Is this split of household tasks fair?

[Foolsonparade]

My fiancé and I both work full time. We have set jobs that we both do that are seen as “our” tasks. So I cook and clean the kitchen and DP does everything else.

I ended up getting a bit fed up of doing the cooking every single night (on the rare occasion that I won’t be back late, he will cook) and then cleaning the kitchen. So I asked if we could split this instead of it being just one persons task. He argued that those are my only two jobs whereas he does literally everything else. I just feel like “everything else” is not as big of a task as cooking and washing the pots.

We don’t have any children, he will clean all other rooms of the house and hoover and do the laundry and clean litter trays. I work hybrid so work from home 2 days a week. This set up has worked nicely tbh because we both know what we are expected to do and just get on with it and are in a routine with it. But would I be unreasonable to think we should take the cooking in turns?

Other posters are mentioning pre-cut, frozen veggies as a shortcut. Which is fine for a lot of dishes, where the veggies come out soft. (In many areas where produce has to travel a long ways from where it’s grown to where it’s sold, frozen veggies often have more nutrients, because they’re preserved shortly after harvesting.) Frozen veggies also let off more water into whatever you’re cooking, so you might consider defrosting and draining them first, if needed.

Rice takes 30-40 minutes to cook, unless you’re just microwaving that ready-made rice in plastic bowls (hello microplastics), and stir fries are better with rice that’s a day old. It’s also better if you slice up your meat thin and velvet (marinate it with egg whites, cornstarch, and/or a tiny bit of baking soda) it for at least half an hour, and if you put eggs in yours, those are best scrambled in their own pan and added to the dish shortly before it’s finished, otherwise the eggs will cling to everything else while cooking and be essentially “lost.” That’s definitely not “minutes” worth of cooking.

If you make like a shitty American version of a taco (with just ground beef, pre-made taco seasoning from a packet, hard taco shells, lettuce, cheese, salsa from a jar, maybe a dollop of sour cream), that might take 15-20 minutes or so, but if you’re making real, Mexican style tacos (soft tortillas, meat like carnitas or birria, fresh salsa and other sauces, fresh veggies, etc.) that takes much longer.

If you plop raw veggies in your frittata, that’s a quick meal, but it might not turn out as well as if you had sautéed the veggies with the seasonings first (heat brings out the flavor of the seasonings, especially if cooked with a fat, and improves the texture of some of the veggies that would take longer than the eggs to cook.)

Again, not saying that cooking dinner takes the same amount of time and effort as every other household chore combined (unless maybe if you live in a very small home?) but that cooking and cleaning up afterwards is a bigger task than you’re making it out to be, if you’re taking care to make things tasty.

Pot roast is pretty quick prep, but that’s definitely a pressure cooker meal, not made with the oven!

Ropa needs to be heavily seasoned, seared, and then put into the Dutch oven, which gets put on low heat for a long while on the stove to let the fats in the meat dissolve, then shredded. (If you do it right, it falls apart just trying to get it out of the Dutch oven. Same with the pot roast). The DO is a PITA to clean, but it works well.

When I do my pork loin, it gets heavily seasoned, physically tenderized, and basted with a bit of butter, olive oil, and balsamic, then tented with foil and put in the oven, whereupon it will need to be periodically basted and temped to make sure it’s cooked well enough, but not overdone. Always comes out so juicy and tender that DH has a hard time not eating the whole loin in one sitting, which fills me with pride and satisfaction. :)

Seasoning and tenderizing multiple steaks takes five minutes or longer alone, let alone getting a good sear on them (not frying) before finishing them in the oven (more temping to ensure proper food safety without overcooking).

Apple fries are definitely best in the air fryer (which is technically a smaller convection oven, but it has a drip pan and a mesh basket that lets air get to the food better than it would if you did it on a solid pan, lending to crispier foods.) The apples need to be cited, thinly sliced, tossed around in a bowl with honey, spices, safflower oil, and a bit of lemon juice, and then properly spaced out in the basket.

You can sauté chopped onions for 5 minutes, but they take about 15-20 minutes to properly caramelize.

Rice takes 30-40 minutes to cook, unless you’re just microwaving that ready-made rice in plastic bowls (hello microplastics)

I use basmati and it in no way takes 30-40 mins, 15 max

I have a sestema rice cooker for the microwave recommended here.

Equal amounts of washed rice to boiling water.
15 minutes in the microwave.

Absolutely fantastic.
Gave to friends as a dinner party gift.

Without a doubt up there with pressurer cooker, airfryer and slow cooker.

Used constantly for perfect fluffy basmati in 15 minutes for 5 people.

It isn’t the ingredients that are bland, @Poiuytrewqa, it’s what you do with them.

most of those ingredients have different cooking techniques, times and temperatures to reach their optimum tastiness.

For example - Sautéing adds to flavour development, par boiling first would make roasties soft on the inside, crunchy on the outside, searing will enhance overall flavours etc

you detailed 5 ingredients upthread that you ‘bung in the oven’ your words, all together wrapped in tin foil, and yet each of those ingredients required different cooking times.

yes, of course it’s possible to cook like that, simple and quick indeed, and of course we’re all capable of making a tray bake without your expert instructions. Just, none of us want to.

Do you just straight up boil it?

Well if you want to arse about with 100 stages you can’t really complain about the times it takes and it being ‘relentless’.

It’s total martyrdom.

And they don’t require different cooking times.

A salmon fillet, mushrooms, tomatoes and red onion all require 20 minutes.

A bone in chicken thigh with potatoes and broccoli will take 40.

But if they take different times, stand up, open the oven door, and add it.

Absolutely ridiculous people trying to make out that everyday modern cooking requires huge amounts of time.

I could say that if you eat anything other than tuna salad from a packet, cheese, and lettuce sandwiches on untoasted pre-sliced bread or cereal with milk for dinner, that you’re spending “huge amounts of time” cooking in comparison and that it’s totally martyrdom to do anything more than that.

Or that you don’t need to fold and hang your laundry at all. Just pull it from the laundry baskets or dryer in the morning when you put on your clothes. You’re making way too much work for yourself. Modern every day laundry doesn’t take that long.

Scrubbing toilets? Who does that? They flush themselves every day. And if you’ve got a little dirt on your floors and crumbs on your kitchen counters, just spend two minutes once a week to do the hovering and wiping. You can probably get the cat litter done in those two minutes too.

There is obviously a middle ground between those spending an hour on cutting up an onion, and those who don't even season food. Without seeing and tasting anyone's dishes, it's impossible to know which would be nicer so this debate is getting very silly.

A relative makes a particular dish that they will proudly and ostentatiously slave over for half the day... and it's really not great. (DH has been known to quietly claim their cooking is what keeps that bit of the family so slim!). Meanwhile a friend of DS wouldn't even eat Southern Fried chicken because it had pepper, apparently they don't eat "spicy" food at his house. Pepper!? So as far as peoples' claims that their cooking is great... well, I'll take those with a pinch of salt, a healthy shake of pepper, some sliced chillies and an extra 5 minutes in a hot frying pan to crisp it up.

I’m not saying it takes an hour to do an onion, but it certainly takes more than “seconds.” (Maybe 180 seconds, for a large onion or two normal sized ones, not including the washing and the peeling.) That’s all. It drives me nuts when people say things like that.

“It takes 20 minutes max to Hoover your whole home!” Yeah, if you live in a one bedroom house with no young children or pets and don’t move your furniture around. Do people even think about what they’re saying when they say things like this?

Although this thread has moved away from the original OP's question it has been interesting to read differing views.

I support families as a housekeeper/cook/cleaner. If cooking, cleaning & running a house only takes minutes there would not be such a high demand for quality 'household help'.

Many families & couples work long hours, have demanding jobs, busy lives & caring responsibilities (children, elderly parents & children with SEN needs).

The most important thing is working together, sharing the load based on other commitments or paying for 'household' help.

I enjoy making people's lives easier, not everyone enjoys cooking, cleaning & chores and if you are going to do it properly (edible, tasty, clean & hygienic) it takes time.

Just my view, not telling anyone what to do.

If you think living in squalor is on par with making a quick meal then that’s up to you.

If cooking, cleaning & running a house only takes minutes there would not be such a high demand for quality 'household help'

I think it's more that a lot of people just don't enjoy those things and are happy to outsource them where they can. I would love the money for a personal chef but that doesn't translate to cooking taking hours - it's just I hate cooking, lol.

I also think it's very easy to make one normal task seem like a very big deal by listing out all the separate stages when you're trying to argue your case/

I mean, I feed all four of our animals every morning - if I list it all out:

Come downstairs.
Get the bowls out of the cupboards.
Get the wet food out of the cupboards.
Feed each of the three cats.
Let the dog out.
Let the dog back in.
Give the oldest cat his medication.
Get the cat biscuits out.
Feed each of three cats their biscuits.
Feed the dog his biscuits.
Get the milk out.
Give all the cats some milk.
Let the cats out.
Gather up all the water bowls.
Wash them up.
Re-fill them.
Wash all four food bowls.

It sounds like loads but in reality it takes me less than five minutes.

It’s on par with spending “5 minutes” on dinner and only ever using one cooking appliance to produce the same kind of meal every night because you don’t want to expend any more effort than that.

And like, that’s fine if that’s up to your standards for meals. You’re only cooking for you, after all. But it’s not up to standards for a lot of people, and therefore they have to put more time and work into it. In the context of this thread, OP might have to cook to higher standards to satisfy her DH, which, if doing night after night, might make one weary. There’s no reason to assume everyone is cooking the same way you are and minimize the amount of work OP (or others) is/are doing, or the amount of value they’re providing to their families. I suspect you’re even minimizing your own efforts just to defend a stance.

Off topic, but aren’t most cats lactose intolerant?

Also, I could say “it takes an hour to get DD ready for school in the morning” or I could say “it takes an hour to pack her lunch, her bedding, her labeled cup, and her stuffie, to brush her teeth and hair, get her dressed, and feed her breakfast” and either way it still takes an hour.

But somebody else would come along and be like “it takes 15 minutes to get a child out the door in the morning. You’re being a martyr” and then you have to wonder, what all are they doing with their child? Surely not the same things. And that becomes evident if you both elaborate on the “steps.” Theyll also suggest you do the same things as they do to make life easier, but there are reasons to do things the longer or harder way, oftentimes.

I haven’t complained. I am happy with my decision to spend a bit longer on prep to enjoy my meal more. As you are with the opposite. Both fine and perfectly acceptable choices.

my initial point was only that the ops dilemma ‘depends’. It depends on the time spent doing each job. Which goes for cooking or cleaning. The longer spent, the better the result. Which she never came back to clarify, possibly because she was bored with the tangent.

That was a response to this

You’re making things up though, aren’t you? I didn’t say I only ever use one kitchen appliance. I said it takes five minutes to prep some food and bung it in the oven, which it does. It also takes five minutes to crack a couple of eggs and make an omelette. Or to click the kettle on and pour water over pasta. Or to boil some rice or make a stir fry. Or to seer a steak. Or one of my personal favourites - squeezing lime juice over salmon to let it cook in the fridge for ten minutes. Or to throw some roasted veg in a blender. Or fold a wrap around the food.

They are all so, so easy and so, so quick.

The insistence that it’s deeply time consuming to make anything healthy and tasty is a load of bollocks. You don’t have to gently caress your chicken with egg whites or hold your tomatoes up in the sun for two hours to make a quick tasty meal.

This whole ‘it’s hard to cook’ comes from many decades ago before you switched on an oven (or kettle, hob, microwave or slow cooker).

It's cat milk :)

I'm not a personal chef & feeding humans well balanced meals takes longer than 5 minutes.
I'm not here to judge & neither should anyone else be.

I'm not a personal chef & feeding humans well balanced meals takes longer than 5 minutes.

I didn't say otherwise, I just don't believe people need to spend hours cooking every single night - it's a choice, because they prefer a certain type of food, for example, but it's not a necessity. You can cook quick, healthy meals in less than 20 minutes quite easily, especially if you batch cook things like sauces and just defrost them when needed.

No, you listed how long it takes to feed 4 animals.
I am referring to humans. Batch cooking takes time....maybe not every night but at some point in the week.
If you work a 50 hour week you may not have the energy or you would rather spend those 20 minutes with your children.
Less judging more kindness.

This is what we’re saying though. If you’re working a 50 hour week then just knock up something easy.