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?

I remember after a very very long day at work and travelling being presented with a watery, grey casserole. DH refused to believe that the slow cooker couldn’t cook a casserole in under and hour and a half. Apparently throwing in a shit load of flour negated the need to cook for longer as the sauce is now thickened.

Why didn’t he just cook it in the oven? He has plenty time to do a casserole in a proper oven?!

Cooking course for Christmas?

Literally to this day I’ve no idea. It was over ten years ago and he’s still defensive if I make a joke about it 🤣

He also had plenty of time to do it in the slow cooker if he’d put it on about 6 hours earlier!

My daughter is doing the same thing.
Refuses to do recipes. Just makes something she thinks might be nice.
I wouldn't mind, but she never cleans the kitchen after!
So I am hungry and have to clean up...urghhh

My ExH had no interest at all in picking good ingredients for nice meals (he had no self-motivated interest in anything really). He and our child would still be chewing on dry, unseasoned chicken breast and two potatoes if not for Hello Fresh.

The boyfriend that was the Fancy Chef, was arrogant in every other way too. Very fragile ego to boot.

I shouldn't laugh OP, but sausage and lentil casserole with cinnamon and cloves had me spurting out my tea.

Get a thermomix, they cook everything by just pushing a few buttons and dials. Perfect for nervous cooks

Not to be smart but what about kids learning to cook. There are easy recipes and pictures to help him see what the dish should look like. Here in the US there is The Betty Crocker cookbook which is easy also, not British though.

I agree with a PP this does sound quite funny🤣

Another vote though for hello fresh, or maybe he plans the menu, shops and preps the food and you just come home and cook it? Then you can eliminate any creative elements that may have crept in!

Tbf, cinnamon is a very common ingredient in sausage and lentil casserole.

Cloves, admittedly, not so much.

I feel you OP. My mum and dad were terrible cooks. We got "pasta Bolognese" with frozen mince cooked in tomato paste (no tinned tomatoes) that was it nothing else.

As a result, I couldn't cook either. I have lived on my own for the past 7 years and made a conscious choice to not get a microwave. I have some disasters, but in general have now started to cook simple food with ratios if needed. It takes a long time.

Is this a case of a man thinking there's nothing to it because it's so often a woman's job?

That seems a stretch. OP says he's usuallt a perfectly capable cook but for some reason is now trying to experiment and is missing the mark.

The casserole sounds fine on its face. Beef stew with cinnamon and cloves is a nice, traditional dish ans I often use cinnamon in casseroles.

Of course, if he used too much of either, that could be overpowering and unpleasant, but it should have been easy enough to rescue.

Well done for saying something @Aydel he needs to know.
Sounds like he is genuinely trying and now he has the time wants to try to mix it up a bit.
You'll probably have recipe books that you use less often as they require a bit more time and concentration. Why don't you push these books in his direction? Point out a specific recipe saying you have always fancied trying this but never had the time to devote to it - frame it like that

I feel like he should be old enough to know that hot things will wilt lettuce. He probably just needs to stop experimenting and use recipes if he's lacking common sense.

My father has started experimenting in retirement. He's hit and miss but never this bad. Great roast potatoes! The last failure I experienced was the limpest, soggiest pizza laden with tomato sauce and cheese. I was bemused that he could think the crust would ever support that amount of wet ingredient piled on top of it.

Thing is, they all think they’re all fucking Masterchef even though they’ve barely made toast for themselves for the last 25+ years. My husband has done some humdingers, but fortunately he hates wasting money and it killed him to see us all scraping it into the bin (even our piggy dog turned her nose up at his beer pie… I can’t possibly begin to describe how vile that was - nor can anyone explain how he messed that up.) So now he follows YouTube videos to the letter. Like dog training he thrives on praise and he has done VERY well with these meals and learned his lesson.

While that's fair enough, he must have heard of recipe books

Basic food prep, tasting ingredients and simple home economics should not be beyond the scope of a fully grown adult

Buy him some cookbooks

Maybe a cookery course? You say he can cook why is his experimenting so bad, ie he’s doing things that clearly won’t work like mixing in salad?

OP already has cookbooks and he’s refusing to use them.

My DH recently insisted on sausage curry (chopped up sausages in a store bought butter chicken sauce). Thankfully having a 7 and 4 year old they let him know it wasn't going to be an award winning dish before I had to. I just don't understand why they need to reinvent the wheel..there's a reason why certain flavour combinations haven't been popular.

My DH experiments if he cooks. Men seem to hate following recipes! The end product is usually a disgusting slop, or burnt because 'turning up the heat makes it cook quicker'. 🙄

These days I make it clear I won't eat it if it's horrible. He does consider it more, probably only because he doesn't want his hard work to go in the bin!

It's 💯 because he has rarely ever cooked. He's making sushi for dinner right now.... It'll take him all afternoon, too!

Does he eat what he cooks?