To think heating food is not cooking?

[pouracupofambition]

So, this is lighthearted.

DH cannot cook. He can spend hours pouring over a cookbook, following step by step instructions but end up producing inedible mush. We are supportive as a family and try to eat any offerings as best we can.

DH made lunch today and it was fine but it was all foods that were heated up. Quorn sausages, Aunt Bessie roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings, M&S green medley microwaved. You get the drift. It was an ok lunch and DH was very pleased but heating up isn't cooking, is it? Cooking is adding ingredients to make a new dish. Or am I wrong?

I sometimes do a cheats roast dinner with pre prepared ingredients and I consider it cooking! I still put in time and energy to make dinner. There are also quite a few different elements that all need to be ready together so if he can do that I should think he could prepare a reasonably easy recipe from scratch. Maybe he is trying recipes that are too complicated.

There's and there's cooking from scratch. I prefer the latter but both are cooking and both feed people.

Why are you looking to knock him down a peg 🤣 words and definitions can change over time and mean different things to different people. What a non-issue.

@pouracupofambition he tried to cook??? frozen sausages, frozen roast potatoes and frozen yorkshire pudding???? who even puts those second two items on the same plate as the first???? cooking to me is oiling and salting a roast to put in the oven, peeling potatoes to make roasties and mixing a batter to make yorkshire pudding! that is cooking, not just heating things out the freezer!

I mean, do you want an edible meal prepared for you with good intentions?

Or is it more important to you to lord it over them that they haven’t technically ‘cooked’ according to your preferred terminology?

If this is meant to be ‘lighthearted’ I fear your heart may be heavier than most.

Well I think it's cooking, albeit its convenience food. Ok. it's not full-fat 'proper' cooking, like making a curry or a cottage pie from scratch, but I don't think it matters as he produced an edible hot & fairly well balanced meal. It's not like he just gave everyone a Rustlers microwave burger. Why does everything he cooks from recipes end up as inedible mush? It sounds like he's trying very hard, most people can follow basic recipes, so I don't get how he's ruining everything to that extent.

I'm with you. In the 39 years we've been married, my husband has learned to cook chilli con carne. And that's it. Oh, and part stir fry. He can manage to "cook" stir fry, i.e., buy chicken breast strips (so no preparation involved), open a bag of stir fry vegetables, a sachet of stir fry sauce, and some noodles, and whack them on a wok.

I cook from scratch every meal, and if there's leftovers, I'll freeze them so I can have a night off "proper" cooking, but still have a decent meal. (I don't like cooking that much - it's a necessary evil.)

It drives me potty when my husband reheats meals I have frozen and acts like he's Gordon bleedin' Ramsey.

And everything is served with boiled rice, with frozen peas and sweetcorn boiled with it.

Put a bit of bloody effort into it, at least, and actually cook something.

Of course it isn’t cooking. It’s re-heating and getting the timings right. Ok to be pleased with this if you’re a young teen, maybe, but a grown adult? Not so much.

Usually most people who "can't" cook are people who dislike cooking.

I'm struggling to understand why your DH can't follow a recipe. Either he is trying something too complicated and way beyond his skillset or he is using recipes that are difficult to follow.

Maybe get one of The Roasting Tin series of books where you basically prepare the ingredients, pop them in a roasting tin and roast for a specific time. These recipes are very difficult to get wrong.

He pored over the recipe

Op there is a line in a movie where a male narrator tells us the cook, a female, who is shown on screen tells him …..I’m only preparing this here food. This ain’t cooking. That line runs thru my head whenever I “prepare” food . Sure it’s edible and we eat it and of course all efforts are appreciated but it’s not cooking. And I recognize you said lighthearted thread altho some seem to find this very serious indeed. I can’t think of movie but I think Tom Hanks was the narrator.

Leaving aside the fact that Aunt Bessie isn't actually real, could you explain how 'she' is literally Hitler?

Even is she was she isn't what on earth has that got to do with roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding?

I’m dyspraxic and dyscalculic and love cooking but struggle to follow even a simple recipe, as I can’t keep the steps in order / miss steps / misread measurements and calculations.

I can cook pretty well if I know how to make a dish without having to consult a recipe, or where things can be done by eye or by feel.

But not everyone who has a hard time with this stuff is just being strategically incompetent. Some of us really are genuinely incompetent! 😂

I wouldn't consider that cooking

But I would consider it having made dinner

Aunt Bessie is not real 😮

Now you tell me.

My apologies @Bunnyhair

Cooking is a skill and like any skill some are better than others at it. Cooking does seem to be something which people moralise over a lot, you don't get people being funny about it if you are no good at sewing or woodwork. People don't boast about making all their clothes from scratch in the same way.

Oh bless you. No offence taken. 😃

If the end result is a hot meal then it’s cooking. That applies to oven chips, home made soup, Christmas dinner, whatever. If it’s a cold meal like a salad or sandwiches then it’s food prep.

I loathe both cooking and food prep with a passion and anyone who does these things so I don’t have to can call it whatever they like and go around thinking they’re Mary Berry and I won’t mind. As long as they don’t use every utensil in the kitchen and forget to wash up!

Using your definition... making mash would be cooking but boiling some salad potatoes wouldn't?

Your DP didn't do gourmet cooking. But considering he struggles, let him have this one.

Many people who can cook don't like doing it either but needs must, for reasons of health, taste and/or budget. We'd all like to take the easy route and not have to bother, but it's usually a case of easy, affordable, healthy, pick two.

So generalising, the man has taken the easy route, so the woman feels obliged to redress the balance by making something that includes fresh vegetables, is within budget, and isn't processed. Which the man doesn't seem to do anywhere near as often.

You know, I wish my husband would occasionally heat up some food and hand it to me on a plate so I didn’t have to plan and prepare all the meals myself

If he were to take those Yorkshire puddings, heatvthem up and enter them in Yorkshire pudding contest.. . He would be cheating. But not at home.

Heating up is cooking, surely?

All the elements of a roast dinner are just "heated up" (making your own Yorkshire puds or stuffing aside) and then put together to make a meal.

For someone who struggles with making anything complex, it sounds like your DH did good. I hope you have not split hairs over heating/cooking to him in person. It would be a great way to knock his self esteem.

Few people need to sew things or do woodwork three times a day to stick to a budget and maintain their health.