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.

I dont want to cant cook and use jars for just about everything and think they taste lovely. Fair enough if you enjoy cooking from scratch but dont think in this day and age its an essential skill.

I have a lavender cupcake recipe - it's in Nigellas Forever Summer book

m.notquitenigella.com/index.php/2007/10/09/lavender-trust-cupcakes-by-nigella/

Mominatrix - I think that a good teacher would be teaching more than just the recipe though. I don't know for sure how they teach it these days but you wouldn't just teach the children how to make a Yorkshire pudding and the techniques involved in doing it but also when you would serve it and what it should look and taste like.

Ready steady cook was good for this.

Loved that program

Actually I got a bit carried away there.

Can I retract the "loved" and change it to "was quite good".

Thanks

I look up suitable recipes to use up leftovers, does this mean I can cook or not? Maybe I'm in some kind of cooking no mans land. Looking down on people for using recipes is a bit up your own arse.
It worries me more how many people are chucking a bag of frozen chips in a fryer everyday and calling it dinner or that there are small children who've only ever eaten takeaways.

BigBoobiedBertha ( as I typed that) - true, but many who are just following recipes probably were never taught and are just trying things out of a recipe book. Home Ec was long gone in the States before I hit high school, and I don't know how common it is here. Even if it was available, what percentage of students take it?

I agree that there is a difference between being able to follow a recipe and confident cooking.

If you can make a chicken risotto, then you should be able to extrapolate that into a pea and bacon risotto or a vegetable rissoto (eg change the stock, blanche the peas etc etc) but I know so many people who when faced with a recipe and a fridge can only make that one recipe. They can't (or don't know how to) use it as a springboard to that whole world of food. That is the problem, rather than using recipes per se.

So in a school context, being taught one recipe makes sense but surely it would be sensible to put a bit at the bottom about using pancake batter for yorkshire puddings or amending a bolognaise recipe into chilli (not that my spag bol and chilli are remotely similar but it's not a bad starting point if you've never made either).

Best learn how to cook book is Appetite by Nigel Slater. Gives a recipe and the 5 or 6 variations on the same theme. Relaxed, every day cooking. It's my most used cookbook by far.

"That is the problem, rather than using recipes per se. "

Yes free, that is what I thought I had said but clearly not Nowt wrong with using recipes when you want to try something new. My favourite one, apart from ancient and dog-earer Marguerite Patten is a Rick Stein one, can't remember the name and a book of vegetarian Indian cookery.

Oh, and if you want to learn how to cook, then I recommend choosing something that you already like to eat (whether ready meal or in a restaurant) and google loads of different recipes. Choose a simple recipe with ingredients you recognise. Try it; then think about what's missing (salt, sharpness, fat etc). Then see if you can find a recipe that has more of your missing element. Cooking something you actually like means that you know how it's supposed to turn out so you aren't quite so working blind.

There are also sooooo many food blogs out there with people desparate to get a cookbook deal/tv show churning out "how tos". My favorites are Smitten Kitchen, Rachel Eats, Recipe Rifle - these are all free and are a wealth of information (including the comments sections below the recipes).

The "the perfect.." series on the guardian is helpful as well as she takes 7 or 8 different recipes and uses them all to create her own perfect version of lots of different dishes, some simple (Porridge!) some more complex.

Mominatrix - DS1 has just started secondary school and they do a term of sewing, a term of design and technology (like the old woodwork and metal work we used to do) and then one term of food tech (home ec or HE as we used to call it). That is just this year. I think they do the same rotation in the next 2 years too until they come to chose their GCSE. I think the syllabus is pretty standard even if their way of doing it (a term of each subject) isn't.

Freebutton - maybe they do teach that about how else you can use a recipe - I'll find out next term! It would make sense to do that certainly.

From what I remember of school cookery lessons, you didn't do the 'throw it in a pot and see what you come up' with type of recipes. What we had to make generally was about technique like cake making or pancakes........ can't remember what else but it was back in the dim and distant past. At home we tended to have the same things every week or two weeks so we didn't need a recipe and my mum didn't buy anything she didn't need. I don't think I did much experimenting until I went to university or got my first flat. I am wondering if you can actually teach improvisation - perhaps it comes with experience of tastes and knowledge of techniques coupled with a budget!

oh it doesn't matter so long as the end result is good

My DH makes fabulous food, he enjoys fiddley recipes and baking that I would get impatient with and cut corners and cock it up

but he will NEVER be an improviser in the kitchen. It can't be taught! He puts such WRONG flavours together if left to make a "cupboard special"

I can make something yummy out of the contents of an almost bare fridge, some left overs and a few cupboard staples. I will never be taught the patience it requires to make fiddley annoying precise stuff.

neither way is better, both result in good home cooked food

Yanbu.

I don't do waste.

I'm continuously astounded by just how many think opening a jar is cooking. :(

maybe this would be helpful for the hard of improvisation! the flavour theasarus I've heard it's really good!

My DH can cook. I can follow recipes.

I agree that it is a totally different skill set, but maybe a talent too, like being able to paint or sing or something?

I find I have no memory for flavours and, TBH, left to myself would likely live on breakfast cereal or toast.

Unfortunately there are people who were never brought up in an environment where food was cooked at home, and they sometimes have no idea at all. I work in a food project, and meet people who have never ever peeled a carrot, or a potato.

Obviously that is one extreme, but for many others who have not had much exposure to cooking, I know they get very frightened. I partly blame the 'Food Police'. There are so many rules about fridge temperature, fat content, sell by / use by / eat by dates, and hygeine rules, that people are bewildered and uncertain. So if recipe says use garlic and they don't like garlic, they don't know whether it's OK to leave out the garlic from spag bol. Or if they don't like eggs, can they leave the egg out of the cake recipe?

We find the cheapest way to eat is to menu plan using joints of meat so we basically always have two days of leftovers after Sunday's roast dinner. I learned the basic techniques at school: pastry, sauces, bread etc so I don't find it hard to produce something edible using leftovers and store cupboard ingredients.

My friend who is a real foodie (eats out a lot) feeds her family on M&S ready meals because she doesn't want to spend 'two hours in the kitchen every night'. I have no idea where she got the idea that it takes so long to make a meal from scratch, we're the same age (early 40s) so she would have had the same Home Economics lessons I had at school.

So I think YAPNBU, some people weren't taught the techniques at school or by parents. And some people are lazy.

Sorry, OP
Your comments are all about thrift, nothing to do with cooking!

Omrian, the problem with throwing together things that are left over is it usually involves frying eg bubble and squeak and we are brain washed into not choosing that 'unhealthy' way of cooking.

I have a crap memory and have to use recipes over and over before I can remember them so maybe people who don't have that problem are more instinctive cooks than I am - but I can make the basic stuff spag bols, mince, ghoulash, curry etc

If you make things often enough they become second nature. I invent things with leftovers-there is no need to fry them.

At what point did mums stop teaching their daughters how to cook just a matter of course? Because that's where we went wrong.

At the point they got over protective and don't let 8yr olds, or even 12 yr olds boil a kettle!

They should also be teacher their sons!! I have 3DSs and they need it as a life skill.