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?

Sometimes it’s to do with anxiety. My MIL is a perfectly capable lady but a very highly strung and anxious person - gets into an absolute flap cooking for others because she’s somehow internalised that it doesn’t matter how hard she tries, something won’t be right (which isn’t true most of the time). It doesn’t help that FIL absolutely will not eat anything spicy and will only eat bland, underseasoned food by choice. He doesn’t cook hot food for himself that I’m aware - have never seen him do so! He does BBQ and make a mean cup of tea though.

That said, she makes two particular dishes better than anyone I know -extremely well- and these usually feature as she knows these are liked.

These days more often than not she just opens a jar of —revolting— orange ‘Chinese style’ sauce or something like that and pours over ready chicken chunks and rice. It’s almost as if she can’t be blamed for the quality if it came out of a jar....

Also We have to abide the ‘sorries’ for everything and ‘well I’m sorry for being sorry’ conversation each time. She’s a lovely woman but it’s super irritating! She seems interested but her own anxiety causes her to fail. It’s not laziness in her case, she’s the least lazy person I know. We love her anyway!

I do think some people have more of a knack, my mum is just a fantastic cook and my food is never as good and I don't understand what I am doing wrong. But that doesn't mean I can't cook, I can, my food is tasty just not as good as my mum's.

For example my peas taste like boiled peas, DMs boiled peas are like food of the gods. How does she do It? I've tried using lots of butter, no butter, lots of salt and pepper, no salt and pepper. I use the same brand of peas, but still they are not as good. How does she do It?

Motheroffourdragons, I love beetroot and often have beetroot sandwiches.

I'm with you OP. I hate the way people seem to excuse their laziness in the kitchen by proclaiming they can't cook and "ooh I'd burn water me".

It's the same laziness with those who are crap with money and excuse their laziness by saying "I can't do maths me", There's nothing difficult about it, it's just laziness and a can't be bothered attitude facilitated by knowing that others will bail them out, whether it's making meals for them, or whether it's lending them money.

I think it's like most things, the earlier you start, the easier it is. My mum and my Gran taught me when I was small. Like them as an adult I cook by feel, the only recipes I follow are for baking and even then I tend to improvise a lot. I grew up in a house where cooking was important, more important than eating really. Some of my earliest and happiest memories are being sent to harvest tomatoes with a basket from the greenhouse, pick herbs, making squashed fly pastries with my mum to use up left over dough or stirring batter for my gran.

People are horrified though that I let ds (3) loose in the kitchen. I let him chop vegetables (supervised of course) but he holds the knife. He stirs the pans, he melts the chocolate for his favourite chocolate icecream and by 8, he will be able to make a basic 3 course meal just like I could. We grow vegetables together and he helps my MiL with pea podding, picking/digging things up for dinner etc.

I'm not sure what schools teach now but when my DC were at school a few years ago the cookery lessons were a joke.

They were a joke when I was at school 40 years ago, and the lessons my son has had in the past few years were a joke. Seems nothing changes despite all the teachers' protestations of too much change!

But on your post Space a lot of the things you talk about just won't matter when you're eating your homemade dish. So what if the onions are chopped small in your stirfry, so what if they're big in something else, so you don't parboil your potatoes before roasting, they'll still taste good, I never parboiled years ago.

I have honestly only learnt to cook by trial and error. My pasta was glutinous, now I scoop out a cup of the cooking water ready so it isn't. I learnt that. Plus lots of other things. It's all about being interested enough to learn I think

I'm not ill bodied in any way and I cook every night for me, DP and DS, yet I am TERRIBLE. I had a new kitchen last year, bought a great cooker hoping it was help. It hasn't. I can follow recipes word for word, minute by minute, yet I cannot cook a thing successfully. There is at least one thing wrong every single meal. I wish I could cook, I try different methods and follow all types of tutorials. It just doesn't work for me! More annoyingly, everyone in my family is a fantastic cook, and here I am at nearly 30 not being able to fry an egg properly.

It's nothing to do with being lazy, preferring take aways or simply not trying. It doesn't come easily for some people.

I hate cooking, therefore I've never tried to cook. I couldn't think of anything worse than having to make a meal from scratch.

@BertrandRussell I was being brief, but we also have a cleaner once a fortnight, so I only do little bits in between, and all the washing, which I quite like.
I think time wise it's roughly equal now. I had a thread about it under an old username when we were debating getting the cleaner about a year ago, when I thought we did equal amounts before, but I was wrong!
He does clean up after cooking (not perfectly, but well enough).

Who taught you to chop onions very finely for a sauce, but in chunks for a stir-fry? When did you learn how to prepare potatoes for roasting? How do you know which cut of meat to use for a stir fry? How long does it take to cook a pork chop? What herb goes best with lamb? Should you salt the meat before cooking? What temperature is best for cooking steak?

The recipe tells you these things. If you can follow instructions you can follow a recipe. Google will tell what something is if you don’t understand.

I didn't know how to cook when I left home, I just learnt through trial and error and practice. And now I can't cook ready meals or oven food, whenever I do they always come out a bit rank or burnt - but ask me to make something like a stew/mac & cheese/fish pie/lasagne/roast chicken dinner etc and it comes out beautiful. Very odd.

It always makes me laugh when I see people on fb for example saying they've cooked a homemade meal and making a big deal about home cooking (and genuinely believe that's what they've done) and its just stuff you just put in the oven. That might be mean and judgey but, meh.

@Dinosauratemydaffodils you are correct. I was never even allowed in the kitchen as a child bar the occasional fairy cake bake, and was barely allowed to make beans on toast as a teenager. DS isn't interested in helping me cook, but I do get him to fetch things for me and do some pouring/stirring at least.

I like baking more, because the product is usually much nicer. Can't beat chocolate cake.

SpacePenguin good post.
The recipe doesn't tell you everything. It was only when I started to teach my son's to cook that I realised how much skill is assumed by recipes.
Often the first stage of preparation is skimmed over in the list of ingredients like this one for spag bol.
1 tbsp olive oil
4 rashers smoked streaky bacon, finely chopped
2 medium onions , finely chopped
2 carrots trimmed and finely chopped
2 celery sticks, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2-3 sprigs rosemary leaves picked and finely chopped
500g beef mince

All that trimming and fine chopping. The recipe doesn't tell you how to do it, or make it clear that this is the major part of the work involved.

Of course after a lifetime of cooking I know which order to do things and how to time all components of a meal together, but it does take practise.
I started by teaching them a few staples such as spag bol. After years of school cooking lessons they had never chopped an onion. It took hours the first time they did it.

Storm that's why some of us are saying its not as easy as others make out.

An experienced cook will know if certain ingredients can be left out OR they can use a substitute. Using your examples I would sub

Mustard powder - depending on recipe turmeric or horseradish or even curry leaves. But it's a low perishable item so should keep well.

Capers - chopped green olives (I must admit I tend to have these in) but capers are a pickled item so should last ages UNLESS you introduce a sugar or protein to the jar.

Sour cream - (dead easy to make your own) again depends on recipe I'd sub with plain yogurt, Mayo or whisked cream cheese.

Tawdry - I think a lot of people do a mixture most days. I've met people who SAY they 'always cook totally from scratch' but use jar sauce (but have cooked the meat and veg for say a stir fry from scratch) or use easy cook rice, or pre cut veg etc.

I cook from scratch when my energy is there. I have mh issues and a physical disability so standing at a kitchen counter for 1 hour+ isn't always feasible. But I enjoy cooking and it soothes me so I do it when I can.

I make most sauces from scratch - except pesto (cause it would be hard to get enough basil where I am without spending a fortune to make a decent amount, plus pine nuts hard to get and it really doesn't taste as nice without) and hollandaise sauce (I don't know WHAT I do wrong it never works).

Do most of my veggies prepped from scratch except onions (I get far more eye problems than most such that it takes a couple hours till I can even see again!).

Meat and fish I can do but I can't do 'to order' without guidance as I'm veggie and I'm just not familiar enough. But I do all sorts with Quorn and soya meat subs and tofu.

I'm old enough to have done cookery lessons pre GCSE. In cookery lessons we did:

Victoria sponge
Swiss rolls
Christmas cake
Jam/lemon tarts (and made the jam and lemon curd fillings from scratch)
Mince pies
Lemon meringue pie
Shepherds pie (with piped mash topping)
Steak and kidney pudding (steamed at home)
Chicken chausseur
Hungarian ghoulash
Spaghetti bolognese (although we didn't make the pasta from scratch)
Quiche Lorraine
Scotch eggs and sausage rolls

I don't think schools teach any of this type of thing now.

At home I learned
Soups
Stews inc stovies
Loads of baking including fruit slices, bakewell tarts, ginger buns, tea loaf
Sunday roast
Breaded fish (Friday's) with proper home made chips and peas (at one point from a neighbour that grew them) we (siblings and I) loved getting messy and argued over who got to do the egg bit in the 'production line'
Glasgow fry (takes real skill to make the perfect fried egg with white cooked and yolk runny)
Savoury pies
Gravy from scratch
Steamed puddings
Custard from scratch (a friend once claimed they made their custard from scratch and I already knew they were quite a basic cook - they meant birds powder 😂)

Some cook books are better than others too. My now ex mil gave me (because it contained some favourite recipes of my then husbands cake and biscuit wise) a book by a tv cook (way before delia but after fanny) which not only included great easy to follow recipes but also had a fab section on things like how to prep certain veg (bear in mind it was written when Brits mainly ate potatoes, peas and carrots) and fruit, even how to do eg tomato 'roses', how to 'rescue' trickier recipes (a sort of troubleshooting section), basics for new cooks for eg how long to roast a chicken (by weight), how to make all the different pastries, a basic bread recipe... It was brilliant I'm bummed I lost it!

"I think modern life means that mothers don't have as much time to flop around in the kitchen showing their kids how stuff works"
That's possibly true in some cases but not the whole story. Have a look around here on mn there's a lot too many parents who think their children shouldn't have to do any chores at home. I've been called abusive for how much my dd does! (Occasionally she's agreed but doesn't really mean it). Because she's been cleaning her own room since starting high school, then doing her own laundry (admittedly that was earlier than I'd planned but on the back of an argument about me not being psychic re clothes required), she's been cooking with me since quite little for fun but around 13/14 usually cooked one evening meal a week. I've read comments like 'they'll have to do it enough once they leave home' 'their education is more important' 'I'll only end up doing it again properly' 'they'll make too much mess' yet how else are they meant to truly learn? They have to learn also to bounce back from mistakes and how to deal with them (eg dd panicking at first mixed wash mishap me then directing her to colour run remover and figuring out what caused it). I've also read numerous threads with older teens/early 20's "children" still at home and op despairing because they won't lift a finger - if you start young they get used to it, appreciate the work it takes, and take pride in their space.

"Some men claim not to be able to do these things, yet work executive jobs. I call bullshit on that." Definitely! It's a 'wifework' thing.

Quim - I wonder, a lot of older cooks seem to overcook, I wonder if that's at least partly due to modern equipment being more efficient than they're used to. My mother does the same now but I don't remember her food being overcooked when I was younger but it usually is now.

His father didn't even know how he took his tea! Every time they went to someone's house and he was asked he'd say 'ask the mrs'!

"The best chefs are men" ugh my dad comes out with that shit - he never cooked! To the point there's been times when mums been eg going into hospital and she's made his meals for the week PLATED and frozen and LABELLED (what they are AND day of the week it's to be eaten - but that's her 'thing' - if it's Tuesday it must be sausages type thing) so all he has to do is get out freezer in morning, microwave at night - and he struggled with that!

No, men GET to go far as chefs because as in so many careers to do well you need to be able to commit to extremely long hours, career breaks severely impact on career progression, it's a profession NOT known for flexibility for family reasons. But there are far more female chefs who work under the head chefs doing the graft!

Re beetroot - it can even be used to make a really lush chocolate sponge cake 😉

Possibly yes to the generational thing on cooking vegetables to within an inch of their soggy lives. My mother in law is guilty of this one, her cooking is decidedly awful. She did a cookery course in the 60s and hasn't progressed since.

Cooking is not her thing- She's a fabulous baker and her house is immaculate. I can't bake to save my life and I battle to keep my house in order. Who am I to judge?

I love 'cooking' what I don't love is 'catering' and that is what most of my cooking is these day. Basic stuff for 5 hungry people that don't all eat at the same time - cauldrons full of lentil chilli, mushroom curry etc. I don't blame people who don't do that sort of stuff.

But on your post Space a lot of the things you talk about just won't matter when you're eating your homemade dish. So what if the onions are chopped small in your stirfry, so what if they're big in something else, so you don't parboil your potatoes before roasting, they'll still taste good, I never parboiled years ago

Of course they matter and you won't understand what went wrong if you don;t know how to cook. If the onions are too small they will burn before the other things are cooked, if they are too big they will be half raw when they are meant to be soft. If you don't parboil but cook for as long as the recipe tells you to cook, the potatoes will be hard in the middle.
So your end result will be crap and reinforce the belief that you can't cook, thats the point.

YY Graphista and Space. I used to follow recipes religiously when I first started out, I remember going to a number of different supermarkets looking for Maldron salt and stressing that I didn't have it! It's about confidence and of course that comes with experience.

I can cook. I've always found it easy as long as I've got a recipe in front of me. But I don't always have the time to cook from scratch. Thats the part I find hard.

Irian - can none of them cook for themselves? Mum faced a similar issue when I was at one college, bro was working shifts, sis still at school and dad still in at 1730. She firmly stated "I am not a cafe" if you wanted her cooking you'd to be in for 6 and give her notice, if not you made your own!

Exactly twixes - like knowing you don't need a certain brand or style of ingredient.

Don't actually agree Miggeldy. If you stir and watch the onions, they won't burn, you can turn the heat down. if you have to Roast pots are fine, you just watch they go brown and stick a knife in to see if they are hard or soft.I've never known a hard roast potato. I used to be a useless cook and I just prodded, tasted, and watched, as opposed to just stick it on a hob or in an oven and hoping for the best. It's all about wanting to learn though. If you don't, yes you will have endless disasters.

Roussette, that is exactly my point. It's trial and error. You have to learn lots and lots of things before you can be competent at cooking a range of dishes, never mind being 'good' at it.

If you don't figure out how to fix your mistakes, or improve your technique, you'll keep making shit food and give up and declare yourself crap at cooking. Or, you might not even have enough basic knowledge or equipment to even try.

I've always enjoyed cooking, so I've never not cooked. And I grew up in a house where food was cooked from scratch, so had a decent amount of basic knowledge. But I've had lots of disasters over the years and I can see how someone else would not bother again if they made the messes I did.

I used to make a version of risotto - read some recipes, probably watched a video, and made something I enjoyed eating. I made it loads of times, but it was never like real risotto - it was fine, but never 'good'.

Years later, I came across a brilliant blog with step-by-step pictures of how to cook basic Italian dishes.

It changed the way I cooked completely. I understood the importance of preparing ingredients in the right way, using the right cooking technique, and as I hit more comfortable began playing around with flavours.

Now, I make an awesome risotto, but it took years to get there because I didn't know what I didn't know. And I didn't know where or how to find out how to fix what I was doing - I was following a recipe after all.

The thing with the Internet and recipes in general, is that you don't know which to trust - there's actually too much choice and a lot of poor recipes and bad advice out there. It can be overwhelming.

It's one of the problems in general with the informations at our fingertips - how do you decide which is a good source? Content curation is another skill that doesn't come naturally, but we'll all need to use it more and more in the future.