To think that cooking isn’t hard...

[CrabappleBiscuit]

....as long as you are physically fit and not unwell and don’t have a disability that makes it hard, and have access to a kitchen and equipment (disclaimer)

Friends who say they or their partners ‘can’t cook’. But hold down jobs, drive cars and can put together flat pack furniture.

It’s not rocket science, read a recipe and do it. I like cooking and I’m good at it, dh isn’t a great cook but he still cooks a fairly limited repertoire but he does.

Is it just laziness?

NB, my DH can cook, but I do most of it. He tends to be happy to kind of make things up rather than follow a recipe and I don't always like how that comes out!

Yes, that is an issue, but you went far too far with it.
Don't be silly. You're just being deliberately argumentative.

No I'm not. You made your own argument ridiculous.

A drama writer, Russell T Davis, was on BBC one show the other day saying that anyone who can drive is amazing as he can't - millions of people drive - its a hard skill to learn at first, but come easier with time, but lots of people don't drive or have lessons and can't pass a test and there have been threads about that too. I hate driving, but I can and its come in handy so often to be able to and i'd be lost without it.
Same with cooking - some people are just better cooks than others and actually do enjoy it and others just do it because they have to.

i agree that the list of ingredients for some dishes is mind boggling - it can take time just going to buy it all and not everyone has a garden to grow their own either - i have looked at some lists of things and the cost alone puts me off giving it a go. I stick to basic dishes and some recipes can also be confusing if youve not cooked them before or similar dish.

I think what tends to happen is people live with their parents a lot later than before now and perhaps their parents always cook for them. When they do leave home, it’s possibly as a uni student so they live off ready meals and take aways. Then when it’s time to become a ‘real adult’, they’ve never learnt how to cook and can’t be arsed.

You do need to learn how to cook, it isn’t something that comes naturally. Some people really do struggle with it or just hate doing it.

A roast is fairly basic, but read some cook books or on line and they can make that complicated.

I was amazed when i learnt that my brother , 68, ' cant cook' but i think its more a case of him giving it a go one day and my sil saying 'that was horrible' and just doing it all ( she is good though!)
he tends to do easy cooking now!
my dh does enjoy cooking if he has the time and the energy and is better than me.

I think a lot of "can't cook" doesn't necessarily mean incapable of actual cooking, but can mean lack of instinct. For instance, my mother makes all her own food but has never been any great shakes in the kitchen, and I've realised now it's because she doesn't have much of an instinct for what works. Her omelettes come out dry, she incinerates salmon fillets so they taste like sawdust, she overcooks green veg so they go a bit grey, etc. and all of this is in spite of doing it regularly for years. She uses a fairly limited range of quite bland ingredients so nothing has much flavour. When we were little and asked for a chocolate cake for our birthdays she had a recipe which she rigidly stuck to, involving a single teaspoon of cocoa powder, so it came out brown but not chocolate flavoured, which produced a thin, dry brown disk. Obviously this is "cooking" in the sense of turning ingredients into food, but when I left home and started cooking for myself, it didn't take me long to work out that a quick blast of heat leaves veg vibrant and crunchy, and to start experiment with cheeses and herbs to give things a bit more flavour. Obviously I guess I had the benefit of the internet, and also of a more "eating out" culture which gave me more guidance, but it surprises me that these instincts never kicked in for her in spite of cooking every day. It's mostly trial and error.

It's not a matter of taste either, when she comes over to ours for dinner or we go out to a restaurant, she'll exclaim over the food saying "oh my asparagus never comes out like this" and "oh, the salmon just melts in the mouth!". Well mum, the former still has a crunch, and has had lemon and pepper added to it, and the latter hasn't been under a grill for half an hour

There’s also a cost element

I made a cauliflower cheese yesterday.

Cauliflower £1.49
Cheese £2.95
Flour £1
Milk £1
Butter 95p

I could have bought a frozen ready prepared bag in Iceland for £1.69

I do love to cook and will 5 days out of 7 but I sometimes am so thankful for captain Birdseye

One of my colleagues daughters has Cerebral Palsy, wheelchair bound, can’t live independantly, but even she can cook from scratch using specially modified equipment. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

If you like doing it then it's easy. I enjoy cooking but you do need to respect that it is a science, and one that involves lots of trial and error. Not everyone has the inclination for that sort of thing.

Anyone can do basics I would imagine. I'm yet to meet somebody who can't make toast or instant noodles.

It’s always men and they’re always enabled by their wives or mothers - whichever one they live with.

Absolutely ridiculous behaviour but often seen as a male badge of masculinity not being able to cook.

@tit - the prices you quoted are for the entire bag, you need to adjust them down for the price of a meal. If you made one big cauliflower cheese with a 1kg of frozen cauliflower and all your milk and flower then your price per meal would probably be in the pennies.

@HerFemaleness

My SIL set fire to the microwave putting dry instant noodles in and putting it on for 10 minutes.

She also has poured beans into a toaster, put tins in the microwave and one asked me how to make cheesey chips.

Thankfully my brother is not this dense and manages to keep the family alive.

That's a bloody big cauli cheese TitZilla. I make two at a time. There is not way it's £1 on flour! It's about heaped 4 tablespoons (I like the sauce thick) and that makes two dishes of CC.

And £2.95 on cheese? 95p on butter? That's nearly a whole pack! I use tasty cheddar and use nowhere near that much. I reckon I can make two dishes for about £2

It’s odd that that’s women enabling men but if you are asked to think of a famous chef or cook chances are the first thought would be a male name probably.

And it tastes far better than bought as I put english mustard in it, gives it a kick

The best chef's in the world are men. I don't think it's seen as 'girly'.

There is a clear difference between male chefs – famous, feted, cooking for money and acclaim, often celebrated for their workaholism and tempers – and 'cooks' in the sense of people who do it every day for their households. These people are not acclaimed, offered book and TV deals and featured in the weekend papers.

My SIL set fire to the microwave putting dry instant noodles in and putting it on for 10 minutes.

I stand corrected

@nikita - I agree. In most cases male chefs make money by using the same recipies (but with overseasoning) as their mums / grans.

I consider being able to cook as having the basics down and a substantial repertoire of dishes that you can whip up from memory. Also perhaps the ability to add a bit of this or that without it being a disaster.

When I say that I can't cook, I mean that I need to carefully follow recipes, am slow at prep and find cooking both daunting and a chore. Over the years I have picked up maybe 3 dishes that I can make well but only after making them loads. It's not an issue, I eat well and there's loads of simple recipes available online.

“Except for all the women on this thread, of course. Don't let that get in the way of your misandry though.”

Me and DH regularly cook from home, despite full time jobs and long commutes. It's not hard (difficult) but it can be effort and time consuming, partly just in coming up with ideas when you are knackered and braindead.

I do think everyone should learn to cook meals from scratch, and it's really important to teach DC, but I also know a meal or two a week of lazy food won't kill you.

There's a lot of snobbery around readymeals, or freezer to oven food, and I think some of it is unwarranted. You can make healthy or unhealthy choices however you cook.

I really enjoy cooking at weekends when I have time. Its a boring and relentless grind during the week, though. DH shares the cooking with me, though. I'd be bored shitless doing it myself every single day.

It really annoys me when women allow their husbands and sons to get away with not being able to cook. My fil is even incapable of heating up his own food.
I also can't understand the money people are willing to spend to avoid cooking. My db and SIL don't like cooking so every time we visit them we eat out. Last Christmas they spent £300 on eating Xmas dinner in a pub. Maybe I'm just a miser.