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'd get a bunch of ready meals to have in the freezer and take one out every time he makes up a disgusting concoction instead of following a recipe.

The Birdseye bags of frozen pasta with sauce and vegetables are great and ready in 6 minutes.

YANBU - nothing worse if you’ve been working and hungry!

He needs to be more considerate, and I would focus on this rather than cooking tips.

Emphasise that you are exhausted. Cooking and taking on more of the domestic load is about you having a really long tiring day, coming home hungry . He needs to start seeing cooking as caring for you, not an experimental new retirement hobby.

He needs to learn to walk before he can run. Winging it with what’s in the fridge takes experience. The best thing for him to do is to start with recipes to get a feel for what goes with what, develop his cook’s palette, and so on. Many of us learned to cook by our parents’ sides, watching and learning, and then slowly taking on cooking responsibilities based on tried and true family recipes. In the absence of this, using the many cookbooks you have (or similar resources) is the next best thing.

I had to wince/laugh at his latest creation!

My ex had a (not so) experimental phase by putting chilli in everything. He was a good cook actually, but he'd ruin his efforts by adding heat. Everything tastes the same! Or he'd find a recipe and ignored half of it and said, no, the method is wrong...sometimes it turned out ok but sometimes 🤮.

I agree, if there's a way you make a spaghetti bolognese, and it's good, why tinker with it?

Do he can cook a chilli, a mustard chicken, a pasta.
But he doesn't have basics knowledge, because to cook dry beans without soaking them is basics. This would all hack me off. Ask him to go back to cooking basic dishes above first.

Sushi from someone who hardly ever cooks sounds like a recipe for disaster…

😂

You could try a Gousto box or something similar. He can try new recipes but you can’t go too far wrong with the clear instructions and everything portioned out.

Well, now you know what to give him for christmas. Cooking lessons!

This! I'm a horrible cook and DH does pretty much ALL out cooking, I only cook simple meals for the kids and the eventual chicken or meat with onions and read Peppers, or chicken in the oven... If you don't know how to cook, start simple.... or follow recipes!

You have my sympathy, I have an experimental cook in my family.

Yep. I’m a fairly decent home cook. Being „experimental“ when you’ve understood how a recipe works is something I’ve started doing after I’ve been cooking for some time. It’s also I’ve watched my mother doing my entire childhood so I had her explanations in mind. But you need to understand (even just instinctually…) how something will interact and why the standard recipe works.

Whatever OP‘s DH is doing is definitely not the appropriate way of cooking for one’s family…

Good idea!

Or how about making a meal plan together for the next week and deciding what to cook together? Pick recipes he likes and is genuinely excited to try.

Your food shop will (have to) match the meal l plan. Which means that cooking based on what’s in the fridge shouldn’t lead to „experiments“ but simply what you’ve already agreed on.

His extremely poor effort with the kidney beans shows that he is putting very little thought or effort into the cooking. Although you say you don't believe he is being deliberately incompetent, I can't help feeling that there is an element of this in his behaviour.
I wonder what sort of meals he eats at lunch time, perhaps he could limit his experimental cooking to meals he eats on his own?

The fact that he is sulking when you criticised an inedible meal, is a classic controlling manoeuvre, he's trying to make you feel guilty, so that you apologise to him!

I think the meal box kits are a good idea, and would be interesting for him to use, though he may well not agree.
Until he develops some skill in the kitchen, I'd be making sure I had a decent meal at lunchtime!

It depends whether he (1) admits that a lot of what he has been making is bad, but wants you to be patient while he learns to experiment (2) knows it's bad but won't admit it or (3) happily eats what he cooks and genuinely thinks you are being too picky.

If (1), I'd see if you can get him to agree to limit experimentation - e.g., he cooks a meal he knows how to cook but adds one crazy appetizer, sauce, side dish, or pudding/dessert - then you can eat most of the meal and just try the experimental element and it also limits the wast of food and money. If 2, positive reinforcement might work - praise what he makes that's good, and remind him of things he used to make that you loved. If 3, that's the worst as it may never improve. All you can do then is appeal to his sense of decency and his care for you, asking him to make something you can eat and if necessary giving him instructions on what does and doesn't work.

Consider the cooking show Chopped - contestants (typically professional chefs) are each given a basket of eclectic ingredients and have to make something using all of them (plus pantry supplies) in a short amount of time. The judges prioritise and reward creativity, but above all stress the principles of good AND SAFE cooking and using what you know to make educated decisions about what you can make with new and unfamiliar ingredients. If he already knows how to cook competently, he shouldn't be routinely making inedible or unappetizing meals even if he is being creative and experimental.

Prob others have said (sorry.,) cooking the kidney beans like that could make you seriously ill. They must boiled thoroughly-20 -30 mins first or they’re poisonous. What he’s doing is taking the piss. Is his idea that if he does it badly enough he won’t have to do it at all?

Then he needs to be experimental when he’s the only one eating it

Gousto have 60% off at the moment. How about something like that for a couple of weeks where it is a set recipe / pre measured ingredients. Hopefully he realises after that following a recipe means nice food.

Is this another MN thing where everyone needs a recipe book 🤔.

Let him get on with the slop, & get something to eat before you come home.

So he clearly knows how to cook. Just remind him that you really liked his roasts, chicken etc and request it, plus no more experimentation. How can he think cloves and cinnamon are good additions to anything (maybe porridge?!)

This is my OH too.
Things start OK but then he goes " off piste" , chucking in all sorts of things he finds, he is probably a more "adventurous" cook than he was a 20 years ago, it's not just a case of learning. He also oversalts everything to an inedible degree.
We all make our own food in the house- 4 adults-I rarely cook for everyone.
Last night he made himself a chilli with rice, and to be fair he portions it out into containers which he takes to work for lunches.
I tasted his chilli last night- it contained gochucgang, soy sauce, garam masala, fenugreek, fermented black beans, anchovies and a can of water chestnuts thrown in at the last minute.

I enjoy cooking for just me- my meals tend to be simple and nutritious, and I get to eat exactly what I like.

It does if you refuse to learn from a textbook, trial and error will take several lifetimes.

Buy him a copy of 'The Flavour Thesaurus'. At least then he'll have a better idea of flavour combinations.

Yes it’s a type of arrogance. Thinking you can just make something up with no experience.