Is he doing this deliberately?

[Wuldric]

I asked DH to cook Sunday lunch this weekend. He blanched, but when I pointed out that the DCs were doing breakfasts, I had done Friday evening, Saturday lunch and evening, and Sunday evening, he manned up.

It was a roast. What could be easier? It's all peeling and chopping. So this is what happened.

Roast lamb - I would have cooked this with slivers of garlic, plenty of rosemary, salt, black pepper and red wine, and served it pink and juicy and delicious. We got dry and overcooked lamb. No extras. You try overcooking lamb until it is dry. It is not good. In fact it is pretty hard to overcook lamb until it is inedible. DH, however, succeeded.

Roast potatoes - Roasties are simples. You boil some potatoes, drain and slather them in goose fat (we have jars of the stuff) and salt and black pepper. Never leave them in for longer than an hour. DH presented us with roasties that had been carbonised. I have never tasted such things. Imagine something black on the outside, and the inside had shrivelled and detached from the outside. Little buttons of burned stuff.

Gravy - he presented us with bisto granules. I have binned this stuff since I saw it creeping into the cupboard. They are nonsense. Nasty and artificial and somewhat sinister. And lumpy.

Vegetables - I don't even want to tell you about the vegetable abuse. You would call vegetable social services. In any event, they were so soggy that they were almost liquified. You try presenting liquified carrots and parsnips. It takes a real man to liquify a parsnip without electrical assistance.

Yorkshire puddings - purists amongst you will have noticed that the roast in question was lamb. Yorkshire puddings are served with beef. DH is from Yorkshire therefore feels that no meal is complete without a Yorkshire Pudding. Despite his undoubted Yorkshire heritage, DH managed to serve black nuggets. Black nuggets are never ever going to catch on. I understand now why the smoke alarm kept going off repeatedly.

He is doing this deliberately, isn't he?

[ChilledGhoul]

I'd have got my friend Aunt Bessie to help me out if it was me

[doormat]

giles to be fair that incident with the boiled egg ..really shit me up...i woke up amid thick black smoke..draggedthe 5 dc out of house and dh who fell asleep on couch..

i banned him from using the cooker ever again...
if he is that much of a twit to cremate a boiled egg ..i dont want to risk my family being harmed in a quest for him to do or learn cooking skills...

my case is extreme i know but because i do the cooking doesnt automatically give ppl to assume or preconceive a judgement of me being a stepford or a downtrodden doormat...its simply safety of my family...

[LookingThroughTheFog]

Look, the complaining about the burned meal isn't the smug part.

I would have cooked this with slivers of garlic, plenty of rosemary, salt, black pepper and red wine, and served it pink and juicy and delicious.

Is the smug part.

If the OP is so obviously superior in cooking skills and has never ever over-seasoned, overcooked, undercooked, or made a mistake... then it's not unreasonable for the general labour to be divided that she manages the meals. If that can't happen for practicalities sake, then have a couple of easy things in that DH can manage without a problem. OP will just have to descend to the level of mere mortals a couple of times a week. Problem solved.

Personally I think it's fine for two people in the relationship to play to their strengths. I think it's pointless for my DH to check the kids' homework for spelling and grammar - there would be no point to this at all. He's much better than me at maths, which I can't get my head around, so that's what he does. He tidies, I clean. We both do mending stuff. I do all the driving. He does most of the cooking, but there are a couple of meals I can do better than him, so I do those. On the days when I'm cooking, he has stopped telling me how amazing he is at cooking and how the roast potatoes should be just so because he knows it's bloody rude! I provide what I can manage and we don't go hungry.

[TheHeadlessLadyofCannock]

'if he is that much of a twit to cremate a boiled egg'

he needs to learn from it and not do it again, not use it as an excuse, supported by you, never to cook again. We've all made disastrous cooking mistakes, but most people move on from it. The safety of the family is his responsibility as well as yours.

[PrimalLass]

Crikey I think a roast is a bit tricky to get right, and I am a pretty decent cook.

[Gileswithachainsaw]

It's even trickier to incinerate everything to perfection

Hours of work that is

[Suttonmum1]

Two words would solve this problem

Aunt Bessies

Get the yorkshires and the roast potatoes and get him to concentrate on the other bits. If he wants to progress from there then fine, if not at least it will be edible.

Can I suggest a stir fry as a better place to start?

[LookingThroughTheFog]

It's even trickier to incinerate everything to perfection

Hours of work that is

Not really though, Giles. It's the work of; 'Lets set everything going together, and let the oven do it's work.'

I hate cooking a roast simply for having to remember every few minutes that it's the right time to put the next thing in. It's boring and distracting, and if I'm stuck trying to extract a child's head from the banister, something will be in late or not out on time. Plus we have one oven, and the meat and the potatoes need different temperatures so that needs taking into account. In and out of the kitchen all the time, fiddling with knobs (not like that!) and hoping that I haven't forgotten anything.

I like stews that I can start off on the hob then stick in the oven and leave alone for an hour or two. Or risotto, where I can just say I'll be in the kitchen for an hour, staring at a pan, so leave me the sod alone.

[Pobblewhohasnotoes]

I would probably ruin lamb as I don't like it so have never cooked it. I also use instant gravy, meh.

My DH cooks beautifully and loves to plan a meal.

[freddiefrog]

My DH finds it tricky to get a roast right. He struggles with timing and putting things in at different times. Therefore he doesn't cook roasts.

He does take his turn at cooking though, I just leave him to decide what he wants to cook, within his capabilities

Same as I decide what I want to cook when it's my turn, within my capabilities

Yes, it was definately his turn to cook, but let him decide what he cooks (provided it's not jam sandwiches/beans on toast)

[HardFacedCareeristBitchNigel]

When I was a pastry chef I boiled dry a batch of 20 cans of condensed milk that I was preparing for bannoffee pie.
The cans exploded with force all over the veg section of the kitchen, resulting in me having to clean the ventilation system, the deep fat fryer, the grill and 3 large ovens. The veg chef narrowly avoided a very unpleasant injury.

Did I stop cooking because of this dangerous error ? No, I did not (I couldn't have done, I'd have been out of a job and out of a home). I learnt from it. And didn't do it again.

[Norudeshitrequired]

Because as an adult we should be able to know our own strengths and abilities and I should have put some thought into the situation and either adapted the meal to something I could so or MADE it my responsibility to inform myself on how to do it!!

Whilst I agree with that, it sounds like the OP would have been peeved and accused him of making I edible food if he adapted the meal:
If he had used Bisto 'the meal was covered in a hideous over salty liquid made from granules that he dared call gravy'
If he had used aunt Bessie's yorkshires ' how dare he serve yorkshires with my lamb and to add insult to injury he couldn't even be bothered to make fresh ones like I would and instead bought them ready made from the local freezer shop'
The fault finding would be endless, because it wouldn't have been made to her exact expectations.

I have no issue with men being expected to cook and feed themselves and their family. I just have issue with somebody expecting them to make it exactly as they themselves would.
The OPs meal does sound horrendous though.

[FriendlyLadybird]

We have yorkshire puddings with every meat. In fact, when I (unusually) undercooked the meat last weekend, we had them instead!

Fair enough, it was his turn to cook. But I think he should have been able to choose what he cooked. Lots of people find roasts difficult.

Also, did he like it? My DH positively wants food that is near-incinerated and has been known to request bisto gravy rather than my fancy-schmancy wine-based and over-herbed concoctions.

[FredFredGeorge]

If you want someone to cook, they get to choose... YABU to demand what to cook, and how to do it.

[TheBigJessie]

When I was a child/teen, my mother had a thing about how the "kitchen was too small for two people", so I left home at 18 unable to cook.

I still worked out how to feed myself though, through reading instructions and experimentation. Still can't do good curry, but I'm working on it. Cooking is practical chemistry.

Take clean utensils, reactants/ingredients, mix appropriately, heat for correct length of time, get out of saucepan and/or oven.

It's not always easy to get right, but if you are capable of one, you can do the other.

[SolidGoldBrass]

Well, some people are just rotten cooks and dislike cooking. There's not a lot of point in forcing someone like this to 'keep trying' - far better to agree that this person takes on another regular necessary domestic task eg always does the washing up. As long as s/he can at least manage to microwave a ready meal or phone for pizza in an emergency, why turn cooking into a battleground?

[YouTheCat]

From the sounds of it, he's not a bad cook but the fact he incinerated everything suggests he just wasn't paying attention.

I can understand the OP being pissed off as she was hoping for a roast dinner when she got back from work but got charcoal instead.

[Crinkle77]

I have to disagree about the yorksire pudd thing. Ok traditionally they go with beef but I love them and would quite happily have them with any meat

[TheHeadlessLadyofCannock]

Solid, I think the husband turned this one into a battleground by having to be argued into cooking for his family.

[Wibblypiglikesbananas]

I think it's deliberate. And also quite hurtful. He couldn't be bothered to try and get it right. Any number of cookbooks would offer advice on timing.

[valiumredhead]

My ds who is 12 knows how to make roast chicken, he knows how to make roast potatoes and prepare veg. He knows all these things as separate elements, he can't put it all together so things are done at the same time.

Timing is essential and if you don't know you fuck it up. I'm not making excuses I'm offering reasons having done it myself.

Let him choose what to cook and see how it goes next time, maybe pop your head round the door at some point if you think he'll be receptive to suggestions.

It's a burnt dinner not the end of the world, unless there are a whole host of other issues going on and this it's the last straw?

[Gileswithachainsaw]

norude

If the op had just complained it wasn't how she likes it or that he did it wrong then of course I would say she was being U and fussy bit this was a deliberately ruined meal that was inedible and not even a fair attempt.

[Grennie]

Exactly Giles. I struggled with timings when I first started making roasts. So roast potatoes especially were rarely ready at the right time. The first time my DP made a roast, the oven wasn't turned on. So vegetables, etc were lovely, and the chicken was raw.

These are understandable mistakes. What the OP describes appears to be far more deliberate.

[classifiedinformation]

YABU, if I was your DH I'd have told you to shove your dinner where the sun don't shine. I can do roasts and so can DP, but not everyone can. DP and I tend to cook the meals we each do best and never have a go if something goes wrong.

If you're so perfect, cook it yourself!

[classifiedinformation]

And by the way, if it was deliberate then maybe he did because he already knew how anal you were about how it should be done!