What did/does your Mum cook better than anyone else?

[FlamedToACrisp]

Feeling wistful about my Mum's chicken curry - it looked like a strange green lumpy mess, but tasted divine!

And her apple crumble... she put semolina in it for extra crunch.... mmm.

@BigSandyBalls2015 That really made me laugh, blacken the icing 🤣. What a strange thing to do!

Everything! My mum was an amazing cook and it's one of the very fond memories we all have of her

(apart from liver and onions, which were just bleugh, but that's just liver in general, not a reflection on her cooking)

Just a bit of pressure! I'm not a bad cook and there's a few things I can do that are close to Mum's, but there's no point in me even attempting pastry.

Chicken stoup (thin stew/thick soup!), so comforting and nutritious!

She makes the best sandwiches too.

What a lovely thread!

My nana was a good cook, but once decided to make bread and butter pudding. It was so bad, my younger brother hid behind the settee crying. 😂

Oh I miss my nana.

My mum is a terrible cook, had lots of burnt offerings growing up . She makes the best flapjacks though.

Bread pudding. She makes it up and it’s delicious every time. I can’t replicate it.

Nothing! My mum is the best mum ever but cooking isn't her strong point. My dad's a far better cook.

Some of the bad ones here are brilliant. MIL was an amazing traditional cook - pastry, pies, cakes, roasts - but it always went a bit pear-shaped whenever she tried to jazz it up. One memorable meal was chicken curry with sultanas and mango chutney accompanied by the full complement of Sunday lunch veg - over-boiled carrots and sprouts, peas and roast potatoes with gravy on the side. FIL tucked right in and couldn’t understand why the rest of us were a bit nonplussed

Frikadeller it's a Danish meatball dish similar to the ones you have in Imea (but wayyyy better) to be fair she was a good cook (luckily as she was a chef by profession) I recall very few poorly made dishes as a child.

MIL was a terrible cook... but dh says she did a good spice cake and served huge big slices.. (I do miss her thought she passed last year)

Broth and dumplings. I never even attempt to make it as you can't beat perfection.

Nothing. Her egg and chips was pretty decent but almost everything else came from a packet growing up. Sunday dinners were bland and overcooked. She puts weird combinations of things together (egg and tuna "pie", or Chinese stir fry veg with your Sunday roast anyone?!). Creme fraiche is used very indiscriminately as 'a sauce'. She once bought some sushi from M&S because she knows I like sushi.....then heated it up in the oven before giving it to me and was most put out I wouldn't eat it! DH and I have both been ill after eating there, her oven never seems to be hot enough (2 different houses 2 different ovens so not a mechanical failure!) so food is often soggy or not cooked through. I bought her a Jamie Oliver cookbook a while back and it was dismissed with 'thanks love but I prefer to make it up as I go along'.

If we go there now I either eat first, take stuff with me or offer to pay for a takeaway. When she comes here she is always astounded at how 'tasty/fancy' my cooking is, it's really nothing special!

Absolutely nothing. My mum is a shocking cook. She's only just learned how to turn the oven on in her new home (been there a year) because she needed to heat up frozen sausage rolls.

Nothing whatsoever! I went for tea after work in the week, salmon, mash and broccoli. Just about ok if it hadn't been microwaved....all at the same time on the same plate.

Can't think of much to be honest. She was an ok cook but I know I cook and bake better than her.

I think that 'over-cooking' used to be the norm, I recall my mother saying how she liked carrots, cauliflower, sprouts etc at our house because they had some crunch but she still over-cooked them herself! She also used to buy rolled sirloin when we had a family roast dinner and cook it until it was like corned beef, I could have wept when I thought of its cost!
Apparently I make the best spag bol, 'but don't tell Daddy', according to the grandchildren and I usually win the Christmas roasties comp. too.

A roast dinner, always enough food to feed an army and I've never known anyone else's family provide 3 types of potato with a meal! My granny used to make the most amazing Scotch broth, I try to replicate it but mine never tastes the same.

Lentil bolognese and Tiramisu. My Scottish granny used to make a lentil vegetable soup, should have been broth but was adapted to accommodate fussy vegetarian younger generations and my mum and I both make it but it’s not the same. That really is our Proustian foodstuff, preferably with buttered Auld’s plain loaf and iron bru watching rain pour outside.

Cheese scones 🤤

@Eriko frikadeller definitely ^are* waaaaaay better than IKEA meatballs! Are you Danish? My grandmother made delicious frikadeller, fried in butter. To this day I can’t smell butter cooking without remembering my lovely Mormor.

Mince pies, the trad small kind. Very thin pastry, loads of filling. I've never quite been able to equal hers.

Roasts too, and her cheese pudding was delish. I've never found a recipe that's quite the same.

Oh oops couldn’t read! @Enko!

Absolutely nothing. She couldnt cook whatsoever. We had chips in a frying pan every night. She wouldnt have known where to start with a roast, and never cooked rice or pasta in her life. She sometimes made an apple pie.

My nana's lobby was amazing, never had anything like it since.

@Ninkaninus Yes I grew up in Denmark. My mum cooked her Frikadeller in butter too 😀