Marcus Radford / Tom Kerridge

[Ihatesandwiches]

I like both these guys. Today I followed the links for their inspiring recipes for FSM families. As a confident cook (and with money to spend on food) I was appalled at the recipes. So disappointed.
Yes - the recipes are too complicated
No - the recipes are accessible for most people

@toomuchtooold

It's the recipes on the instagram you're supposed to follow isn't it, not the ones on his website? It's the Instagram that confuses me - I just want a list of the recipes, I don't want teaser videos of cheese toasties... I'm probably a bit old for their target audience though.

Oldie here too. Write it down. In a list on one page please. Having waded through the website and found out how Instagram works the recipes look good though. Simple and cheap and most importantly edible. Does anyone remember a thread on food banks a few years back where some preachy arse was saying there’s no need for them because you can feed a family on oatcakes and mushed up red kidney beans for £1.20. The lack of common sense and empathy was gobsmacking. These recipes are the opposite. Cheap and palatable.

Oldie here too. Write it down. In a list on one page please.

They have on the website - each recipe has its own page with clear, simple instructions. Instagram is where they post cookalong videos to help those who might want that over written instructions alone as well as other posts intended to up their audience engagement to keep people coming back each week and to maximise the people who see their posts.

@etinox

endchildfoodpoverty.org/full-time-meals

Scroll down for the recipes
Instagram is about driving traffic to the website

When you read through the recipes you can see the care they’ve taken to limit the equipment needed (like kitchen scales or measuring jugs) and to use ingredients that people are familiar with.

[quote TotorosCatBus]@etinox

endchildfoodpoverty.org/full-time-meals

Scroll down for the recipes
Instagram is about driving traffic to the website [/quote]
Thank you!

They can't cope with his level of complexity. Easy for me and most MN'ers who are only basically competent, but not for the kind of audience he is appealing to

Poor people arent on mumsnet @oblomov21 ? And poor people aren't competent? Or able to understand complexity?

Wow. Just wow

Patronising the poor isn't new, of course.

This is from The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell, 1937.

“Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.”

Also:

“A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards. A man dies and is buried, and all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten lives after him in the sound or rotten bones of his children. I think it could be plausibly argued that changes of diet are more important than changes of dynasty or even of religion....Yet it is curious how seldom the all-importance of food is recognized. You see statues everywhere to politicians, poets, bishops, but none to cooks or bacon-curers or market gardeners.”

Love Orwell.

@zukiecat

That Whole Chicken Satay recipe is not straightforward! Not to mention that it would cost a fortune to buy all the ingredients.

I fancy trying the Beef and Stout Stew, just without the Stout and Mushrooms.

You must be joking. Not straightforward? What on earth are you usually cooking? Not seeing where it would cost a fortune either - everything except the chicken is cheap.

These seem like very easy recipes OP and they’ve clearly deliberately cut down on ingredients. I can’t see the problem at all.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g wonderful quotes from Orwell, thank you.

Deathstare I never said nor meant anything of the sort. You have completely misquoted me.

I meant their level of cooking capabilities. And I didn't mention poor people. I meant most people, couldn't cope with the complexity of TK's previous recipes because they are particularly complicated, more so than most of the other celebrity chefs.

This is a very confused thread. People aren't reading it all, not surprising I suppose, as it's fairly long now.

Tom Kerridge's normal recipes are quite complicated because he's a chef and he's writing for people who love cooking and have plenty of time, equipment and money for ingredients/fuel/cookery books.

He did some much simpler, quicker recipes for the BBC series on losing weight he did recently.

He's now done some even simpler, cheap recipes for this new project. There are many links in this thread to straightforward recipes on various websites. There are five here on the Sainsbury's website: recipes.sainsburys.co.uk/scrapbooks/get-cooking-with-marcus-and-tom

Chicken satay is one of the confusing ones because there's a complicated cheffy recipe on his own website for a whole chicken satay with salad, and really super basic pared down one on the Full Time website using chicken thighs, carrots, onions and noodles.

Thanks, @JingsMahBucket! (Great name, btw)

I heard Tom and Marcus on the radio when the scheme was launched.

They clearly said these recipes were aimed at kids/teenagers so they could cook themselves something easy and tasty when they got home.
Tom explained that he had to cook for himself and a sibling as their mum was at work when they got home from school.

They launched the scheme via social media so that it was easily accessible to kids. I think it's brilliant.

YABVU
I think they’re great recipes. A moderately competent 12 year old could do most of them, they’re quick and they are easy to follow.

A great initiative from Kerridge and Rashford.

@Badabingbadabum

www.theguardian.com/food/2021/may/29/easy-tortilla-pizza-creamy-chicken-pie-kettle-omelette-shakshuka-traybake-marcus-rashford-and-tom-kerridge-easy-family-recipes

Some of the recipes in the guardian today. Why do so many on mumsnet think that families receiving free school meals or on a tight income are complete idiots who can only manage to heat up oven chips. These look like filling tasty meals with long life freezer and cupboard ingredients.

This. Pretty ignorant comments on this thread.

I grew up in a 1 parent family poverty etc. I was cooking from 9, visiting food banks. I could read write etc shop i would have liked some direction. I like they way they are not treating these families children etc like idiots. To me it doesn't come across as condescending crap. At least rash Ford is using his wealth and platform positively something many others could learn

I was cooking from 9, visiting food banks. I could read write etc shop i would have liked some direction. I like they way they are not treating these families children etc like idiots. To me it doesn't come across as condescending crap. At least rash Ford is using his wealth and platform positively something many others could learn
Agreed. I grew up in poverty too, and learned so much from my mum about making food stretch out. Potato peelings into fries, bulking out with lentils, freezing leftover meat, etc and then putting all the scrap ends of meat into a mystery pie. More than I ever learned from school HE lessons, which used to make my mum cry as the school’s ingredients list would take up so much of her shopping budget.,
There’s so much you can do, simply and relatively cheaply, but it’s sharing the knowledge I think Marcus and Tom are trying to do here.
I hate the sneery attitude. Families aren’t stupid, they are often cash and time poor. Why would anyone do someone down who is trying to help families cook and eat better?

My parents were very young when they had us so we lived on a tight budget until they were able to progress in their careers. My Dad absolutely loved cooking and still does. I hate that people assume cooking is only for the rich. It's a basic life skill that should be accessible to everyone and having chefs like Tom Kerridge come up with cheap recipes should be applauded. It helps disprove the myth that processed foods are cheaper and builds confidence in the kitchen.

I applaud them too, but I'd like to see some costings that it really is cheaper to eat home-cooked food. Multinationals can buy in such huge quantities that they get a really low unit price on ingredients, far lower than we can get as individual households. Of course they then to have add on a mark up to cover all their other costs and to make a profit, but when you can get a burger for 99p as somebody said upthread, with no fuel costs, and no time to factor in for shopping, cooking and washing up, where's the incentive to cook for yourself instead?

This is a large part of the problem. Fast food and highly processed food is cheap as well as easy and quick. If food manufacturers were forced to pay the environmental costs they're responsible for, the balance might tip a bit the other way.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g The burger thing is a good point. I'm a vegetarian and although I buy meat occasionally for DH, we mostly eat vegetarian so I'm quite out of touch and didn't consider the cost of a standard diet. In my head I was comparing a single Thai green curry ready meal (£2.50 in Sainsbury's) to the basic version I make which is about £4-£5 for 4 servings depending on the veg I use and any offers.

@MilduraS, yes, it makes a lot more sense to cook for yourself if you don't eat meat, I would think. In our household we eat meat for a main meal once, sometimes twice, in a week, although I often have meat at lunchtime (e.g. ham sandwich) as well. We have fish a couple of times a week too. The rest of the time the protein comes from pulses, nuts, grains, cheese, milk, yogurt, eggs, and we eat a lot of vegetables and fruit. Some of those things can be bought for a song, especially if you live near a market or a discount store, but a lot can't, and then you've got the skill gap from people who didn't learn how to cook when they were growing up and have a lot to learn about buying, storing and preparing food, as well as cooking it.

I wish the government would make it a priority to help everybody get access to healthy food. They'd need to look at so many things to make a difference, though. What food shops do people have access to, both physical and online, and is it easy to make use of them? How can they get more people living in spacious enough accommodation to fit in a fridge/freezer, food cupboards, microwave, basic cooking equipment etc? How can they help people acquire the knowledge and skills they need, not just to cook, but also around food hygiene and nutrition?

This campaign is a good start. Marcus and Tom have the credentials to do it, as they know first hand what it's like.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

I applaud them too, but I'd like to see some costings that it really is cheaper to eat home-cooked food. Multinationals can buy in such huge quantities that they get a really low unit price on ingredients, far lower than we can get as individual households. Of course they then to have add on a mark up to cover all their other costs and to make a profit, but when you can get a burger for 99p as somebody said upthread, with no fuel costs, and no time to factor in for shopping, cooking and washing up, where's the incentive to cook for yourself instead?

This is a large part of the problem. Fast food and highly processed food is cheap as well as easy and quick. If food manufacturers were forced to pay the environmental costs they're responsible for, the balance might tip a bit the other way.

It’s about education. When the parents at my nursery realised you can make a healthy meal for the whole family for under 99p with minimal fuel costs, some slowly started to move away from fast food options.

But it doesn’t always have to be ‘properly’ homecooked food all the time - for some this initiative has helped them take a step from McDs or the chippie everyday to subbing in beans (or other tinned veg / soups) with toast some days. And then 1 or 2 cooked meals a week. It’s still processed but much, much healthier. And still a step in the right direction.

My ds made this for us the other week as part of his DofE

It was simple and pretty good- we will make it again and tweak, but it was good enough

I love what Tom and Markus are doing! Good for them!

Pretty sure MR and TK will have workshopped these and tested them with the intended audience...

I had a Tom Kerridge recipe book given to me a few years ago. I never cooked a thing from it as it was ridiculously complicated - and I am a competent cook.

It’s about education. When the parents at my nursery realised you can make a healthy meal for the whole family for under 99p with minimal fuel costs, some slowly started to move away from fast food options.

Its not only education but about confidence - for every poster on mumsnet who can make a chicken last a family of 10 a month because of their kitchen nous, there is a family where "cooking" has never been anything more challenging than calling the takeaway or bunging something and chips in the oven for 20 mins on 200°. I have mountains of cookbooks but some recipes I have never and will never attempt because they are either overly complicated or use far too many ingredients in small quantities that I just don’t want to have to buy as the initial outlay isn't worth it (eg you need a teaspoon of X and tablespoon of Y but X and Y are only sold in a minimum quantity of 250g)

Some families just don't have the money/time to risk trying lots of new things in case they go wrong or aren't liked, so they stick to what they know. Recipes like the ones in the FTM programme are basic enough that anyone can follow them and use common enough ingredients that most people will be confident enough using, and if they don't have something then there's usually another common ingredient they can sub instead as a lot of people don't feel confident in just chopping and changing parts of a recipe.