To ask what food thing have you given up on

[wetcardboard]

For me it's cooking East Asian food at home.

Food columnists are always suggesting stir-fries and noodle soups as easy midweek options but I can never get them to turn out right. That's even when using proper authentic ingredients like imported bonito flakes, mirin, shrimp paste, sesame oil etc. It always turns out too sweet or too salty, too insipid or too intense. Often a combination of dissatisfactions.

I suspect it's not so much about the ingredients but more about the cooking process. To get a really good stir-fry you need a heat higher than a household cooker provides, and for noodle soup you need to be boiling bones for a day or two to get an excellent broth.

After yet another noodle soup tonight which didn't quite hit the mark, I've decided to give up on East Asian cooking and save it for eating out. It feels liberating to throw in the towel. Though I have a bunch of East Asian ingredients and condiments in my cupboards which will probably languish at the back until we move from this flat.

Peeling potatoes. I'm genuinely astounded people actually do that. Life is too short, it's boring as hell. So all roasties are done with skins on and I use ready made mash from the supermarket.

I also don't iron, because that's just as bad, but that's a whole other thread.😂

I could have written your post op. Slaved over a chicken laska tonight. It was OK but disappointing. Not enough punch. A kind of grey colour instead of the inviting white steaming broth full of noodles on the picture. I poached a whole chicken and everything. Not sure I'd bother again.

Dontlaugh I may well just be too impatient. Either that or it's my pan or something. I have literally tried every method - all-in-one, roux, whisking, butter, butter plus olive oil, plain flour, cornflour, cold milk, room temperature milk, warm milk, skimmed milk, full fat milk, dumping half a tonne of cheese in it, you name it. It either goes lumpy or separates!

Anything which requires avocado. The blimmin things are so unreliable. You never know if it's going to ripen at all and if it does it usually goes straight from hard to brown and rotten. Total waste of money. Love a chicken bacon and avocado sandwich but can only ever have them out. Where do kitchens get their perfectly ripe avocados from?!

OP I have also come to the conclusion that my hob just won't get hot enough to properly stir fry things. It's very annoying.

Even though I cook most things from scratch, I have given up on making my own pastry. It never turns out right. Even if I think it has, it then either falls to pieces when I try to do the final roll-out, or else the texture when cooked is ridiculously crumbly and my little pies and tarts fall apart the minute they are touched.

Buying a roll of ready made is just infinitely less stressful and punishing. I'd love to be the person who makes my own pastry, but I've given up.

mackereloffact you have just got to use crem fraiche instead. I use a small a small tub of the low fat one. Microwave or hob stir in cheese for your cheesy sauces. Parsley for fish. Finely chopped onion for onion. Pour over mushrooms sauteed in garlic for creamy garlic mushrooms. So easy

@MackerelOfFact
You're doing it too fast! Could nearly guarantee it.
Slow at each stage, which is totally against my approach to EVERYTHING, but dja know what, I had to just sit back and whisk slowly, add flour s l o w l y.
Kills me but worth it.

Coconut cream or milk - always too rich and quite vile

MackerelOfFact - I use a tub of cottage cheese, Philly and vat of cream mixed. Extra mature cheddar to taste.

MackerelOfFact
Butter, melt, add flour, make into a paste, add milk, stir with a whisk constantly, low heat. Don't let it boil as it will separate. It takes ages but it works!

Cadburys chocolate in all forms

Yorkshire puddings here. Mine refuse to rise and go stodgy. I get DS to make them if he's around, his are incredible - otherwise it's Aunt Bessie's.

I'm a dab hand at a roast, but I cannot make gravy for the life of me so I delegate it to DH.

Definitely mashed potatoes. I threw away my masher, last week. They're just so messy to make and you buy what is supposed to be a good potato for mash and it goes from solid to mush in the 2 minutes you spend stirring the gravy. Then the gravy catches while you're mashing the spuds.

I just buy them now. The sainsburys £1 for a kilo frozen stuff isn't bad at all.

I love the alchemy involved in making a proper curry. Sad to say I just can't devote the time to it because DS2 is usually movin furniture when I need to be cooking, so needs really close supervision and distraction. M&S and prick with a fork tend to be the order of the day.

I did try a well regarded local restaurant that does takeaway but, apart from a paneer saag side that I could have eaten until I burst, it was pretty disappointing. I'll stick with M&S, Waitrose and the very occasional dip into one of my recipe books - I particularly like trying different versions of a Korma (much spicier than some would have you believe, just that the chillis are tempered by the creamy content and masses of pureed onion and, usually, almond) but tend to go for the Hairy Biker's one because it has a sauce that you can batch cook, freeze in portions, then cook your meat or fish in, like a jarred sauce and add a splash of cream (if you remember!) And yeah, it's salty!

All food. I am a shit cook. I used to be good but I'm fucking sick of it now. I literally can no longer boil water.

Although I did do a nice steak the other night No I didn't! It wasn't cooked enough and had to redo it and everything else was overcooked and cold.

The only thing I can rustle up these days is a gin and ginger!

Custard. It's just not worth the hassle when there are so many ready made options that taste just as good.

And paella. I buy Lidls frozen bag now which is bloody lovely, cheap as anything and woks in 15 minutes.

Pomegranate, tastie but complicated, do I nibble round the seeds, eat the seeds? takes to long, have a biscuit

harrykane

I cant do curry.
DS can do stir fries and Asian food, I cant. His taste authentic, mine taste like something I got out of the freezer and heated up.
I can do roasts, puddings, bread, cakes, pastry and biscuits. I'm too fat to eat them

Any kind of pastry, cake or bread. Our oven just can't cope with it. Same with Yorkshires and toad in the hole. Never gets hot enough.

Curry, stir fry etc I find dead easy. DP is better at roasts.

I also hate cooking roasts - too messy. Luckily DH likes cooking them! Ditto Yorkshire pudding. I have followed every piece of advice out there and they never work.

Another who can't poach eggs here. I m a prettt good cook. I just can't get the poached bit right.

Totally agree that a Béchamel sauce needs time. You've really got to cook out the flouriness otherwise it doesn't work. Stopping when it's just thickened isn't going to work flavour-wise.

I've given up on fudge. Even easy children's recipes leave me with burned on inedible slabs of sugar.

Lentil dhal - tried it so many times only to have a thick green sludge. My friend uses the same recipe and produces a creamy, dreamy pot of heaven. When I ask her secret she goes all vague and says 'I added a bit of butter'.

Smug lentil bitch

Cooking full stop

I can't be arsed. I'm not interested in food and neither is DH. Sadly no kids so we don't need to make proper meals as no small people to feed.

So now I just eat a reasonable lunch during the day and have some toast or a snack in the evening when I get home from work. At the weekend we'll go out or order in from Deliveroo. Just pick from the fridge otherwise.