To wonder how someone can reach their early 20's without being able to even boil an egg?

[IceCreamAngel]

Just that really. I could boil an egg at about eight years old! By the time I was 10/11 I could fry bacon and heat up some soup, spaghetti or baked beans on the hob. I could also operate a microwave to prepare myself a ready meal. It wasn't of my parents making me do it either. I wanted to do it all myself, and once I could their response would always be, "ok well you know where everything is".

So quite frankly I'm disturbed that there are young adults out there who can't even manage the most basic of life skills. How the fuck is that even possible? It's appalling and quite sad really.

Lacquitar Well if you bake a fish and prepare potatoes and veg then thats cooking in my book

But I just stick the fish in the oven! And I very rarely do potatoes, usually its rice or pasta. I don't really call this cooking, its more heating up food. but that's actually what the OP describes too.

Cooking or baking I classify as creating something very different from what you started with.

Findo There's an awful lot of rampant self-satisfaction about cooking now - it's become an aspirational thing

Absolutely. And if cooking and baking aren't your interest, then people will try to condemn you for it. Or as one of the women in my family would say to my former flatmate and his girlfriend, who spent 3 hours or more every single night slowly cooking their dinner and eating it together, "don't you have anything more interesting to do with your time? Don't you have any hobbies?" its meant to be funny not an attack on cooks

ketchup Knowing how to store food needs to be taught before cooking skills

Please, noooo! Surely most young people make basic mistakes when they leave home for the first time. What does it matter? I'm sure most people work it out in time.

I was "force fed" home economics at school, and hated it. So did my mother, and many heated meetings with the school ensued until I was "allowed" to do mechanics with the boys instead.

All the cooking they did in it involved frying and was incredibly unhealthy (I don't even eat chips so why would I want to waste valuable time at school learning to make that sort of stuff when I was trying to pass exams?)

this boggles me as well. I knew how to cook a decent meal for my entire family at about 11-12 and had done baking etc much younger than that...when DS is older I plan on including him in the cooking process so he knows how to cook when he leaves home!

My ex was awful and didn't know how to make toast (he thought you had to bake the bread in the oven, no joke, apparently had never heard of a toaster) though of course he was probably trying to get out of cooking by feigning ignorance. When he was on his own though (parents on holidays) he used to survive on crisps and pasties etc. It made me despair.

Yes, but, chandler, it's not all that funny. It's an in joke for a family of women who probably have a reason to believe that they have more interesting things to do. If it wasn't such an essential skill, then it might be something to laugh at.

This is very common. A girl I work with treats me with an odd sense of awe because I cook "proper meals" (or my dh does depending on whose turn it is). It makes me feel ancient and there's only 4 years between us.

Apparently her parents don't let her cook because she's so bad. Not likely to get better either.

Neither my DH or I are wunderkinds in the kitchen either, just normal stuff, which makes the way she gapes at me when we talk about food even stranger.

Alis take her home, show her some things and buy her a Jamie Oliver book for Christmas. You'll be setting her up for the future.

I agree that some people genuinely can't cook. Learning from reading packets is easy enough if you are functionally literate. I once taught a child who ate at Tesco cafe most nights because it only involved his parents pointing at the food and handing over money.

Christ knows how they are all getting on now

I'd be guessing that the child is now old enough to point at the Tesco food and hand over money!

Dora

I'm willing her to move out of her parents so I can get her a house warming gift. If they won't let her cook in their home she's a bit stuck (I think there was a fork in the toaster incident at some point).

It was a Jamie Oliver recipe book that got me into cooking as it goes. As annoying as he is sometimes, he does put together collections of recipes normal people can achieve/ source ingredients for.

The worst "I can't cook" was my housemate at uni putting white sauce over chopped up uncooked chicken breast and then being amazed when she subsequently came down with food poisoning. Same girls parents hadn't let her read newspapers either, because they wanted her to remain innocent .

I don't understand what being privately educated or being spoiled has to do with learning to cook. I'm neither, nor is my daughter and we can cook. In fact, I'm pretty certain than not one of the chefs that I've worked with was privately educated.

Alis, indeed. We can't account for the sins of all parents, else we'd be here all night! But, can't cook, won't cook, is also a great hint. I'm not sure of the extent to which throwing things together is a function of being able to cook already. So, CCWC might be useless to someone who pours white sauce on raw chicken.

I haven't worked with an adult novice in years. But, I'd be tempted to ask what she enjoys eating and work from that point upwards.

All power to you elbow, then, lemony.

I am crap at boiling an egg.

I left home not being able to do anything.

By contrast my 15 year old son will be doing most of the Xmas dinner this year. He is off to college soon to do professional cookery and has already had to cook for tons of people at his school restaurant when they open up in the evenings.

I have been teaching min how to cook from toddlers because I remember leaving home with no cooking skills whatsoever and I don't want that for mine. I can cook very well now but it took many many years to do so.

It wasn't snippy or snooty. At first I didn't understand it, exactly. But, it was fine.

Oddly enough, the Army does a mean cookery course, so I hear. I worked with an ex Army chef for 3 years.

You see these things seem to do a circle.
The mothers who were brought up in an era where it was a woman's job and it meant you do this (cooking) instead of something else (studying, career) and the boys could do that other thing had decided to not repeat the pattern and encourage the daughters to do other things instead.I understand that and it makes sense.
Then those daughters (like some posters above) have decided to teach their children (both genders) to cook.This also makes sense because these days it is not a woman's job but a skill for both genders.
Also ad it is now much easier to cook -you dont need to go to the market, walk back, light a fire, skin a chicken, cook, boil water, wash pots by hand etc- it means that you can cook AND do other stuff too.

i remember the children wanting to make their own sandwiches for the first time... and then the time they did it all on their own. when dd made her own breakfast... the feelings were very peculiar. quite a surprise that I was no longer doing everything for them, guilt that they were making their own breakfast, a feeling of impending redundancy... if at this point I had reacted by shooing them out of the kitchen and pushed them aside then I can see how they would be potentially going to grow into adults that would not be able to boil an egg... however, I have taken myself in hand and put up with the digging chunks out of the margerine and dripping jam on the worksurface, the trail of crumbs and the odd splashes and puddles of milk as they learn competancey, and apologised profusely to mother for having a wrecked tin opener...

I am teaching them to do other things as well. dd can organise one of the quick dinners better than her dad. she has not yet the strength to open tins herself and is not yet allowed to handle the hot pans but she does the instructing, the fetching and carrying and all the stuff she is allowed to do.

I learned to boil an egg with a colour changing egg device from the pound shop.

Before that all eggs that I cooked were hardboiled (which I prefer) as I loathe any runny egg.

I think I must have been 38 to be able to serve a perfect runny egg. (boak)

I too left home radiant with ignorance on how to do pretty much anything for myself, like some posters here. My dm liked to do everything, and had no interest in showing me, though to be fair it never occured to me to learn, too busy reading and studying. Broke the first washing machine I was allowed to use without supervison.

Eggs- get the water boiling. Put egg in with spoon. Set timer

3 mins - very runny and not really cooked
6 mins- hard white, soft yolk
9 mins - hard white, hard yolk.

Run under cold tap to stop it cooking when you take it out.

My dc learn as they go. My ds loves to cook. My dd prefers to lie on the sofa and read, and have ds make her toast. They wil both leave home competent, even if they choose not to and live on baked beans:)

Dora, the child in question is indeed old enough to point at food and hand over money but I suspect he has no money to hand over, and no means of getting any. Hopefully his sister who wanted to be taken into care has learned some basic skills.