To be sick of DH inability to cook

[Friarclose]

DH have been together 9 years. He cannot cook. He is the sort of person who will heat up some fish fingers and chips and tell everyone he cooked. I do 90% of the dinners here and his dinners are always just beige stuff with chips.

I am by no means Nigella but I'm an OK cook, have a small repertoire of dishes, mainly bog standard stuff the dc will always eat - spaghetti bol, roasts, shepherd's pie, sweet and sour, soups, that kind of thing. I've taught myself to do this over the years as in my twenties cooking was dumping a bit of salad cream over the top of pasta!

Tonight I asked DH if he could do dinner. Tortellini and jar sauce. Really can't get easier, 2 mins in the water. He's just served up what looks like soggy paper, all filling fallen out, mushy and horrible, inedible. Oh i got distracted when it was boiling"

I am so. Sick. Of. This.

He's 40, not a student. I have lost my shit slightly, now he's walking around like a sad child. AIBU to stop cooking for him?! He has no problem eating and enjoying everything I make but has zero interest in learning even basic cooking skills and I have really had it.

All these men who can't cook... How are they on a BBQ? Every useless manchild I know who won't cook anything other than freezer tapas thinks they're Gordon Ramsey when a BBQ is lit.

My bar is pretty high, I get meals cooked for me better than I can do for myself - as I don't have the patience or love of food that my DH does!

I have one of these too OP. It periodically gets me down too, it seems to go in cycles and I agree that this time of year the relentlessness of all the bloody cooking is a bit much and i fantasise about divorce every January.

Mine is a big fan of the beige too and considers heating a plate of beige crap to be cooking. He gets shitty if I am ungrateful for a plate of beige crap and is incapable of serving a hot plate of anything cooked from scratch. Cold shite food, usually burned along the way.

I try to let it go for a few reasons:

• he washes up and cleans the kitchen every evening
• he makes the packed lunches
• he does the laundry for him and the kids
• he does way more taxi duty than me
• I never put the bins out
• he's tidier than me

I suspect that in his head, this means that he does more than 50% of the household chores, but even though that's bullshit I think it means he is just about pulling his weight - he does a lot more than he used to a few years ago when he had a long commute so it feels like an improvement to me.

Could you agree that he does your most hated chores in an exchange for the cooking?

The other thing that's worked is teaching him one simple meal so that he can at least do something acceptable when needed (mine is pasta with fresh pesto and peas).

This is us. DH does all the cooking if he’s in. I have a few meals like spag bol, oven risotto etc that I eat with the kids. But he enjoys cooking and prefers to cook.

I do get a little narky at time that it wouldn’t kill him to eat the odd jacket potato and gammon (if I make it I just oven cook it, if he makes gammon he’ll boil it with stuff for ages) but at the end of the day I’m getting nice meals so I don’t make an argument of if.

I do all the cleaning afterwards.

If he can put beige food in the oven, he can chop veg and roast in the oven. If he gets distracted he can use a kitchen timer.

However if this has become a source of friction, it's possible that he has got a bit of a mental block. If he's prepared to learn and you are prepared not to get pissed off over fuck ups IN THE SHORT TERM then that would be my approach. But in the long run, I expect a partner to be able to cook basics.

I can’t cook… I can cook a couple of basic dishes but no way could I do a roast dinner.

I am also recently disabled. I cannot stand for long without intense pain, so now not only do I not cook, I don’t clean or anything. I have to stay sat down all the time.

I couldn't cook then one day I found a book in the library of really exciting Chinese meals you could knock up in 15 minutes that looked really tasty and I thought sod it I'm going to borrow this and try it. It was easier than I expected and the recipes were so good I loved it and I absolutely love cooking now! All it took was one little book to turn me I to a foodie 😊

I let it go- play to our strengths. He can cook the beige food when needed, it does no harm now and again.

for dh I think much of it is generational, his parents are shite cooks and their food is verging on inedible. I think it’s fucked up his palate as he has no sense of flavours and what works.

it would take years to unlearn all of that, easier if I cook and he does other things.

OP, does your bloke do other things - cleaning, childcare, shopping, washing, gardening? Any of them or anything else?

Play to your strengths - if you cook, he can wash up. If you do the shopping, he can wash the car, that kind of thing.

for dh I think much of it is generational, his parents are shite cooks and their food is verging on inedible. I think it’s fucked up his palate as he has no sense of flavours and what works.

This is true of mine too. He was raised on truly revolting food, my MIL is a terrible cook. They were forced to clean their plates at every meal and as a result he will eat any old shite and not care if it tastes crap. He can't even season food. Claims not to be able to taste a difference between his mash (cold, lumpy, unseasoned) and mine (warm, also a bit lumpy, and perfectly seasoned). Mash without salt is disgusting 🤢

@Friarclose don't loose your shit over a few tortellini.

EAT & SMILE and tell him that they taste lovely albeit seem a bit overcooked.

Then let the poor bloke find his feet in the kitchen. To become a good cook, he'll need to practice and serve up a few disasters here & there!

He can cook and would manage perfectly ok living if chips and frozen processed food

the reason he’s probably never bothered is he could quite happily live off the above
so won’t see the need

a tough one for OP but a tad unreasonable to demand he cooks to your spec he’d more than likely cook every night but you’d end up with frozen pizza or pie and chips

I’ve messed up tortellini and am a pretty decent cook and baker. It looks easy on paper but in reality they float about the dry bits staying crispy and the wet bits getting soggy. I gently stir them and spoon the simmering water over them but it has happened more than a few times that they seem to go from undercooked to soggy in a flash. Tortellini and ravioli are not my favourite types of pasta for this reason.

So, I think your reaction is OTT too.

I would think on how important is it that he also know how to cook? If there is a daily task he can wholly take over, would that balance it out?

Mine is the same and it drives me mad. I work late 2 days a week and he will literally heat sausage rolls and beans or do beans on toast for the kids.
We’re together 20 years and his excuse is always ‘I don’t know how to’ I didn’t know how to but I learned because children need food that isn’t shit.
its a serious bone of contention in this house and no matter how many rows there is over it nothing changes

Does your oven have a timer?

not to sound facetious but this really helps

I.E If the recipe says cook for 20 minutes at XXX temperature, then put the timer on for that amount of time. Then he has no excuse, because it'll beep

And these men are always PM'S, have a great job, hedge fund monkeys etc etc ad nauseum

When my ds started college he had very little interest in learning to cook. He was also disorganised, forgetful and a bit ditsy. He soon got sick of awful food so he literally put his laptop on the counter having bought the exact ingredients and followed each step on utube. If they said stir he stirred etc. He is now a good cook as he knows where to go when he wants a new dish. He is not a natural cook but has found a way that works for him.
Your dh can do it.

My husband can’t cook so I do it all apart from our fortnightly take away or if we eat out, the big bonus is we always eat exactly what I want to eat, and everything is cooked how I prefer it.

So many non cooking DHs!

I probably did overreact its just I worked a full shift all day and I hardly ever ask him to do dinner and I just wasn't in the mood for it all.

He's a good man and good in most other aspects, just has zero common sense.

My DH does all the cooking. We had the oven for 3 years and I had to ask him how to turn it on a few day ago.

If he can hold down a job, drive a car, build a flatpack he can cook. DH comes from a traditional culture (North African) yet he and the majority of his friends can cook. Both my DC can cook. Tell your DH that there are loads of straightforward recipe videos out there.

Not always. Raised with shit food and no idea of what tastes good means we are on to a loser.

he has tried. I have tried to teach him, but evening after evening of tastless overcooked and/or overseasoned mush that he covers with ketchup and can’t see why no one else likes it, nope, he can do the ironing.

I do think you need to enjoy food and know what good food is to know how to cook, and some people just don’t.

mind he is shit at building flat pack too 😂

YANBU. He needs to up his adulting.

Is there anything he does that you can’t?

if so, be prepared for that to stop.