To not have eaten the meal DP cooked for us?

[NameofTheWind]

For context: DP will eat pretty much anything, he's more of a quantity over quality type and open admits that fancy food is largely wasted on him. He would choose a larger, normal cut of steak over filet, for example.
I'll eat most things, but am a bit of a foodie so get excited about a good meal.

DP's cooking style could be described as... "pot luck dining" - if it's in the fridge, it's in the pan. Most of the time it's vaguely edible, if a bit eclectic.

Today he decided on curry - Jar of sauce, chicken and maybe some onion and pepper... Or so I thought.

I've just been presented with a curry comprising of chicken, sauce, onion, pepper... Courgette chunks, sweetcorn and button mushrooms.

The sauce has turned to coloured curryish flavour water because of all the veg, and something has happened to the chicken to make it indistinguishable from the mushrooms.

I made a really valiant effort to eat it but its so grim

I've had to admit defeat and DP has obviously noticed. He's such a lovely man and I feel like such a cow, but this is a terrible meal right??

I like veg in curries (although sweetcorn wouldn't be my first choice, and personally, I'd avoid peppers too). Not a fan of jarred sauces, though.

In our house, as standard, we would probably put a selection from onions, mushrooms, sweet potato, spinach, chickpeas, lentils, potatoes or tomatoes in our chicken curries, and would use either spices from scratch, or a premade curry powder or paste.

So your a stuck up snob?

No, but food is really important to me. I knew I couldn't have a relationship with someone who wasn't on the same page when it comes to food. I bloody love the occasional McDs!

I also bloody love apostrophes!

YAB (a bit) U. We'll throw all kinds of odds and ends of veg that need using up in pretty much any dish too.

The point is, he fucked it up.

Anything is gross if you fuck it up.

It sounds like you both could do with learning some cooking basics.

It's really easy to make a delicious vegetable curry...as long as you know to fry onions first, then add spices etc. No need to add jars full of preservatives.

Just good honest food done well. You will eat better, enjoy it more, and it will be cheaper. Britain is an anomaly in that there is relatively little BASIC cooking knowledge passed on and then everyone wants to gorge on ready meals and takeaways as when they attempt it themselves it is inevitably rank.

It's okay to not want to eat what he bodged together this evening, it sounds completely rank.

"I don’t think the OP is saying that it was bad curry because it had lots of vegetables in it - more that he didn’t follow a recipe or cook it off properly so that the vegetables essentially just boiled in the liquid sauce and made it watery and tasteless."

So they weren't fried first you mean?

I felt vindicated in my Big Mac love when I read an interview with Michel Roux who said that occasionally, after a particularly hectic service, he went and got a Big Mac.

That's because they're fucking tasty Michel. We know it!

The curries where you fry up the spices first and add the rest are lovely.
The Spice Tailor.
Don't be tempted to bung more things in though.

I'm all for adding random bits to curries but that mix is one wet veg too many. The trouble is it would need reducing a lot to become a reasonable consistency, which by then would completely dehydrate the chicken. Maybe next time he could save some veg to make a pasta sauce for his next culinary adventure!

Oh OP this just gave me and hubby a giggle. I readmitted to him as he often accuses me of watering down sauce with too many vegetables. In his opinion peppers do not belong in a curry. (He will let us have jalfrazi as me and the kids like it....but I can't add all the other veg to it).

All my meals tend to have peppers, onions, and carrots as a basic in them....if there are other delights in the fridge I'll stick them in too....the more the merrier.

Courgette and mushroom is not at all strange in a curry but yes the method was bad. You can't call yourself a foodie if you choose to regularly eat jars of sauce.

I have little patience for bad cooks. If you don't know how to go "off piste", culinarily-speaking, find a bloody recipe to follow. It's not exactly difficult to Google something suitable.

A watery sauce will ruin pretty much any dish with the exception of consommé.

Those ingredients wouldn't worry me but if it's not cooked with care and turns out watery I wouldn't fancy it, no.

This sounds so much like my partner, bless him.

He can’t make the simplest of things without whacking in half the store cupboard 😭 I’ve had a sausage sandwich flavoured with garlic, herbs and chillies before.... like I just wanted Richmond sausages on bread with butter ffs.

I don’t let him cook often.

As a veggie I eat assorted veg and mushrooms in curry often, in homemade, shop bought and from resteraunts... they are common ingrediants, cant see how it could make it bad.

If anything I would turn my nose up at the onion (pretty sure I havent had that in curry before) and the peppers (hate those).

I'm glad the food was not wasted, thanks for clarifying OP.

For your ongoing cooking situation, I can highly recommend Simply Cook - easy to follow recipes with all herbs and spices premixed, a list of ingredients and a list of substitutions for if you want to mix it up! Most of the recipes can be made from scratch in 20 mins of less. I have a code for a free box that I can pm you if you like OP- it might help give your partner some sense of the order in which to do things when coming in general.

OP, I sympathise. My OH is the same.
Never follows a recipe and has made inedible curries before. Too dry or too wet. Veg raw or soggy. Too spicy etc. If he's just Google something and follow it instead of guessing and chucking it all in

Who puts courgette in a curry
Just. No.

Also... sweet corn in a curry is odd. It tends to come in a tin or frozen so doesn't need using up. Can't see how it would add anything to a curry

In over 20 years my dh has managed toast probably less than 10 times, beans on toast once (beans were barely warm) and pancakes twice.

@BoyTree

For your ongoing cooking situation, I can highly recommend Simply Cook - easy to follow recipes with all herbs and spices premixed, a list of ingredients and a list of substitutions for if you want to mix it up! Most of the recipes can be made from scratch in 20 mins of less. I have a code for a free box that I can pm you if you like OP- it might help give your partner some sense of the order in which to do things when coming in general.

Oh, yes! Me too. So good

Random veg boiled in a jar sauce does not a curry make.

My husband is a terrible cook. He goes on about his cheffing career washed up in a pub one summer 30 years ago
He has to add some odd ingredient to make it different but it just clashes or curdles. Worcestershire sauce in pepper sauce to colour it Coconut oil floating on the top of noodles as garnish. He uses too much salt.
Most of all, he has no idea of timing so fucks everything up. Normal people will serve tea at 6pm so put the meat in at 5, spuds at 5.15 prep the veg etc. Not him, he does it all Willy nilly in any order he fancies so nothing is ready at 6. About an hour late we're starving, veg stays in the pan getting soggy, spuds are like bricks, meat shriveled gone cold. Then gets a cob on because it's inedible. It infuriates me

The amount of people not getting the OP is amazing ... It's not that hard to understand.

Well I’m Indian so using a bottled sauce is sacrilege in my family!

That aside, you can put any veg you like in a curry. You do have to compensate for them by adding extra masala’s though. You can’t just chuck a load in a curry sauce without adding extra or it will be really bland. On the the rare, rare, occasion I’ve used a bottle sauce (uni days) I fried off onion, ginger, garlic, chilli, garam masala and curry powder, then added the meat, veg and sauce. Then finished off with some fresh coriander. Thats the only way to make a bottle sauce taste decent, imho.