To feel that sad that basic cooking skills are dying out

[SingleDoubleWhippedClotted]

Me and my brother were taught to cook by my gran and mum. Dad used to cook too but worked away a lot so wasn't around as much.

So many people now seem to be incapable of basic food prep and spend a fortune on food. Cooking seems to be an undervalued life skill, I think its so important to have the skills to be able to prepare simple cheap healthy meals.

I have taught my teen to cook and she could fend for herself if she left home tomorrow. She can cook healthy cheap meals.

I see so many threads on here where people can't boil rice, boil an egg etc

So the premise of your AIBU is that the people who attend your project for people who can't cook, can't cook.

I think this is no more widespread than 10, 20, 30 or more years ago. The 80s in particular went mad for convenience foods. Microwaves, ready meals, all sorts.

Now we have endless YouTube channels teaching us cooking from around the world rather than pricy hardback cookbooks, domestic science lessons and whatever your parents could show you. If you want to learn to cook, the answers are sitting on your phone.

So if one's parents didn't teach, what's to stop someone learning? Just get a cookbook and start, and get on to YouTube too.
My mother was a fantastic cook, but as she went to boarding school and when at home had 7 bothers and sisters they weren't allowed in the kitchen. She lived before marriage in a bedsit (1950s) with rudimentary cooking facilities. So she didn't learn to cook til she got married. Bought the Constance Spry cookbook and off she went.
My kids can cook. My son taught himself from 13, and my daughter just thinks what something is supposed to taste like and recreates it. She has a flair for it, as my mother and her father did.
But if you can read you can cook.

The people I work with are just one group. I know of many professional people who can't cook and very few of my dc peers cook anything.

My DD has only had 2 cookery lessons but they did make the food from scratch.

For anyone who WANTS to cook, there is far more available online and on TV than there has ever been. When I was young, we were either taught by parents (I was taught to bake but not cook) or learn at school (limited but I learned enough to get me going). I never ever used any seasoning, other than salt and pepper, when I was younger.

Through watching TV cooks and cooking shows (Saturday Kitchen is brilliant - other shows are available), I used so many different herbs, spices, sauces, vinegars, oils etc etc. I wasn't taught at home or school to use any of them.

If people can't cook, it's because they don't want to, see the (obvious) need to or pleasure in. It's certainly not because the information isn't out there.

I can cook from scratch but I don't have the time everyday. DH on the other hand is a terrible cook was never taught and would live on ready meals. I do try and batch cook when I don cook from scratch.

Both me and DH work long hours. Can leave at lastest either of us leave the house is 7.30 and earliest home is 6.30/7. When I get home cooking is the last thing I want to do. So anything for quick easy meals is a win. By the time I'm showered and changed (don't have the cleanest of jobs) it can be 8pm then bed for 10.30.

Most people nowadays choose convenience foods to allow them to have a life.

I love TikTok for recipes and cooking videos! Visual, simple, straight to the point. I’ve learnt so much from there.

Pet hate is those blogs where you have to scroll through their life story before getting to the recipe 😂

Is this at Primary? I don't think my DD did any cooking in Primary but never known a Secondary where the DC don't bring the ingredients in from home.

It affects us all, the culture of not cooking from scratch and eating processed foods is causing much of the health crisis we are experiencing, it also affects food availability and what drives restaurants etc in their trends. We would all benefit as a society if there was a systemic approach to healthy eating

What are you basing this opinion on?

Ummm… I don’t think I was the one being agist?! I was countering the OPs generalization with a generalization of my own, to point out how ridiculous it was.

On here just the other day loads of people were saying on a thread that making mashed potatoes were too much of a faff to bother cooking, ffs just peeling, boiling & mashing too much effort?

I can relate to this, the problem is with the 9-5 week, when it was envisaged there was one member of the family doing that and another taking on all the housework, laundry cooking, childcare etc, while not working or working part time, now we are expecting to both be working while trying to squeeze everything in, so even if we have the skills to cook healthily and from scratch we struggle for time with all the many things it takes to run a family 😔 working from home has helped many I think, but that also robs is of other coping mechanisms and resources that keep us mentally well. It's fucking relentless

I agree, I wasn’t taught by my parents and had to teach myself everything I know… in the age of the internet there’s no excuse to not know anything these days. Every library has a computer… it’s more about wanting to do it or not, and not wanting to is a valid stance also (maybe not the healthiest, but valid even still)

I wasn’t particularly taught to cook by my mother however we were presented with meals cooked at home from scratch each day, including full Sunday roast, so I left home with the expectation that this was what I would provide for my family. I was really keen on baking from about age 12 onwards (which my mother had no interest in) so I did experiment a bit with that.

I think the problem is the precedence that is set at home. Generally, if fast food, beige food and takeaway is seen as the norm growing up it is likely to be what is provided going forward. I was 20 and at university when I had my first takeaway. I was watching a video last night where the family ate takeaway for 2 or 3 meals a day and the 5 month old was gumming on a hamburger whilst clutching a chip. It’s all they will know.

I wasn't taught to cook much, but I like good food so I just followed recipes and I think I'm pretty good now. I assume most people will teach themselves if they want to.

I have a Delia book which is only about 20 years old, but I do notice it makes assumptions about things she assumes you know. Like, it says "make the pastry", whereas a modern book would probably describe this in more detail.

Yes, 10 mins peeling and chopping before boiling/ steaming for 25 mins before another 5 mins of mashing is somewhat faffy and messy. Tasty, fairly simple, but too time consuming for many people to produce after work and between evening activities.
If I'm doing potatoes, I'll tend to microwave and oven cook jacket potatoes because it requires less attention and generates less washing up.

The least competent cook I knew was my great-grandma. The development of M&S ready meals revolutionised her diet from bland cold salads and soggy over-cooked, salty vegetables. Culinary skills in my family have improved and diversified through the generations.

As someone who is a self confessed dreadful cook, I agree! DH is a professional chef and I’ve learned lots from him. It’s great. I look forward to our children learning too.

Is cooking not like so many other skills that were previously handed down person to person in that now anyone with an interest can search the internet and get multiple tutorials on anything at all - from how to make beans on toast to how to make gourmet dishes from across the globe. I think you might be sad at the lack of interest. Only difference between good and bad cooks in today's world is interest surely.

I get what you mean, but I do think there’s a difference between being able to follow a recipe and being able to cook.

My DH didn’t really cook at all until he met me, nor did he grow up in a family who cooked. He can follow a recipe, of course. I don’t think he can really cook, though. Present him with a random Wednesday where someone ran out of time to go shopping and he wouldn’t be able to look at what’s there and make it into a decent meal. He doesn’t know how to make a sauce, or how long to cook a bit of meat and at what temperature, which isn’t the temperature in the book because our oven is hotter, when to season and what to use. In my mind being able to cook means you understand how it works, can see where something might go tits up and rescue it if it does etc. I’m an unremarkable cook but a competent one. I think OP is right that there aren’t that many of us and it’s a useful skill. Saves money and makes eating healthily but not boringly much easier.

i’d love to see kids taught to cook in school, but it’s not something I can get too worked up about. I can turn 3 chicken thighs and a tin of tomatoes into a dinner but there’s lots of other equally useful things I can’t do and can’t be bothered to learn.

I didn't learn any cooking until high school in 1976, when we had to do Home Eco classes. Never learned anything useful in them, and the teacher was one of those bullying types who expected beginners to be almost expert. I hate cooking (as did my mother and grandmother), and it'd be bad luck if I liked it, because I have only a microwave oven and no space for preparation. ETA I find cooking stressful - if you get it wrong and it's inedible you've wasted all that food and still have nothing to eat. I don't need that sort of pressure.

Meals are provided at the retirement village where I live, which suits me extremely well.

Who cares.

I buy frozen mash because it’s cheaper, easier and saves peeling spuds. I know on MN anyone who isn’t considered a Stepford wife level of homemaker should be self flagellating but in the real world normal people DGAF and accept everyone is different.

Also why is ‘proper cooking’ only relevant to cheap meals? I make a cracking beef wellington and spend a bloody fortune on the ingredients is that not proper cooking?

My mum didn't teach us to cook but thankfully I did three years of Home Economics at school, which taught me the basics.

Then I went to university with three cheap saucepans, a knife, some mismatched crockery and a cook book (pre-internet). God knows how I didn't starve. Or get rickets. 😁

These days I am positively expert compared to my dm. I cook from scratch every night, can turn out a meal in 15 mins if necessary, have a reasonable knowledge of nutrition and can always conjure up something from the cupboard. My ds is far better fed than we ever were.

I recently managed to feed a vegetarian exchange student for a whole week, despite having no warning that she was vegetarian. 😊

People are too busy ordering takeaways today.
Yanbu.

I wouldn’t call it sad it just seems like how the times are and I personally don’t tag it with any particular emotion (because I don’t care tbh!).

With people being so busy with everything pressure to cook can be the last thing anyone needs. Even with myself, toddler DD and DH, we opt to throw easier stuff together rather than proper cooking. It’s not that we can’t do it and neither DH or I learned from our parents. But we can follow a recipe or video easy enough like many others can too.

(I would not bother boiling rice though - even a rice cooker takes ages. Microwave rice is so good and fast btw).