Are some people rubbish cooks or is it just weaponised incompetence?

[Starling78]

PhD student currently living back at home (hopefully not for long). It’s just DM and I. I pay board, help out around the house etc and we generally get on well.

DM has never been a great cook. I grew up labelled as a fussy child but in reality this is more likely due to the fact I was raised on plain/beige meals that could be quickly shoved in the oven and ready meals.. I do most of the cooking/grocery shopping/meal planning etc for both of us as I genuinely enjoy it and find it useful as a way of de-stressing. DM will occasionally make dinner, usually just the simple meat & two veg, spaghetti bolognese, stir fry type stuff that I would count as fool proof. No matter how easy the recipe is she will carelessly burn something, overcook things, undercook it, forget key ingredients… I could go on. Invariably if I dare mention a thing she’ll then get flustered, refuse to eat and tell me I should’ve just done it myself. It’s been like this for as long as I can remember (only child).

Drives me absolutely insane as I will easily spend an hour carefully prepping a nice risotto or homemade pasta dish with 0 thanks and criticism on any minor details she deems wrong or is too fussy to eat!

Maybe if your mum is choosing a ready meal over your food your cooking isn't as good as you think?

Your mum isn't a good cook, either she isn't interested in food/ cooking or it's just not something she is good at for whatever reason.

You sound really resentful of that. But different things are important to different people.

It sounds like it works well when you both just eat different things, so why not just do that?

Or you just cook something, give her the option to have some, if she doesn't fancy it she can have a ready meal.

Does it really have to be a big deal?

I cook everyday and have done for 18 years since I left home. I'm still absolutely rubbish at it! Nothing ever turns out the way it's supposed to and I really do try. We can't all be good at everything.

I always thought not being able to cook was a case of not being given sufficiently well drafted recipes which explain things clearly enough. Which is part of the issue. My DP can and does follow a recipe and can turn out a passable meal but despite being primary carer for his 2 DC and cooking for years, he has an extraordinary lack of insight into cooking. He still cannot tell most herbs unless they have a label on the packet (so if I ask him to fetch some rosemary from the garden he is never sure which plant it is). He never seasons. And he never applies knowledge from a recipe to another recipe. So if something is missing then it's just left out because he can never think of a substitute. I have tried gently explaining over the years and the best I can come to is that it simply doesn't interest him. He enjoys a good meal but doesn't enjoy the process to get there and so expends zero brain/memory cells on it. So yeah, some people are just not good/interested.

I hate cooking and rarely do it (only when dh is very unwell!), I’m not ‘bad’ at it but he’s excellent, really creative and just naturally knows what will go together. If I cook I follow a recipe, don’t deviate and it comes out fine but not great.
Fortunately he’s willing to spend a couple of hours in the kitchen every evening to get a decently and delicious nutritious meal on the table every night.
If he’s out I’ll go without and will do ds some salmon, broccoli and potatoes. Or sausages broccoli and potatoes. Sense the theme?!

I think cooking is a skill that can be learned but it definitely comes much more easily to some people than others.

My DP is autistic and has taught himself to be a reasonable cook using recipes and he can now make seven or eight dishes fairly well but he doesn’t have the gene that makes him think “I wonder if this spice would work with that meat”. His meals are functional and always done exactly as the recipe says.

My ex, on the other hand, had a natural gift for it and could open a fridge with four items in it and turn them into something fabulous.

There are definitely some people who are innately better at understanding what flavours go well together.

That said, there’s no excuse for just eating beige food every day. I would be mortified to feed this to my child day after day.

Well yes some people are rubbish at it as with any life skill. Some people can ride a bike for example but absolutely terribly and they never quite master it confidently so tend to avoid it. Cooking is a skill even when following a recipe. It’s the multitasking and patience required to stir, make sure everything is timed well etc.

ADHD and dyslexic here - terrible cook 😂

Cooking is a skill like anything else and, in order to get good at it, you have to be motivated to practice it. Are you any good at drawing? I am, it took thousands of hours of practice. Will you be motivated to invest a thousand of hours to improve this particular thing? Or maybe thousand of hours it might take to become a good dancer, or a good car mechanic? I personally would rather take my car to the garage. Your mum would much rather put her meals into a microwave. Same thing.

I can't think of anything more boring than spending an hour in the kitchen cooking, if it can't be done in 30 minutes then we don't have it or DP will make it.

I can see other people have already said it. My mum has adhd and is a chaotic cook. So in answer to your query, yes, I think some people struggle to cook a meal from scratch.

I can't cook, and my mum can't cook. My daughter can cook better than me, but her dad is a good cook. I mean....I can follow a simple recipe but despite trying my best, either I can't get flavour in my food or the meat is too tough or something else goes wrong.

I an okish cook. 1h prepping a meal would and does annoy me. I love food but not really the prep and mess. Is food important to your DM? I had a friend who told me, food is fuel- i found that an alien concept. Perhaps your DM feels the same? You could simply cater for urselves. I'd ask your DM what she prefers. Whatever you are paying it will be cheaper than when you are living elsewhere, so I would just put up with this issue or simply leave.

I don't think it's innate knowing if a spice goes with meat, it's learnt and remembered and the people that appear to know innately have just learnt it at a young age. My Mum was an HE teacher and said she could always tell if someone grew up in a house where people cooked because they already knew so many skills from having observed it even if they had never cooked themselves.

I also think really liking food is a big motivator to be a better cook. If you think food is just fuel then obviously you won't put the work in to make tasty food. Although I think the 'food is fuel' people just grew up with bad food, my MIL was enthusiastic but not always the greatest at execution, DH and his siblings weren't that into food, his sister once told me 'oh, em, I think I had fish' when I asked her what she ate at a restaurant. Whereas my family (very foody culture on both sides) will take half an hour to discuss a meal out in extreme detail.

I think an hour in the kitchen when all you have to show for it at the end is essentially a savoury rice pudding is a complete waste of time.

What type of food does your mum like? When she does cook, you shouldn't criticise. I imagine she's touchy about it, as she has cooked for you your whole life with only negative feedback. I think it is completely unsurprising that she would criticise you too and give you a taste of your own medicine.

How can it be weaponosed incompetence, unless there was someone else to do weekday meals when you were growing up?

I’m in my 70’s and I hate cooking, always have done. When my kids were at home we had home cooked meals from scratch every day, but now I’m on my own I love the convenience of ready meals. There is no way I would spend an hour preparing a meal.

OP if you love cooking and want to spend your time preparing food that’s great, but obviously your DM doesn’t feel the same. Give her a break and don’t be so judgemental.

OP, I can’t see the relevance of declaring that you’re a PhD student. Would you care to explain?

I’m a terrible cook, I just can’t get things right. Hence why DH does all the cooking.

"Superiority" compared to little old dm it came across like. I don't see why else you'd mention it. It has nothing to do with cooking.

I don't understand qhat the fascination is with risotto or "soggy rice" as I call it. I dislike it, but each to their own. Also dm cooks bolognese, op "pasta !" There isn't any elaborate dishes compared to dm's. It sounds like a case of just preferring your own cooking.

Op, you should be grateful as a full grown adult you have got somewhere to stay, as a lot don't from an earlier age. I think you atr young op, and once you've been cooking for everybody else for decades (especially if you choose to have dcs, the complaining will get old quick). As long as it is edible I'd be happy if somebody cooked for me!

Quite a strong correlation if you have the inattentive type. Being unable to follow instructions, being unable to get started, all the steps can be overwhelming, time blindness. Even choosing what to make is near impossible for some.

I was thinking yesterday about the hyperactive/inattentive types of ADHD and wondered if the hyperactivity could be an advantage for cooking! I am mostly just inattentive and cooking is a challenge because I get distracted and start cleaning out cupboards and things like that. It’s possible for me to completely forget I’m supposed to be doing something else.

I've never been interested in cooking because I'm not that interested in food or spending all that time in the kitchen. But I do have a few dishes I've learned to do well.
You enjoy cooking, your mum doesn't. Why is that so hard for a PhD student to understand?

😂good point. I do always think people that rave about their own cooking aren't quite as good as they think. Taste is subjective.

What does being ADHD have to do with being a terrible cook?

Some people are just rubbish.

I had an ex who loved cooking. He'd buy all these weird and wonderful books of recipes (lots of more avant-garde stuff like Ottolenghi rather than what you might call traditional home cooking) and had cupboards full of exotic ingredients and spices.

Unfortunately he was completely shit at cooking. He couldn't even do nuggets and chips right, he'd just dump them on the tray in a pile so the outer ones were burnt while the inside was soggy.

Thing is he'd eat his bizarre combinations (fajitas made with veal mince and mushrooms and raisins anyone?) with every sign of enjoyment.

We broke up for many reasons but his over-enthusiasm for shit cooking was definitely up there.