How do I tell dh that he's a REALLY bad cook?

[Ohmygodmakeitstop]

I don't know what he does to everything to make it so shit.

Of course I'm grateful for him cooking sometimes (not often, thankfully), but it's getting to a point where I dread him cooking.

We are beyond skint at the moment, and he has used up so many things in one really crap dish, and I'm fuming. Not only that, but I have to sit and eat it and pretend it's nice because I don't want to hurt his feelings.

What do I do? He's so proud and chest puffy-outy when he does it, and generally he's an ok partner. But mother of God 🤮

He can cook a really good steak, tbf. But those days are gone for a while!

He's not learning, he's 53 🤣

But he used to be quite good, believe it or not! Don't know what he thinks he's doing!

Right, time to go back to my usual name 😁

Thanks for the laugh tonight. I am guarding that gammon with my life tomorrow 😉

Are you sure he wasn't actually trying to kill you? Either by undercooking meat or just plain starvation by never giving you anything edible?

I am usually at least competent but I made TERRIBLE pasta this evening 😢so upsetting. Do you think he knows deep down?

has he forgotten that you need to drain the potatoes?

Did he like what he cooked? I once decided to make a quiche. It was absolutely shite. I knew it was shite so I decided to never inflict it on anyone ever again.

Haha! Recently rewatched the Friends episode where Rachel makes a traditional British trifle - by adding shepherd’s pie to it.

Also slightly horrifying to learn on this thread that at least 2 blokes have thought fish & meat a good idea in a stew.

Not entirely sure, no. I begged him not to cook, and he would sulk and call me ungrateful. I'd have been happy enough with a tin of soup as I got home from work quite late after a long commute.

Anyway, I left him. For many reasons, all of which can be summed up as "he didn't respect me".

Sadly, if the spuds are rubbish then very easily. I have made potato soup before now and I don't even add milk to mine, just butter and S&P. I do tend to steam my potatoes now as have had far too many many issues when boiling them.

My dh makes a few things, but he doesn't cook them for as long as I do, nor season and wonders why his spag Bol or chilli doesn't taste quite as good as mine 🤔 His does taste fine, btw, just needs some salt.

I feel life is too short to make pastry. I buy it ready done as it stresses me out far too much.

Haha my ex was like this. Really fancies himself as an amazing cook, to the point where he ran his own cafe (not for long, it was always empty and he had to close it down). To be fair, he could do a half decent pasta dish, but other than that my cooking was hands down better, and I don’t consider myself to be particularly good.

There was one time we put on an event to raise money with food and entertainment for 80 people, of course he had to be in charge of the food. But I was ‘allowed’ to do one side dish. And all night he had people telling him they really enjoyed the food, particularly the side dish that I’d done (no one knew I’d done it). He was really quite pissed off about that 😂.

Tricky though because like your DH you could never tell him his food was shite. He had a big old ego about it. Luckily my kids are a lot less tactful and would tell him straight that his roasts (or whatever) weren’t as good as mine 🤣.

Is it always with chicken thighs too? My ex used to do this and it was enough to make me vomit.

Another one here. DP cannot do timings or seasonings.

He also once used a can of condensed milk in a curry because there was no coconut milk.

Oh my word! What IS it with men who lose all their senses when it comes to cooking?

However having said that, I was reminded of the Friend’s episode when Rachel added beef, potatoes, peas and onions to an "English Trifle". _. 🌹

It's ridiculous for grownups not to be able to cook simple meals.

My 8 year old grandson can make simple meals correctly like mash, spaghetti, casseroles.

Have him look at simple meals in 30 minutes on YouTube and he'll find 1000s of recipes and they show step by step how to do it.

"Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls 
Married impossible men? 
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out, 
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten. 

Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic, 
Foul-tempered or depraved 
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world 
How well women behave, and always have behaved). 

Impossible men: idle, illiterate, 
Self-pitying, dirty, sly, 
For whose appearance even in City parks 
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by. "

Robert Graves

These men can cook, they can follow recipes.. but they choose not to. They know better than chefs who created the dishes. They can make it 'better', make the dinner stretch further by adding ingredients and they won't admit they are wrong.

My ex read that putting some chocolate in chili could bring out the flavour. So he dumped half a bar of Dairy Milk in.

He once made me a birthday cake and couldn't be bothered to go and buy butter, so used a block of lard instead ("it's the same thing" - funny how I could tell as soon as I took a bite) and when trying to make a chocolate cake he couldn't find the cocoa powder (it was in the cupboard with the baking stuff, not in the cupboard with the tea and coffee stuff) so he used drinking chocolate powder instead, which is mainly sugar and dried milk.

Oh, and his approach to roasted potatoes was to cut them all different sizes. Literally some were thin slices almost like crisps and others were more or less the whole potato. When I asked what he was doing he said it was "more interesting" than my way of cutting them more or less the same size. I pointed out that they would cook at different rates but apparently I was being stupid.

The result was burnt crispy bits and uncooked lumps. Also soaked in oil, so rather than roasted they were just slowly boiled in oil. Inedible.

This is quite sweet really, OPs DH had enough presence of mind to decide to make a quiche without being asked. That's a plus. The fact he's not good at making quiche is a minus. But he can probably learn to improve if he's got the motivation to turn his hand to it in the 1st place!

I think the crux of the problem is knowing his limitations. And this is tricky because some people have really bad taste buds. I work in food development and honestly when we do panels and benchmarking so many people genuinely can't taste the differences between versions. So all those bad cooks out there might genuinely be enjoying what they make, and as they enjoy it will think others must to, and that as a result translates into a feeling of confidence in their cooking ability.

The dodgy mash sounds like he's maybe in this camp and with extra belief and confidence in his ability he's watched master chef or whatever and seen people doing pomme purée and thought he'd give it a crack. Poor misguided sausage.

This is so funny. I also don’t let DH cook.
He used to be okay but age has done something odd to him. He can make something perfectly normal, but the desire to fuck it up is just too strong and he will ruin it by adding weird ingredients and thinking it’s creative.
i especially don’t let him make pasta as he has on several occasions added sweetener to the sauce as it ‘didn’t taste sweet’. Tuna and canderell are not complimentary.
I also defrosted pasta sauce and left him to it. He served mostly dry pasta, turned out he has saved the sauce so I could freeze it for another meal.
Half the problem is his mother was a dreadful cook and he thought she was great. I spent years convincing him that everything didn’t need to be cooked until it was either cremated or mush. Or with half a bottle of salt added. He still slips into ‘that’s not how mummy made it’.

Quiche (or any pie), mash and beans is very Lancastrian!

Now THIS makes sense to me

I couldn't be in a relationship where I had to tiptoe around in case the other person was all sad and morose

Can't he taste his shit food?

Fucking hell 🤣🤣

I blame their mothers!

Quiche is quite hard to make and I'd never serve it with mash

Why?

My DH is a good cook, although he does get into a flap with new recipes and has to read everything 10 times until he feels confident he's got it right lol

My DM on the otherhand... I learnt to cook as a teenager to avoid her cooking 🤣 I think she is allergic to seasoning/salt as everything just tastes so. Bland. I don't know how she manages it. Its like she's an expert at extracting the flavour out of perfectly good and tasty ingredients.

My lovely MIL who is a good cook has had a few hilariously bad moments too. On the whole she's amazing, but one year she decided to do turkey for Christmas (she usually does gammon in our family). She cooked the turkey in the same way she did the gammon. As in overnight, low temperature in the oven. It was more like dehydrated turkey you'd find in a rations pack from the military.