To ask what you'd class as cooking?

[Mouldyfoodhelp]

Having a discussion with someone and their stance is: just getting a chicken breast out the pack and into the oven with a few potatoes is good enough cooking, doing the same with a ready meal, or buying a pie.

My stance is that whilst that's cooking in its absolutely most basic sense ( bar the ready meal), it's not what most people mean when they cook. Now I'm not being snobby we have more than our fair share of crap food but I say actual cooking has more processes like let's say a roast even though you're putting a chicken in the oven you're seasoning it, portioning it afterwards and you've got the veg to sort out, Yorkshire, stuffing etc. Other food ideals are for example a carbonara, shepherds pie, lasagne type stuff meals.

And even if some people do just put stuff in the oven I argue it's not literally just a plain chicken breast normally and they generally do some work for the meal.

It's more about expectations of results when each is cooking because I know they wouldn't be happy If that's all I did all the time as well.

Oh and they'll put everything in the oven for an extended period to purposefully overcook it, the menu and shopping is basically solely my responsibility and everyone cooking has the same time in the home, but the other person I'm talking about does the least cooking and least in general so has more time they could put into cooking if they wanted but I feel like this is getting away from the original point now to a whole other post.

Dunno? Do you? It all sorta just goes in the oven and the roast + roast juice comes out? It always seems to just end up ready at the same time? But fair enough, making gravey sounds pretty complicated.

The key for me is whether the end result is delicious and eaten with relish. I may be biased, when I 'cook for myself' I chop up a good variety of salad vegetables, add cheese, olive and other tasty morsels.

It's my favourite meal ever, I never tire of eating it snd the infinite variations.

And it's good for me, too.

I would still consider it cooking even if it started with a jarred sauce, I’ve still got raw meat to put into the sauce. I mean in the very basic sense, if the meat wasn’t ‘cooked’ then we would get ill, so definitely cooking IMO.
I wouldn’t consider a salad cooking as no heat is involved. That would be preparing food IMO.

Quite frankly, if someone else is putting it on the table, they get to call it whatever they like.

Cooking is making food as a precursor to eating… whatever that may be. Good food/cooking is completely different … it can be from a freezer or a pot noodle if that’s what you really want to eat right then.

my dh does freezer food and I make steak snd kidney pie with mash n veg from ingredients … both fine with me. But then he refits the bathroom snd I hand him the tools. After which I order a takeaway.

so is it cooking or someone taking the puss that’s the issue?

I can't really see why it matters. Unless I suppose you are talking about the domestic work and effort.

I feel like when you talk about cooking and 9f you can cook it's about knowing a good range otlf techniques and what flavours work together maybe? But I don't know I'd be able to say what counts as cooking. Just that there are different levels of effort. Like fridge to oven or a stir fry mix kit, or a full toast for example are cooking just different effort

It's all cooking really isn't it? Unless it's an all in one ready meal then it's just heating.

If you're turning something raw into food then it's cooking.

Carbonara is what I cook when I can't be bothered to cook

Doing something with a few raw ingrediants = cooking.

Tonight's tea was chips and roasted veg. Not fancy or time consuming but it involved preparing raw veg, chopping up potatos etc so I'd say that was cooking.

A roast is about as complicated as we get!

"Cooking" doesn't have to involve heat.

But I'm not going to judge if throwing a ready made sauce on some dried pasta is all someone can manage.

Surely cooking is anything that involves heating food to eat? so even a microwave meal is cooking.

Yes there’s different styles of cooking but heating food is cooking.

👍

I feel like stuff such as salad is a grey area as there's not much actual cooking say like a chicken breast, egg, maybe pasta rice or potatoes to bulk it out but there's time spent prepping like cutting stuff, coincidentally they won't make a salad because its rabbit food and " nobody would cut everything up they'd just put it in the bowl" and complained when we've insisted it needed to be, and wouldn't do eggs or any pasta or the like, which made them hate the salad more

I have some sympathy, OP.

I lived with an ex who was a very enthusiastic cook. He expected what I regarded as complicated cooking every night. He could not understand that after a day's commute, the most I was really interested in was grilled pork chops with mash, plum chutney and veg.

If it didn't have 25 ingredients and look like MasterChef, he wasn't happy.

Whenever he went away with the boys, my supper was cheese, wine, a few olives and some chunky bread.

In the end, it was just too stressy and every meal was a misery.

Some people really don’t like cooking. Trying to force them to do stuff when there’s ready-prepped or different options available sounds miserable. Give them something else to do - all the bathroom cleaning, or the laundry, or all the clearing up after cooking.

It's not really. You roast the meat and when it's done you put it to one side to rest on a plate. Then you use the juices left in the roasting tin plus some stock and/or vegetable cooking water and I do what my Mum always does, I thicken it with some Bisto powder, which is basically cornflour and a bit of caramel and salt. Not much different from making custard or cheese sauce.

Chicken and potatoes - yes, because you will need to scrub/chop the potatoes, season the meat etc.

Heating a can of soup / tin of beans - no.

If the meal is chicken, chips and coleslaw, then I wouldn’t want to portion a whole raw chicken, peel and cut chips and cut and prep coleslaw. So I’m on the side of the lazy arse here - and I’m an excellent cook.

I guess instead of focusing on the literal definition of cooking as I mentioned in my OP it is cooking in its most basic form its more if you think people literally have just plain chicken and potatoes every day? Or a jacket potato with literally nothing on it and I mean literally nothing.

The main thing is that you and DP split the cooking and both get a meal that involves protein, fibre and veg on the table.

Beyond that don’t make it a competition. If they just do assembly meals and you’d like to do the same, then do. if they complain tell them that if they complain about your cooking you won’t be doing any more

For him we don't even make him make chips we buy them for him 9/10 times.

If it was chicken, chips and coleslaw, I'd use crinkle cut oven chips and shop bought coleslaw. I wouldn't waste time chopping veg from scratch when it's all readily available.

Why would I?

DP does out of the freezer and into the oven. I do from scratch using raw ingredients. I don't consider what he does 'cooking', it's not the same. We have very different standards but it's fine, he does him and I do me

@Mouldyfoodhelp Just to be clear we don't use jar Bolognaise, we go for white sauces as a back up for lasagne that's about the extent of it

It's ok. You don't have to explain yourself to me 😀😀😀

Well quite. If you can buy ready-made chips why cut your own?

Honestly, give the guy a break, whoever he is. Stop asking him to cook, or expecting anything but bung-in-the-oven food.

I was sympathetic until it seems there’s at least 3 of you cooking, not just 2.

Why would I?

Because it tastes much nicer and is usually healthier?

That's why I do it anyway. But everyone's different and has different priorities, skills, preferences.