to think that the French can't cook?

[Idratherbemuckingout]

I base this on experience, as I live in France. Okay, they have lovely restaurants, but the general public CANNOT cook.
My friend Dominique has just told my husband that she has bought a turkey for her family. She is going to boil it. He explained how the english cook theirs, but she thought it sounded too complicated.
Hmmm.
In the supermarkets you can of course buy fresh food, but having stood behind french people at the till countless times and seen their mountains of ready prepared meals, I doubt that many of them actually BUY the fresh food. Or if they do, that they cook anything interesting out of it.
I have a friend called Isabelle who is quite mad. We asked her once if she liked spicy food, thinking to cook her a curry. She declared that she did, but that she would bring us her signature dish. Chocolate Chicken. Yes, I kid you not, it was like chicken in chocolate sauce and it was NOT very spicy.
She also once asked us if we liked eating snails, and foolishly we said yes. "Ah," she said, "I 'ave a secret recipe zat I will cook for you. I shall collect snails in my garden (!!!!) and put zem in my snail 'otel and feed them special food and zen we will eat them together."
Well, the first year they died (silent sighs of relief) but the second year she did it again, and we were duly invited to her house. The kids refused point blank to go. DH tried to but I made him come with me. She had cooked us 200 snails. TBH they tasted much like all the other snails I have eaten - snaily. Not enough garlic in my opinion. That wouldn't have been so bad, but she followed it up with duck with apricots (very rich too) and then American Peach Pie. We had indigestion for days.
ANd they can't make coffee either. Never have I been to a french house and had a decent cup of coffee, or tea either if it comes to that.
They don't seem to possess kettles you see, so they heat the water in the microwave, to not boiling point. Then they give you the cup of hot water and a sachet (I kid you not) of instant coffee to stir into it, or a teabag to dunk.
My DS was at the local primary school and after the Christmas (not) spectacular, we stayed for the buffet meal. Poo Sausage was the highlight. You know you are mixing with peasants when the offal is high on the menu.
Poo Sausage (my DH called it that)is actually called Andouille, and is a bit like chitterlings, should any of you know what those are - ie made of some horrible bit of the insides of an animal.

I could go on, but I won't or this is going to look like an essay.

Thank you!

I tried to go to the one in Ardres last year but unfortunately it was closed that day. Will try again.

Lots are closed on Mondays.
Chateau de Cocove is really good too, open on Mondays (but full of Brits!)

Mon dieu, YANBU, i totally agree.

I lived in France as a student, and was astonished to see students (99% of them) eating a bowl of plain pasta, sometimes with a single slice of cooked sandwich ham on top, every night for dinner. They did not know how to cook anything else, except ready meals ofcourse. They were intrigued by me cooking different meals every night from scratch!

And when I lived with a (lovely) French family for a bit, they considered dauphinoise potatoes (yum) to be a full meal. With bread. No veg, no salad, no meat. Tres odd. And another night, they ate pureed carrot. Not soup, just thick carrot mush. On its own. For dinner. Hmmm.

At least the wine is good.

Boiling meat sounds very unappetising, but not so much if you "poach" it. Chicken, for instance. Poaching is just simmering which is a very very slow boil. I've often poached a whole chicken, it's the basis of the Jewish chicken soup. I guess you could poach a turkey if you had a large enough pot.

Boeuf bouilli is also to die for! I haven't had it in years, my grandma used to make it. I've never heard of dinde bouillie though, I also find that odd to believe but it could be good, who knows? Frog's legs and snails are really yummy, as are sweetbreads, gizzards and many odd-sounding foods.

Much of the more recent British cuisine is heavily inspired by French food.

YANBU, We are forgiving re; the lack of fresh fruit and veg in the Alps, that's understandable, but in Brittany? and Normandy? in summer? We visited the local markets but honestly other than tomatoes non of the quality was at all what we expected (we grow a lot of our own stuff at home and like to think we can recognise a good cucumber).

However,I do love those fruit purees that French kids have instead of yoghurt. Our DC's really miss those

i think you need to move or stop generalising op.you sound rude

I have eaten some truely wonderful meals in France and utterly dire ones. Just like the UK. I have a friend who is French, though she lives in the UK and her cooking is wonderful.

French chefs had a huge panic a few years ago that France was losing its place as the culinary capital of The World. I dont think that is true. Its just others are catching up - including the UK.

As for ready meals and McDonalds, well that is just a function of being urban dwellers the World over. Time poor and cash rich.

Unfortunatly no they can't, they can place things on a plate looking quite pretty but don't expect it to be cooked the meat will be raw dripping blood probably.A french aquaintance of mine actually eats meat raw straight from the butchers,saying it has more flavour im sure it does ,so does a cup of animal blood over a cup of tea but any normal human wouldn't drink that.Just look at that strange dredfull chap on Master chef from france,Theres your awnswer.Why not consider moving may be to Greece where they really can cook.

So, my first reaction to the OP was to be deeply offended (yes I am, you guessed it, French), sharp intake of breath and everything. Then I thought, maybe it is time to dispel some myths about the French.

So here goes:
Not all French people can cook. Or indeed care about what they eat. (shock horror!)
Not all French people like snails, or frogs' legs. In fact I know an awful lot who don't.
A lot of French people own kettles. People who don't (like say, my parents or my grandmother) tend, in my experience, to boil water in a pan on the stove.
And while we're at it, we do not all speak fluent English (far from it!), we do not walk around with garlic around our necks and although a few of us can rock a stripy Breton top I do not know anyone who owns a beret.

Now the boiled turkey does make sense to me, although I would say it is poached rather than boiled; it would be a variation on "poule au pot", normally made with chicken and cooked in broth with veg, etc.

Oh, and in my opinion there are just as many people in the UK (been living here 9 years) who use instant coffee as there are in France.

Aaah, stereotypes...

OP I agree with Petite, you must be the unluckiest shopper in the world!
I have never had any of the problems you've mentioned (also NW france but not rural)

I used to live in SE London, all the local supermarkets were awful and everyone seemed to live off cheap ready meals and takeaways. If I told you all the English were bad cooks you'd object right?

Sorry, if there is any nation that cannot cook it is Greece. Good chefs in Greece just leave and work elsewhere. Lebanon, Turkey, Israel are far better culinary experiences in the Eastern Med.

Steak cooked rare is the only way to have it Just because you don't like it it doesn't mean it is not a valid way to prepare it

And people seem to be confusing cultural preferences with bad cooking, e.g. rare meat does not mean the French can't cook, it means that generally the French prefer more rare meat, that's all. Not serving Earl Grey with fresh milk isn't bad cooking, it's just not what most French people do (their tisanes are lovely though).

MoreBeta if I were to pick one country to live in purely on the basis of their cooking it would be Lebanon

Seriously impossible to have a bad meal there!

dreaming - I agree. Although, if I just had to eat cake for the rest of my life it would be Turkey. They have an astonishing range of sweet foods.

Ah, I totally agree about Turkish sweets, I am sat nearly crying at the memory of a cake I once had in a totally non-descript local restaurant.

Although the French can also rock damn good pastry!

Le doyen, boulogne sur mer

If the French eat so badly, what are all the superb street markets about then? You know, those ones bursting with vegetable stalls selling huge onions and giant lettuces, cheese stalls with massive wheels of smelly cheese, the charcuterie, the fresh meat stalls, not to mention the giant pans of paella and other yummy things.......

You are not being completely unreasonable about the food. Some people are, though!

I remember when I first moved to Paris about 13 years ago, an extremely smug young Parisian told me the French did not know how to cook. This, particularly for the women, was a very big deal for him. Basically he said that people used to be able to buy and cook fresh produce, but certain generations didn't know and didn't bother. It was easy to get good food without having to bother, and wasn't necessarily too expensive. He later mentioned that the English don't know how to drink tea. I inwardly rolled my eyes and forgot about him.

But I can see that it is very true for my generation. There are some people, in some sections of the population, who are passionate about cooking, but there are many more who just do not know how to cook. My partner's mother is a wonderful cook who has a broad repertoire of French dishes, but she would never spend days in the kitchen making things from scratch. The vegetables are either the entire focus of a course, or totally absent from the meal. Especially for celebrations, most things will be bought in, especially desert. There is a very practical, unfussy attitude to food. However, ingredients must be good and fresh and will be bought from various supermarkets/markets/farmer's markets.

My partner is one of the good cooks (yay!) but he rarely has time to practise his skills. He likes to keep things fairly simple most of the time and only sometimes revels in making a complex meal. How many of us have time? Same goes for most French people I know. None of his French friends can cook. When we were staying with one couple, and had to take a cake to a picnic, I was given an instant mix and asked to do it because the girl had no idea. They lived off frozen fish etc, and ate out loads. These are what I would call middle class professionals, not poor but just not into cooking. They are completely typical for his (very large) group of well-off, time-poor friends (city-dwellers mainly). There is not this obsession with "I made it myself"! They have always expressed amazement at our cooking - "cooking" for them usually means something very basic that they actually cooked, accompanied by the rest of the meal, which they haven't.

And who can blame them when there is delicious food to be had everywhere at relatively affordable prices? (which is changing, I know). I know that all my friends are into cooking at some level, and partly that started when we wanted to eat good food, but were sick of going out and paying (loads) for average-to-terrible food. That doesn't mean all Brits are great cooks! But it is true (in my experience) that many, many French people cannot cook well, but are very, very good at eating well, at putting together delicious meals.

So there is definitely a misconception that "the French can cook" and "the British cannot", whereas the reality is that many French are now tending to leave it to the experts, while many Brits are really into cooking. And yes, many PEOPLE can't cook, whatever the nationality.

But the incredible meals I have eaten in France over the years....no words!

And the kettle? My MIL thought I was a real mystery all those years ago when I described it. They've now had a kettle for years and use it daily for their afternoon tea, tisanes, and breakfast drinks...I don't even drink tea, but she does.

Before that they just used the coffee machine. And boiled water on the stove.

I have been several times to France over the years and experienced food from atrocious to wonderful in the restaurants.
Possibly the worst was in a café somewhere on the Left Bank in Paris - I asked for a pizza margarita and got a microwaved frozen one, which had been nuked to the point that I couldn't cut it in places. Another really bad one was in a French version of a Harvester (so serves us right, I guess) - we had a mixed seafood basket and some of it was dire - some underdone, some just tasted old, and all of it was nasty.
But yes, I've had several mediocre meals too - it's certainly not a given that you'll get a decent meal at a restaurant in France! The good ones have been rather fab though...

No experience of French home-cooking so can't comment on that; but I do agree that kettles aren't that common a feature in some areas of Europe (Russia too, but rather than microwave the water, they have boiling pots for the water and do it on the stove; same in the Italian household I stayed in, iirc.)

My ex mil used to can her own duck; confit to die for: with a side of cêpes and some Sarladaise potatoes. My ex became a 2* chef, but he still hankers back to the days when his mum did everything herself.

Did you know that the french farmers use more chemicals on their crops than ANY other country in the world? Do not fool yourself into thinking that vegetables bought on a market stall are devoid of chemicals - they are just as likely to be smothered with them as the ones in the supermarket. Anything not marked BIO has undoubtedly been well "treated" in its short life. Beware.
Spinach, for example, is treated just prior to being cut with a chemical to retard wilting. Lovely. Presumably this then prevents our insides from wilting too when we eat it, as however well you wash it, you will not get it off. I only eat home grown spinach now, since an acquaintance's cat was rendered practically dead by getting sprayed with the anti wilt product. It went into a coma.

Thankgod two of my neighbours both wear berets and they cycle to the boulangerie with baguettes strapped on the back of their bikes. I love it, always makes me think, yeah I live in France. They are however about 90 years old.

I buy veg off the bio counter at the market because it's the best, the stuff in supermarkets is pretty rubbish as the OP says, and I live in a very rural area surrounded by fields and they spray those fields with some pretty toxic stuff to aid growing or kill bugs, I'm never sure which. I've started growing my own veg now.

The fish counters in the supermarket are great, but the fish counters on the market are amazing, I've never been sold old fish.