to beleive that a lot of people in the UK don't actually know how to cook.

[OrmIrian]

They know how to follow recipes. And it isn't the same thing.

I am quite old. I was brought up with a mum who had been through the war and was totally intolerant of waste. So left over meat from Sunday roast was always used up - cold with salad and baked potatoes, or made into cottage pie or a stew. Whatever was left over in the fridge got made into something and if you were a half-decent cook it was delicious. For example last Sundays lamb shoulder leftover were taken off the bone and slow-cooked with some pearl barley, lentils, sweet potatoes and the remains of the red wine gravy. On Tuesday there was half a pack of sausages in the fridge - they were chopped and cooked with some chorizo, garlic, passata, basil, chilli and onions and served with pasta. Dh was about to get a load of mince out of the freezer and cook spag bol - the sausages would have stayed there till they were ready to walk out of the fridge on their own.

When my children cook at school they always seem to learn how to cook specific dishes - not the general techniques that would serve them well for general day-to-day cooking. DD loves cookery programs - when she decides to cook she comes out with a huge list of ingredients that would cost a small fortune because someone on Masterchef did it! They are learning to do it my way, but it's slow progress.

Cooking is being able to make something good out of whatever is available. Not just being able to make something good out of a trolley load of expensive ingredients.

Cooking is just making stuff hot (to kill germs) and soft (to digest).

Cooking well is another matter

I always try to use up leftovers, think about what I can make from what we happen to have in the fridge etc. I'm sure plenty of people do this.

Though when I started learning to cook, I did follow recipes. It's sometimes only once you get a bit of confidence and experience that you can start adapting recipes, or using them as 'inspiration' rather than a protocol you have to follow to the letter.

I get your point but I definitely don't think it's a UK-specific trait. My DH is French and a fabulous cook but he does the glory cooking not the day to day stuff, I'm the one to look at the random things in the fridge and turn it into something edible. DH will go to the shops and buy a bunch of random things that take his fancy then I need to do a top up shop to make it into meals. Or DH will look in the fridge then pop out and get another half a dozen ingredients to add to the thing we were trying to use up.

Was going to post YABU but now I've read your post NYANBU.
This is how I cook my DH calls it my ready steady cook method - the Dc are always asking what we're going to have and I'm always saying I don't know till I've opened the fridge to see what we have - I am too disorganised can't be doing with meal planning and recipes - I'm sure I go shopping less and throw little away eat a lot of stuff just pat sell by date

Cooking for a family is something you should learn within the family IMHO

ephiny - i think recipes are a useful first step perhaps but not the bulwark of cooking. I have friends who never put a pan on a ring without Jamie Oliver to hold their hand.

I'm a recipe cook. I have never been taught differently. Also a crap cook but I do try.

However I do use my head and plan. That way I don't spend loads on expensive ingredients and all leftovers get used.

I don't think it needs to be expensive if you use a bit of common sense.

I happen to agree with you - up to a point. But I expect you're on the wrong channel here - I'm guessing most people nowadays prefer beige shop-bought ready meals from Tesco to any form of kitchen slavery. And they will quite possibly be a little bit offended by you lecturing showing off your superior abilites

That should get them going.

YANBU at all.. but I do think things are improving now due to the high cost of food, and the popularity of cookery shows.

I don't think it's showing off - it's admitting I am a bit of a cheapskate and am the daughter of a cheapskate

A woman after my own heart. My Mum was a good simple cook who fed a husband and 4 children on a shoestring...but our meals were the envy of our friends. Whilst they were tucking into Egg & chips or Findus crispy pancakes, we were feasting on casseroles, home made rissoles, pies etc. She taught me invaluable lessons such as ,Buy a large chicken not a small one. That way you will get at least three meals out it (including a soup). This week I have done even better. 1 roast dinner, 1 leftover chicken with a cream & tarragan sauce with broad beans then a soup....the leftovers of which I put into a pie the next day when it had gone thick...yum!

I also think things are changing. Thanks to the likes of Jamie Oliver and a drive to get people eating more healthily.

I also think that you need to follow recipes to learn how to cook first then the knack of putting a decent meal together from leftovers comes later as you remember making a similar dish before.

Cooking from recipes is how many people learn what ingredients taste good together. Not everyone grew up with parents who cooked.

Also, when I meal plan I look up recipes for what I have in, that doesn't mean I can't cook, it means I want to increase my repertoire.

I think yabu.

It does seem a bit odd to not be able to improvise meals at all. Once you get the hang of making say a soup or stew, or a frittata or a pasta sauce, it's pretty easy to adapt them according to what you have in, or what you feel like.

Though I am like that about baking, now I think about it, would never make a cake especially without a recipe to follow - but then there's a bit less of a margin of error with cakes if you're not very precise about ingredients and amounts.

Hhmmm I don't know. I can cook the way you describe. I use leftovers and by the end of the week my fridge is empty(we literally buy what we need). Little is wasted. We do menu plan, as we can budget better. I also use recipe books as I find they inspire. I take bits from one, bits from another and cook. I guess I am a creative cook. But I can certainly make something from nothing. But I love my cookbooks too. I also think its better this generation are re learning to cook, even from books. Their kids will grow up tasting more than shop bought rubbish. Nothing wrong with that....so on that basis YABU I guess

You are not wrong.

And judging from the 'Korma' Incident from last week's Food Tech, DD2's teacher can't cook either. Nor can the Government fuckwits who put together the recipes they have to follow.

I am not looking forward to today's offering of Dutch Apple Cake. Neither is DD2, who can cook very well and was mortified by last week's 'Korma'.

Everyone has to learn to cook from somewhere, though, so why not recipes.

I don't know if your family is fron the UK but some of the ingredients that you mentioned would never have been used if people just followed family recipes.

You only have to look at the amount of people who won't try "foreign food" because their mum would never have cooked it, from our age group.

Personally i think thank goodness for multi-culturalism, for what it has brought to the UK, food wise.

IDGAF. A lot of people in the UK don't know how to diagnose and fix a GC-IRMS either. I do. So fucking what though? Different people can do different things. This obsessive fixation on how other people cook in the UK is boring and self-righteous.

I'd like to think I'm getting there - definitely started out as a 'recipe' cook though! I've tried menu planning, but more than a day or two in advance just doesn't work for me - you never know how much will be leftover, or if a friend or two will bob up at the last minute!

Is Ready Steady Cook still on TV? If not, it needs reviving. My favourite time for cooking is around Christmas when there are lots of left-overs to play with.

YABU.... There's more than one way of cooking. Following a recipe at least means you learn the basic technique which can be refined and adapted. The 'bung in a bit of this that and the other' is a different method which, unless you know what you're doing, can easily result in big old tasteless mess. DM never uses cookery books thinks she's a whizz in the kitchen and is the worst cook I've ever met.

YANBU. I know many people who have to buy sauces to make bolognese, casseroles or stews.

There are basic techniques which open up a whole world of culinary adventures. Simple things like making a roux or a stock or a stew.

I think there is also a fear of cooking, people are worried that something will turn out wrong so don't attempt it. queen of the inedible disaster

But cooking is a very basic life skill. It's a necessity. It does actually horrify me that so many people can't cook even basic stuff.

"This obsessive fixation on how other people cook in the UK is boring and self-righteous."

Goodness! Is this thread evidence of an obsessive fixation? How thrilling...

I DO use recipe books too. My Good Housekeeping one (inherited from myMum), a few Delias, Yan Kit for Chinese and Madhur Jaffrey for Indian. Generally I favour cooks rather than chefs as their recipes tend to work and be less
invloved than the Cheffy ones. Spray melted chocolate onto a cake?...er, no thanks Heston!