the vast majority of human history, it has been street food, takeaway, servants, or someone being responsible for several households living together (and not responsible for much more elsewhere).

So yes, it's something that you can reasonably expect an adult to do, but no, actually it isn't normal for humans to eat the way we do in the UK, let alone expect a rotation of nutritionally balanced, meal planned international variety either.

I've got a delicious beef casserole on the slow cooker today - and it was all dumped in from pre-sliced frozen meat and veg. The less effort, the better the results I find.

Go with your strengths - and give yourself credit for what you're good at.

You're not failing as a woman, a wife, or a mother if you don't cook.

Buy tech (from a mini chopper to a tablet you can use in the kitchen - that will help you prep meals more easily (if you want to; there's no need).

Figure out three recipes that are easy and cheap - maybe roasted onion, pepper, potato, and chicken/ sausages, pasta bake, meatloaf and instant mash, or cottage pie, and you'll be ahead of the game.

If you're working from a recipe, read it through twice before you get started, and figure out the order of operations. Make notes, circle bits, underline - anything that makes a recipe more clear.

If everyone was good at cooking, it would put a lot of people out of business!

As @thecatsthecats says, it's not a normal way to eat. Food is better when the responsibility for it is shared. We have evolved to be societies so that we can all use our strengths, and fill each others skill gaps. It is important to be able to keep yourself alive (and not piss off too many people around you!) but that's about it. Nobody has to be a cordon bleu chef. I'm glad there are some people who are, so I can enjoy the culinary delights of somebody else's great passion, whilst pursuing my own passions and sharing the fruits of my labour (edible or otherwise).

I can cook and I'm a good cook.
However, I despise cooking. Once the kids left home, I downed tools and said that was it, finished.
I've never cooked since unless it comes frozen and ready made to throw in the air fryer or microwave.

Play to your strengths. DH hates cooking and is shit at it. However he always does the dishes after dinner, we clean up together.
I don't think I've ever done laundry, he does it all. So we are happy with that chore division and the rest is a pretty even split.

I can cook as in boil up some pasta and use a store bought jar of sauce - but not make my own sauce from scratch type of cooking.
I can't be bothered tbh.
Aunt Bessie, Mr Dolmio and (formally Uncle) Ben can do the making things taste nice for me.
Obviously I can cook enough to actually survive if needed (I'd just eat plain pasta if it was an emergency like being trapped indoors in a snowstorm) but I don't have the interest in cooking from scratch.