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.

Sounds like you have different standards for meals and cleanliness and probably can’t live harmoniously together. Does everyone else care/feel he’s taking the piss as much as you do? Sounds like a group living situation and there’s always going to be a range of people with different attitudes that have to rub along in that scenario, and a certain amount of letting things go. Hard to tell from your description if he’s a problematic freeloader or if you’re being dictatorial.

God he sounds infuriating! Is this your DH/DP? I couldn’t respect someone so whiny and immature.

Roasting is cooking as far as I'm concerned, give two people the exact piece of meat and ask them both to roast.

One may well come out beautifully succulent, or pulled with gorgeous gravy with superbly done crisp roast vedge and the other who chucked it in at all in, in one go with zero prep or care can come out like cardboard with burn roast veg.

Big difference.

I crossposted with your recent updates.. sounds like the former then, but if it is a young adult child then good luck arguing him out of it! Maybe he needs to live independently to realise how much work others are doing?

For those who provide fresh cooked meals everyday, do you have young children?! if so what do you do when you are prepping the food? Are they watching screen or getting involved? Curious..
I don't stand around with fresh veg,
I tend to get frozen pre sorted veg and just boil it! Time saver. Or I will do a lot of frying..

What would you class my dinner tonight as?
Brocolli, cauliflower, carrots, homemade wedges & fishfingers?
The veg is all from fresh and chopping etc..I’d consider that cooking 🤔 but it feels weird to call the opening the packet and putting the fishfingers on a baking tray cooking 😬

To answer the question, no, I don't think most people would eat chicken and potato every day (if that was the question)

The person you're discussing clearly doesn't like cooking, wants to put in minimal effort and get a pass for literally putting 'something on the table'.

You're unlikely to change this person / their opinion, no matter how hard you try, some people just can't be assed 'cooking' - I have two relatives and a friend who are like this, luckily for me, their opinions/actions don't impact me but I can see why it'd be irritating if everyone else is making more of an effort and this one person isn't.

However, if the food is edible (even if it's repetitive & boring) I don't think I'd pick this hill to die on.

If it involves adding heat to food items before they are eaten, then it's cooking. HTH.

Blimey. I’ve seen it all on here now. Making a roast dinner from scratch doesn’t count as cooking? Ok.

It doesn't really make any difference if it's homemade or from the freezer if it goes in the oven, air fryer or microwave it's cooked as a lot of frozen food is raw so you have to cook it to eat it.

Cooking is whatever it takes to get a meal down on the table in the evening.

Anything made before 4pm is not cooking 😆 no idea why.

The opposite of cooking is phoning for a takeaway.

Interesting question OP.

If I'm cooking, then I'm using either the hob and/or oven, and cooking something (usually) from scratch, so this can range from boiling eggs, baking a cake, pan-frying fish/meat, sauces, roasting a chicken and everything in between.

If I'm making something to eat, then the components are usually all cold - I'm assembling something be it a salad, a sandwich etc etc. There's rarely, if ever any heat involved.

(I don't have a microwave and rarely buy anything ready made, but if I do, this I would class as heating up something to eat!)

Popping a shop bought pizza or pie in oven is warming not cooking. Using fresh ingredients from scratch is cooking. Chicken breast, potatoes and fresh veg or even frozen peas is basic cooking in my book.

Raw food is cooked
Cooked food is heated up

Yeah but what do you mean ‘from scratch’ ? you mean peeling some veg and unwrapping a chicken, bit of oxo and some oil, all in the oven and feet up for an hour? Kettle on for the bisto and Roberts your fathers brother? It’s a lazy Sunday washing up generator, not a culinary masterpiece.

I will agree with a roast dinner being an easy one and I make me own yorkies and stuffing but they are not hard to all cook together.

Days in this house it will be a takeout, another day could be anything on toast and i mean anything (fish fingers and peas, super noodles, literally anything) and then I have days where every spice and herb is out on the island being used.

When dp 'cooks' it is pasta with chilli or tabasco sauce added to it. This is what he considers cooking. The odd time he will BUY a cooked chicken and just throw frozen spuds and yorkies in the oven and boil peas and again calls it cooking. Maybe it is just a personal thing!

The pasta is cooked but it's not cooking per se to my mind. I would think the same about throwing a spud in the microwave or oven to make baked potato. Basically, you end up with cooked food, the same way you end up with cooked food if you bung a ready meal in the oven but it doesn't count as cooking it yourself.

I think I,explained my logic re the sauce and meat. I don't consider it cooking if you haven't done the main part of the meal yourself. I would describe that as preparing food using convenience food.

Scrambled pancake.

Cooking to me is the minimum required to get something you like to eat

If that's putting a piece of chicken and a
Potato in the oven that's great

I think more people realised how easy lots of cooking can be they might be happier to avoid junk and ready meals

Faffing around - who had time for that when kids are needing fed and it s late and your tired ?

So you have adult children living at home and have a cooking rota?

We have a similar situation and proper cooking happens.

YANBU but I wonder when you say "we give them chicken and chips with Coleslaw" or "we give them sausages and mash" do you mean that you decide the meals and tell them what you are expecting them to cook? What would happen if you ask them to just decide the menu themselves?

On Thursdays we decide the menu for the week ahead and adult DC have their days when they cook. They write on the menu what they will cook and put ingredients on the shopping list. Frankly, they are more adventurous than me or Dh and we all like cooking!

But, yeah, they are BU to moan about mashing potatoes or making gravy!!

This is what my DSis did and I plan the same! It’s adulting.

I don’t count heating up ingredients that have their own ingredients ‘cooking’. Pasta with pesto is not cooking unless you make the pesto.

As one can purchase jacket potatoes ready cooked, rubbing a spud with oil and a little salt and cooking in the combi, to me gets labelled as cooking. Not fancy, but you’ve washed and prepared raw ingredients so why not!

Using a cooker is cooking in my opinion.

If this is a young person you need to tell them to get a grip and stop it with the whingeing and whining. Sometimes we need to be grown up about things and just do them if they need doing.

That's daft. Making toast is not cooking. Popping corn is not cooking. Putting a ready meal in the oven is not cooking.