DH doesn't think critically about a recipe as he's making it

[shaniahoo]

I desperately need to rant about my lovely DH, but not to his face since he's just made me a really lovely dinner and I am grateful for that. I am.

But when he cooks from a recipe he sometimes does something really weird because he read it wrong but doesn't notice that it might be wrong and question it.

So this evening we planned a new recipe from a Jamie Oliver book and I left it to him because I was out at an appointment. I said just follow the recipe. Jamie said use frozen mixed onion, carrot and celery but we don't have that nonexistent product so I got those vegetables in fresh. I didn't mention that to DH, didn't think it necessary. He decided to use the frozen mixed veg that we do have in, which is peas, sweetcorn, carrots and green beans. I don't understand why you would see "frozen onion, carrot and celery" and choose to use a frozen mix of completely different vegetables, rather than the same veg but fresh, and also apparently have never at any point considered that might be wrong. See it's not just misreading the recipe, it's also the fact that this veg is getting sauteed in oil and then add some vinegar and cook it off before adding chopped tomatoes. That's a REALLY WEIRD thing to do to peas and sweetcorn and he never considered that it was weird. He does more than half the cooking in our house and regularly makes pasta sauces that start with onion carrot and celery!

The meal was really nice anyway so I limited myself to a brief indignation then shut up about it and enjoyed the dinner.

There have been other times...like one time he made brownies from a jar recipe, and it said to mix together the dry ingredients then add eggs and bake. So because it didn't explicitly say to mix the eggs in, he poured them on top of the dry mix and put it in the oven like that. He said he was just following the instructions and they should have said to mix, but come on you're making brownies here, brownies do not consist of chocolate powder with baked eggs on top.

His visual memory is really bad, like he's a proper "kinesthetic learner" and doesn't seem to picture stuff in his head the way I do, which I've always struggled to understand and I wonder whether it's because when he's doing something he doesn't picture the end result as he's doing it, and therefore doesn't "see" a dish of powder with baked eggs on top of it, or pasta sauce with peas and sweetcorn as a base. Would love to hear from people whose brains work in the same way his does and who can fully understand making this type of mistake!

I'd spend a week looking at every video on YouTube I could find if I were tiling or wallpapering for the first time.

This is because I care about how the tiles or the wallpaper would look, and also because ballsing it up would cost me money and remind me of my mistakes every time I entered the tiled or papered room.

It's also because I don't have anyone else to step in and fix my mistakes as they happen, or tell me not to worry, they'll do all the tiling and papering from now on.

I'm very clinical about people whose domestic shtick seems to be incompetence, but once outsode that front door, they drive a car and hold down a job, order meals in restaurants, catch trains at the right platform, get off at the right stop...

The husband here didn’t seem to be trying to get the OP to take over though. She even says ‘the meal was really nice anyway’. She just thinks his substitution was a weird choice.

I am not at all impressed at men who use strategic incompetence to get out of stuff. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happened here. He’s just chosen a weird variable to substitute along and finished cooking the meal. The OP presumably discovered it when she sat down to eat.

Personally, if I were ruling, I wouldn’t even try to substitute things. I’d need to gave the exactly right tools and materials because I’d make a stupid substitution decision and, as you say, I’d have to live with the permanent effects of that. In fact, I’d pay someone who knows what they’re doing because I would bugger it up!

By the way that frozen carrot, celery stuff is indeed very much a product called soffrito

Also known as mirepoix in French cooking. It is a combination of onion, carrot and celery and generally cut to the same size. It's used in a ratio that's 2 parts onion to 1 part celery and 1 part carrot.

That's a REALLY WEIRD thing to do to peas and sweetcorn and he never considered that it was weird.

Why would he? Cooking is a science and technique and if you don’t have the basic knowledge or experience then yeah you do what the recipe says. Some recipes assume a level of knowledge and skill that the reader sometimes doesn’t have.

DD and I did a lot of baking over the Christmas period and unlike me who had Domestic Science/ Home Economics as a kid, didn’t see the problem when the recipe called for using a dough hook for mixing a mixture that was more batter than dough. When we made buttermilk scones I had to explain what gluten was and how its development impacted our treatment of scone dough as opposed to bread dough.

By the way that frozen carrot, celery stuff is indeed very much a product called soffrito

It is indeed. It's supposed to add more flavour to dishes like spaghetti Bolognese or just a basic tomato sauce for spaghetti. I've never noticed it making any difference than just using onion on its own.

Similar situation here with my DH, only he can't read the local language so goes solely on the packaging. He's done some mad things, went to buy marshmallows and came back with mothballs - fair enough they did look similar.

More seriously though he is diabetic and can't read the characters for sugar so often comes back with the sugared version of stuff by mistake as the difference is very subtle.

Thankfully Google Translate has really reduced these though.

Sorry but I wouldn’t be able to cope with that level of stupidness. The veg thing I can kind of understand (although it’s still stupid) but the brownies thing really demonstrates a severely lacking IQ

Does he enjoy cooking or is it something he is made to do?

He's definitely neurodiverse. Both of my kids are like that. Literal to a fault.

I'm autistic and dyspraxic, and this sounds exactly how I approach everything! I'm also intelligent (undergrad, masters, difficult field of work) but my brain just cannot fill in the gaps for things that aren't clearly set out. Once someone points it out, I'm baffled I missed it too. It can definitely make life really frustrating.

Ha ha my son does similar he's autistic and only 15 so not quite the same.

for me following recopies is key to a good food or bakery creation, its like a set of military orders follow x, y,z and in theory the goal should be achieved.,

not ill think a,b,c is required by the text but instead il do e,g,f etc and hope it achieves the same results

Maybe he had some learning disability and struggles with directions.

This made me irrationally annoyed 😂

It Sounds like he might some sort of language disability. Following things literally is a very autistic trait but could also be something around dyslexia or other language interpreting conditions. Does he do the same with aural instructions or is it just the written word he struggles with? Does he make similar mistakes in other areas of life? I admit the brownies made me giggle but is possibly something my autistic daughter might do. Not sure about the veg substitution as she’s very specific when cooking that carrot and sweetcorn wouldn’t replace the onion and celery. But the word frozen could then put a spin on it depending whether they’ve picked up on the word frozen more.

Also I buy the ready diced onion from the fridge section of the supermarket and store in my freezer as I hate chopping onion. I’d personally leave out the celery as I don’t like it!! You can probably by that in the fridges too though.

My immediate response would be ( because he sounds genuinely dedicated to cooking) to suggest that he has a form of ' Dyslexia'..??????? The thought process isn't match the written instruction. I'm no expert on Dyslexia but It don't sound like he's deliberately sabotaging The dish. Also Highly Gifted people sometimes lack common sense.and Logic.

Home ec lesson aged about 14.

C's parents were diplomats or something, so she was mostly at home with an nanny, and never did the trad baking we did with our parents when little.

Task:scotch eggs. Cover the whole egg in the sausage meat. So she did. Including the shell. Crunch tastic.

She did end up at Oxford though, still no idea if she can cook....

I had this meal the other night, also prepared by my other half! He also did the shop and couldn't find the frozen veg mix required, so bought a slightly different mix and picked out the veg that wasn't in the recipe....I would have just bunged it all in. He is a very literal recipe follower whereas I'm more of a hope for the best!
As an aside I thought the dish was nice but it felt like a kids meal - quire bland!

A dough hook is a bit rarer than onion and celery lol. Sorry, but your comparison fails.

I've not read the whole thread, but do they really not sell frozen mirepoix there?

Nothing to add OP but glad you enjoyed the Greek Chicken Pasta, I had it this week too!

@shaniahoo the onion, carrots and celery mix is not a non-existent thing as you seem to think. It’s a soffrito that’s widely used as a base for many, many things and readily available in most supermarkets. Very useful when cooking and I’d advise getting some in for the freezer. The mixed veg mixture that DH used is not the equivalent!!!!

My DH does things in this vein. He's exceptionally intelligent and not autistic or in any way neurodivergent. I think it's on purpose to troll me / get out of 'helping'.

The other day I asked him to watch some roasting vegetables which were in the oven to go along with a slow cooker stew. I was upstairs working for 20 mins. I crept in very quietly to the kitchen and saw the vegetables were on the verge of burning. He was sitting playing a game on his phone and clearly hadn't looked at them once. He claimed that he couldn't tell if they were burned or not because it was hard to tell through the darkened glass of the oven door from where he was sitting.

@mrsclaus1984 there is an edit function.

I can’t cook. At all. Have never been able to. I am successful, organised person with an admin job. I am intelligent and have common sense. However, I CANNOT COOK. As someone who cannot cook, recipes assume an awful lot. I once followed an omelette recipe that said “put your pan on as hot as you dare” so I turned it to the top setting. I burnt the butter black the second it touched the pan. Now as someone who cooks regularly and understands cooking they might know that there is an optimal temperature for omelettes and anything over x temp is too high. I didn’t know that and the recipe assumed I did.

The eggs on top thing is weird, but then I’m sure I’ve done similar things in the past that others would find weird. If you know he struggles, be clearer in your instructions. “We don’t have x so use y instead but you’ll need to chop them up” is all it wouldve taken in the celery example

My DH hardly ever tastes something he's cooking. And then gets defensive if I suggest it needs something. How can you do that?? How can you be so uninterested in what you're cooking that you don't see what happens if you added this or that, or don't check to make sure it tastes right? Or that the peppers or onions are cooked through rather than still crunchy?

I think in his case, he's just not interested enough in the process. He likes eating fine! He usually appreciates and enjoys what I cook for him (I'll freely say, I'm the better cook) so he must realise that in order to produce a good meal, you have to be a bit more engaged with the process!