What were the favourite things your mum cooked?

[Caramel78]

Is/was your mum a good cook and what are the best things she makes?
Mine does the best lentil soup and apple crumble. Never tasted anyone do them better

My mum is an absolutely dreadful cook. Absolutely everything came out of a jar or packet. Think corned beef stew with no thickening agent, so just lumps of overcooked veg in water with flecks of corned beef floating about. Yum.
However, I loved her chicken tikka. It too came out of a jar but she did something to it that made it nicer. I’ve used the same jar many times and it’s not the same. I used to love curry day as it would save me from the likes of that soup .
Her mum and my Nan however is a brilliant cook. Her roast dinners are the best I’ve ever known. She has a knack for making gravy that I can’t perfect no matter how many times I’ve tried.

My mum used to cook great chips and make lovely broth and also excellent burgers

My mum was the best cook. She died 8 weeks ago and the thought that no one will ever have her cooking again breaks my heart
She made the world's best
Lentil/tattie/ chicken and rice soup
Steak pie
Stories
Macaroni cheese
Mince and tatties
French toast
Stew
Lasagne
Bolognese

So many things. I am a good cook but I've never been able to reach her benchmark

Loving all these stories of mums/dads/grandparents being great cooks (and also the funny stories of those who weren’t).

My mum was quite a good cook she was also quite an adventurous cook and would always, try.her own version of local.dishes we had eaten when we had been on holiday abroad ( with sometimes varying results)Her cheese and onion. Pie was excellent My mum's ,mum was a great baker and always had lots of different yummy cakes ,my Dads mum did a,lovely Sunday Roast , she also did a fruit cake but called it a boiled cake it was lighter in colour and consistency than normal fruit cake and delicious she was.Irish she possibly an Irish recipe ? Oh and her Sherry Trifle!

I really love all these stories too, so amazing and all so different.

Lessstressedhemum and all the other posters who've lost their Fanny Craddock Mums and Grans (and those who weren't quite), it's bittersweet, isn't it?

I used to love my Nan's cheese and onion pie and a while ago I was at a conference where lunch was included... I had something that surprisingly was very much like my Nan's pie. I had to put it down and go and have a little quiet cry in the loos.

Love some of these. My mum wasn’t a great cook although thinks she’s awesome. The only person who enjoys her cooking isn’t sister who is even more of a hopeless cook.

Mum was good at Sunday roast, cakes and puddings, although she didn't start the cake making much while we were still at home, and we got a slice if visiting. Anyway my favourite puddings were bread pudding, jam roly poly, both with home made custard, and sweet dumplings with golden syrup, rice pudding. She made bread and butter pudding which at the time I didn't like and regret not doing so at the time, but funnily enough have never ate it. Plan to make it myself some time.

My DM (now in her 80’s) was never a great cook.
It was all fish fingers, chips and peas, boiled ham, chips and peas, burger, chips and peas ad infinitum.
However she did make fabulous braised steak and onions. I try, but it never tastes as good as hers.

My DM is a terrible cook but I always looked forward to chilli con carne (packet mix so couldn't really go wrong). When I was 17 I worked a really crap job and didn't get home until 11.30pm. I loved when it was chilli con carne night and there'd be a plate waiting for me to warm up when I got in. It made a shit day much better.

My mums most inventive/exotic meal was probably spaghetti bolognaise using a jar for the sauce, but with traditional food, she is the best. I don't know what tradition it comes from, as my family background was a bit of a secret for various reasons and I know very little about it. All I know is my mum's family are from the north so maybe it's traditional northern England food. Most of it had gravy. Things like mince and dumplings, steak pies, casseroles, hotpots. Her chips are always the best. I have never tasted chips as good as the ones my mum used to make.

Tattles and mince with huge dough balls! Yum

Tablet (once she got a new recipe. She'd tried for years to perfect it but it would never set, so we'd eat it using a spoon 😂)

Anything except pork. She really made tough pork chops. She was an amazing cook.

Mum cooks an amazing bacon and egg pie. Fortunately I have been able to replicate the recipe

We live in Cornwall, and my Nan was Cornish to the bone. She would make amazing pastys every Monday. Mum doesn't live up to Nan's pastys but she used to make a steak and kidney pudding to die for, fabulous flakey sausage rolls and lardy cake. All very bad for you but so good.

Both my parents are fantastic cooks. When I was growing up Mum did the "day to day" cooking and Dad did the fancy weekend dinners.

So for Mum my favourites (that I still ask for when I go home or they come up) are pies, cottage pie, chicken cacciatore, roast dinners, bolognese, chilli, potato hash etc.

As well as all the fancy dinners Dad does the most amazing BBQs - from the "normal" homemade burgers (so many varieties!), marinated ribs etc. to BBQ-ing breakfast or whole joints! He also made the best toasted sandwiches for weekend lunches - anything can go in a toastie!!

I hope my DD is able to look back as fondly on my cooking when she grows up as I do on my parents.

I lost all four of my grandparents and my mother by the time I was 11(I am nearly 50) so my memories of them all are very few.

I find it so endearing that so many people on this thread have so many strong food memories. It is very nice to read.

I do have a little jealousy of my relatives who have been taught to cook by their parents or their grandparents (obviously, the ones that aren't the same to mine). I had to learn on my own and it's a bit of a mish-mash of whatever cookery book there is about on the tv or online.

I wonder what my kids will remember from me.

Keep the memories coming!

@OhNoNoNoNotThatOne

Is your oven hot enough? Using a metal muffin tin (for popovers) or small metal tin? Have you let the oil get super hot? Have you left them in the oven long enough? A bit like sponge cake, once they’re in I don’t open the oven.

My mum made a fantastic cheese and potato pie, and great omelettes (mine are never as nice as hers) but her best dish was a liver and bacon casserole, layered with thinly sliced potato, like a hotpot.

Bloody gorgeous, and by the time I thought to ask her for the recipe, she had dementia and couldn't remember how she made it.

Vesta Paella was a regular favourite. About twice a year she would make a beef stew and baked potatoes which was my favourite, loads of butter and thick gravy. She wasn't a particularly exciting or adventurous cook and many meals involved pasta in sauce or super noodles or ready meals. But pancake night was always good. Sometimes she would get experimental and we all hated that.

Oh yes, FSM with those little, tiny dried prawns! That brings back memories!

My mum wasn’t the best cook but her macaroni cheese, bread and butter pudding and mince and potatoes were fab.

My mum did a lovely chocolate cake with caramel butter cream, I've never eat anything as lovely as that.

I also loved her chicken and chirzo stew with fresh bread mmmmm.

My mum is a good cook and makes an amazing curry and stew but her cooking is not a patch on my late nans. My Nan stew was amazing and she always made fresh bread every single morning at 5.30am so when I used to visit I was woken with the smell of fresh baking bread. She also made ribs and cabbage that I loved, everything was full of salt and butter was spread like cheese- type Irish family and I loved every single minute. I even loved when she found my favourite sausages in a shop so served me 7 for breakfast- I was only 8 and a tiny scrap of a child but I ate them all with fresh bread and a dippy duck egg