To not want to eat any more of DH’s “experimental” cooking

[Aydel]

DH took early retirement, and I’m still working full time in a full on job with a long commute as we’re waiting for our home to be renovated.

I suggested that DH take on more of the housework and particularly cooking dinner. I have literally hundreds of cook books that he can use either to follow a recipe or for inspiration. He said he prefers to “experiment” according to what is in the fridge.

So far he has produced:

A sausage and lentil casserole that he decided to flavour with cinnamon sticks and cloves. It was vile and inedible and a waste of ingredients.

A dish of kidney beans cooked in tomato sauce. He cooked the dry beans directly in the sauce, without soaking them. They were hard and inedible, and potentially poisonous. I didn’t eat them.

Tonight he had made chicken in a Mexican chilli sauce with potato wedges and a salad. This had the potential to be nice but he decided to mix it all together in a sort of “salade tiède”, except the chicken and potatoes were too hot and the lettuce sort of melted and disappeared. And there was too much sauce, so it was a big sloppy mess.

I didn’t take tonight’s meal well. I’d been travelling for work and had been travelling all day. I told him it would have been fine if he had served everything separately but the big bowl of slop was a step too far. I said I was tired of his experimenting and all I wanted was a decent meal, and could he please just follow a recipe for once. He’s now retired, hurt, to lick his wounds, and is being huffy. I don’t think this is strategic incompetence so that I take back all the cooking, but how bloody difficult is it to produce an edible meal?

Thing is it takes a long time to learn to cook well. It's all part of the process

He should watch a few cookery programmes, and maybe read some cookbooks. Did he eat the food ?

My son is like this, I said it takes many people many years to work out that the best cakes are a particular ratio of ingredients, stop thinking you are better than history and follow instructions from generations! I think this can be applied to savoury recipes too, eg the classics such as chilli or tagliatelle or lasagne or cottage pie...basically the same recipe, with a few minor tweaks!

My recommendation is to take a nice photo of each meal, keep a note of the 'recipes', then when you have a good selection create a self published book on Amazon entitled:

"Recipes for encouraging a speedy divorce"

It'll be a Christmas 2025 bestseller

I don't think you can be successfully experimental with cooking until you have got a bit of experience of how it's "supposed" to be done, which means following recipes. Once you've made a meal as per the recipe a few times you get a feel for how those ingredients taste together and can then start modifying it to suit your own palate. The more you do this the easier it gets to read a recipe and know which ingredients to leave out, add or use more of to your liking.

I feel for you, when we were younger my husband has his experimental cooking years. I'd dread coming home from work on his day off to find how much money he'd wasted.

He once misunderstood Marsala for 'Masala' curry and totally ruined one meal. He added all sorts of random spices, dried up a Spanish casserole I'd been making by throwing in a ton of couscous. Gave himself food poisoning not browning mince before putting in a pasta sauce.

Then one Xmas he bought me Delia Smith how to cook book!

So many men seem to feel that recipes are beneath their dignity. Or that every meal is an exciting opportunity to show their prowess as a cutting edge culinary master.

I wish more of them would understand things like:

• a quick delicious meal is a good meal
• you probably need to make some cheap meals to balance out the ones where you use all the fancy ingredients
• hungry people after a long day don't want you to do unnatural things to a chicken with cloves, they just want pasta and sauce probably

To give you some hope my husband is a reformed Fancy Mealer and now makes ordinary lovely meals like a pro. We may have had Some Talks along the way.

Explain to him that he needs to learn the basics before starting to experiment - uncooked kidney beans or chicken/pork are potentially dangerous 😳 buy him a good 'starter' book like Delia's How to Cook and ask him to follow some of the recipes. If he's not willing to try and learn then I'd tell him you won't be eating any more of his horrible meals and start meal prepping for yourself, batch cook and freeze some stuff you can just warm up when you get home or make yourself some soup and a cheese toastie or an omelette!

My ex-husband thought he was a good cook. He’d take every ingredient in the house and throw it in, thinking that it would add to the flavour. It was invariably absolute slop and one night I just couldn’t stand it any more. It brought me to tears when he said there was enough to have the next day too!

Current DP also fancies himself as a great cook, and to be fair he is not bad, but still tends to make everything over-complicated and he can’t make decent rice to save his life. My cooking is much simpler but, I think, better.

What does he say when you both sit down the an inedible meal? What’s his reasoning, does he come up with a solution or realise he’s been an idiot? Why does he keep doing it?

Would something like hello fresh be worth trying? Give him some basic combinations? If he picks the dishes it gives him the chance to learn and experiment with different flavours in the way he wants, but you'll get an edible meal

Definitely. It’s not like he had any experience of eating food for the first many decades of his life. The poor lamb got launched into it at retirement age and couldn’t possibly have had any idea that a clove, cinnamon, leek sausage casserole/mexican chilli with disintegrated lettace sauce would be disgusting. Of course a salad or spag Bol or ham egg and chips is far too complicated to attempt 🙄

Back in the 70s, slow cookers were the prob.
People didn't know to boil the red beans for 10 mins to destroy a toxin called phytohemagglutinin (PHA) that can cause gastrointestinal discomfort
Obviously some still don't...

It absolutely does not need to take a long time, if you just use your brain and read a recipe

Just to be clear, he used to be a perfectly good cook, would make a roast, chilli, honey mustard chicken, decent pasta with sauce. It’s not like he’s never cooked. He just has the time to be experimental now.

OP this so reminds of period of my life when I tried to be a SAHM and cook wholesome meals..lasted 2 months when my then youngest DD at 7 years old admitted remembering at school that mummy was cooking chicken casserole for tea...started crying and couldn't stop. I went back to work 🤣

My first ex was like that. I grew up in foster care until I aged out at 16 and didn’t have the first clue about cooking a meal, I had a little common sense though. I moved in with my then boyfriend who didn’t understand less was more sometimes. I’d do a tuna pasta with sweetcorn and mayo, he’d mix it up with lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, onions, chopped up boiled eggs etc. And he couldn’t use common sense when it came to cooking times. I remember him trying to cook rice and it said on the pack 12 mins. After 12 mins it was still completely raw, but he served it because that’s what it said on the pack. The thing is he was 17, not whatever age the ops retired husband is 🤦🏼‍♀️

It's very strange then that he lacks the imagination to "see" how certain flavours and textures work.

He also has the time to cook well.

Does he actually eat his own cooking? Can he not taste how crap it is? And how did he not know red kidney beans are poisonous unless boiled first?

Does he enjoy it? Or does he agree it’s horrible? I’m always really disappointed if something I cook is shit but it does normally inspire me to be a bit more careful along the way.

I think I would agree some nights when he cooks for you both and he has to follow a recipe, other nights you do your own thing you get a takeaway or heat a cook meal and he can experiment to his heart’s desire. I agree though, nothing more annoying if you’re starving to be presented with some revolting nonsense when you’d have been happy with something simple/ easy. I think you do need to be honest when it’s terrible too, otherwise he might serve it again 😳 😱 🤢

Maybe it's just me then, lol

DH has occasional form for this type of thing. We get gousto now so he isn’t allowed to deviate from the recipe card and there are no spare ingredients in the fridge or cupboard to play with (well unless he throws in some crunchy nut cornflakes or jam)

It does take experience to know how to experiment. The odd thing is knowing nothing and then experimenting and serving meals that he's never seen or experienced before because he's decided he knows best. It sounds like he's a bit embarrassed that he doesn't know the basics so is trying to over compensate by being innovative.

My DH once served hot beetroot soup when we were first married. This was bright pink hot water with shed loads of chilli added. Even I couldn't find it in myself to be polite in case he decided it was his signature dish.

lol at ^

I don't know, OP, it seems kind of endearing to me, he's trying isn't he lol