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?

If you're an academic I'd consider reading a book called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.

It explains the science of why different foods stuffs work and why they don't.

I'd also say there are a lot of bad recipes out there - I'm another Nigella fan for recipes that just work.

@Needmorelego it sounds like you don’t actually like food much and view it more as fuel (since the things you mention don’t actually taste nice most of the time). That’s fine, and means you don’t need to cook. Anyone who actually does like food needs to be able to cook. Fortunately reading a recipe and practising a bit make it relatively easy for most, especially if they only want to cook everyday foods.

@cardibach that's actually very true about me. I often wish I could take one pill daily that supplied all the vitamins and nutrition I need but I do have certain foods I like so could still have them at weekends or something 😂

And I sort of wish I was more like you, @Needmorelego but I do love food!

I hate cooking but then often don't really enjoy eating either, well a main home cooked meal, I'm happy to graze all day then bypass actual meals. However I have a family so I plough on, not getting anything wrong, just not making amazing meals. If you don't enjoy cooking, it's difficult to perfect things as you just want the job over and done with.

I hate it and I only do it because I'm a mother. If I lived alone, I just wouldn't bother most of the time.

I grew up poor and believing I was a terrible cook because cooking in a terrible kitchen with no labour-saving equipment, poor and flimsy basic equipment and no money for fancy or decent ingredients made cooking a real chore and less likely to be a success. There was also a lot of stress and anxiety around food. Now I'm better at it. Having a tablet propped up somewhere in the kitchen is great for overcoming the boredom of it, and finding simple, faff-free recipes is the key to success. Nigella and Mary Berry are really good for stuff you can genuinely do at home.

I do find all the stuff about cooking from scratch and cookery being a 'life skill' and 'part of being an adult' a bit pious. If you enjoy other things it is incredibly time-consuming and tedious. If I were rich I would be one of those people who eats in restaurants three times a day.

This thread has actually inspired me to get out some of my cookbooks. I have loads but tend to read them like novels rather than cook from them.

I loathe cooking, never learned to do it from scratch, hated the bullying twerp who taught home eco, always found it intimidating (if it goes wrong, all that food is wasted and then what do you eat?). Moving into a retirement villa where they cook for you has done wonders for my peace of mind, not to mention my grocery bills!

I recommend finding a comprehensive recipe book that you get on with - nothing fancy or trendy, something that includes all the basics. I learned to cook (to competency rather than brilliance) from Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course.

To be honest I think a lot of cookery books are written with this in mind. Yottam Ottolenghi anyone?

Laughing at the idea of a recipe book, i personally have better things to do with my time

I cannot overstate how much I hate cooking. I love food and eating though! But I’d rather clean 50 toilets than even bake a potato. I lived alone for several years and managed to feed myself, so I can cook if I have to but my repertoire is limited. Many times I’d skip a proper meal and have cereal or fruit and yoghurt instead. My partner does all the cooking now he lives with me and I clean the toilet.

Same, even when I had cooking facilities, I had no interest in taking up valuable shelf space with recipe books, or valuable time and effort on cooking. I share the attitude of a PP - all that time and bother and apprehension for a meal that lasts a fraction of the time, that may not be worth it, and all turns to shit anyway.

Same - I do the cleaning including my mother's commode, and gross though that is, I'd take it over cooking any day!

My mum gave me hers when I got married, complete with all her scribbles. Very useful!

I’m not a natural cook either and used to think of myself as a bad cook though now I consider myself fairly competent. At the level of knocking up a standard family meal it’s a skill not an art, and with practice I think pretty much anyone can develop a repertoire of meals that they can confidently cook from scratch. Avoid fancy recipe books and just stick to adding to your list of basic dishes that you can do well.

I cook when I need to rather than for others. My first time it seemed cooking for others in ages was when friends came over for Sunday lunch and I did Jamie Oliver’s special chicken (prosciutto ham, butter, lemon, fresh thyme, celeriac and potatoes and I made a lemon cheesecake. And then when boyfriend and a couple of friends recently steak fajitas but I made the guacamole and salsa.

They are excellent got them. Brilliant for basic things like boiling an egg or white sauce.

I’ve got as DM had it and found one on EBay LenDeightons Cook book (with drawings). Very good, on same lines as Delia.

Try the roasting tin series of books by Rukmini Iyer. Read through the recipes, and pick out the ones that are just "bung everything in tin, place in oven" kind of thing. You can easily avoid the ones where you have to add stuff part way though. They are so easy and delicious!

I think it depends on context. Not being good at cooking as in, "can't do a fancy meal for a dinner party" is fine. No good at cooking as in, "I feed my kids three takeaways a day and we all now have crap health as a result" is not OK.

I think it's extremely rare someone is so unable to cook they can't knock together some simple healthy basics, so in the most part people who say they can't I think are being a bit unreasonable (especially when it's effecting their dependent children!). But not enjoying cooking/not being confident to cook complicated stuff is very much in the "everyone has their own talents" camp for me!

Great post @EnterFunnyNameHere

I'm dyspraxic and autistic and quite similar. I feel bad as would love to be domestic goddess but I have accepted that I never will be.

Now we're a family we use Hello Fresh which I find really easy. We select the easiest ones though.

If you did want to improve, you could do what I did. I'd pick a recipe maybe every month or so. Say, proper carbonara. Then, I'd try to find the most authentic recipe and stick to the original recipe at first. Felicty Cloakes recipes in the Guardian was a good starting point for me. I'd get all the ingredients in advance and try out whatever it was, and the household would vote if it as a keeper or not. I still do it from time to time

In this way I learned how to make an authentic carbonara, bolognaise, seafood chowder, a fancy mac & cheese, and things like Thai or Indian Curries - all the things that I would have never grown up with. And I still do a recipe a month most months expanding it to baking because I was never good at that. I add any recipes I want to keep into an app on my phone so when I'm shopping I can look up how many lemons I need for a recipe or check that I've bought all the ingredients.

If you did want to learn the basics from scratch like making your own roux or pastry then this book is an excellent starter book. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ballymaloe-Cookery-Course-Darina-Allen-ebook/dp/B07HM9855G/ref=sr_1_3?qid=1697712063&refinements=p_27%3ADarina+Allen&s=books&sr=1-3

But some people aren't in to cooking and that's fine too. And even if you are into it it can be a pain in the hole to get home in the evenings and try to throw something decent together in the limited evening time that you have to get the kids sorted, fed and into bed. I meal plan for the week to avoid me staring blankly into the fridge when I'm knackered.

I'm dyspraxic too, I can cook well but things like finely chopping is a nightmare.

DD is also dyspraxic and it affects her cooking but she has a base of half dozen recipes she does really well. Anything else is either gorgeous on which case it goes to her portfolio of dished or it's totally inedible.