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!

My mother was the worst....her argument was "can you sew a zip into a pair of pants....because i can".
Reality is not everyone loves cooking or even can be bothered.
Just laugh it off, you're a grownup.

When people say they ‘can’t’ cook, I usually interpret that as ‘can’t be arsed’.

IMO it’s fair enough to say you just can’t be bothered, you’re happy to make do with ready meals and takeaways, but I don’t see the need to pretend it’s some innate inability to read a recipe and follow even simple instructions.

I HATE cooking. Like, really hate it. it's the worst part of being an adult for sure for me.
Because i hate it, I'm not interested in it. i want my meals from prep to plate in 30mins (neither of us are normally home until 8:30pm of an evening) and I'm not wasting my weekend leisure time "bulk cooking" either.
DP also hates it so our menu is pretty limited but i have less than zero desire to improve it.

Not sure what ADHD has to do with not being a good cook. My DD is diagnosed ADHD and she's a fantastic cook, much better than me.

I know this isn't the same for everyone but I have ADHD which makes cooking difficult because it affects executive function. There's the planning, remembering ingredients, following steps, keeping track of timings and trying to multitask without getting distracted. I regularly miss steps, drop things, cut or burn myself, or forget I've even got something cooking 😂 Time blindness doesn't help either! Then I get completely overwhelmed and anxious because there's too much going on at once. Add decision fatigue and something that looks simple to other people can feel like a massive task. It's not that people with ADHD can't cook; it's that all the organisation and concentration involved can take so much more mental effort. It's the same reason I struggled at school and at work.

I'm a great cook on a weekend afternoon with all the time and space in the world to prepare something nice slowly with no pressure.

Stressed, tired, and hangry on a weekday evening, I'm awful. I have no patience at all for it at the end of a working day and absolutely no idea how people can find it relaxing or de-stressing when tired and hungry.

ADHD affects people in differents ways. I've just posted with all the diffulties I have when cooking. I struggle with executive function so basically my brain management is impaired. It's not about intelligence or not knowing how to cook. You can know perfectly well what you're supposed to do and still struggle to organise and carry out all those steps in real time.

Manage time: Remember when to check the oven and judge how long things will take.
Control attention: Stay focused instead of getting distracted halfway through.
Regulate emotions: Cope when something goes wrong without becoming completely overwhelmed.
With ADHD, these processes don't always work reliably. You might start cooking with the best intentions, miss a step, forget something on the hob, drop something, then feel so overwhelmed by everything going wrong that you struggle to work out what to do next.

I have dyscalculia and dyspraxia and massively struggle with cooking. Other women call me stupid and thick for struggling because “it’s not that hard” Recipes that should take an hour often take an hour and a half. I use multiple timers and reminders and still manage to fuck something up. Meal prep boxes like hello fresh and gousto help a lot but I still find cooking incredibly hard.

I have rheumatoid arthritis now too which makes it even harder and makes me even slower, people tend to put my struggles all down to that and are kind to me about it now, i get told how great it is that I put the effort in and try, even when it’s just fool proof food I’m told that at least I’m cooking something and not reaching for crisps. I get told it shows good resilience skills when they think it’s a physical disability making it hard, and stupid and weaponised incompetence until my hands became visibly deformed.

Well when I say I ‘can’t’ cook I just mean I’m shit at it. I suspect that’s what most people mean when they say it. I have been cooking meals for my family for the past 20 years, so yes I can prepare a meal. But they aren’t very interesting or tasty meals.

When people say they ‘can’t’ cook, I usually interpret that as ‘can’t be arsed’.

I agree, because that usually is the case, disabilities excepting. Or that they just hate cooking.
If you are capable of reading, understanding and following instructions there is no reason why you can't cook.

but I don’t see the need to pretend it’s some innate inability to read a recipe and follow even simple instructions

So true (disabilities excepting)

I cook because I like to eat well. Food is something to be savoured and enjoyed, not viewed as fuel.

Ready meals simply aren't as good as good as home cooking. I don't eat a lot of takeaways or eat out very often as portion sizes are too large for me these days.

Manage time: Remember when to check the oven and judge how long things will take

Why not use a timer @ImthatBoleyngirl ? I bake a lot and always put a timer on otherwise I would forget when to take the cake out.

I don’t like ready meals or takeaways either @RampantIvy because I don’t think they taste good or are good fuel for my body. I cook from scratch most days. My meals still don’t taste great though. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Probably partly because I just cook the same (boring) things all the time because that’s safest. Trying to make something new or more complicated usually results in disappointment. A PP mentioned emotional regulation with ADHD and this is definitely a factor for me. If a meal I’m cooking goes a bit wrong, I am liable to overreact and then get very emotional and declare that everything has gone to shit and I’m never cooking ever again. 🙄😂

Whats wrong with hating cooking though? I hate cooking. I find it tedious AF and I am not very good at it.

DH loves it so he does all the cooking and I do all the cleaning.

It works perfectly for us

Nothing wrong with it. I hate sewing, so I don't make my own clothes (or anything else), but it is disingenuous to say you can't cook when you are perfectly capable of doing so. Won't cook is different.

I can cook, but it never turns out very nice, thats the point. Ive made the same dish side by side with DH and his still turned out better than mine 🤷‍♀️

If there werent degrees of talent in cookery then every restaurant would have a Michelin star!!

Would it help to buy a really simple cookery book aimed at students? Or something like Jamie Oliver's 5 Ingredients Quick and Easy Foods?

I loathe cooking so I don't do it. I eat mainly raw foods or I'll heat something up in the microwave. My oven has cobwebs inside it.

I can make soft furnishings though and put up shelves. I'm excellent at flower arranging, painting and wallpapering. I would rather clean out the bins than make a pie.

I can't imagine wasting an hour preparing a meal that would be eaten in 10 minutes. Your mother won't change now so just accept it!

It might do @RampantIvy but I don’t have any motivation or passion to do that at the moment. I am winding down my cooking career now that the kids are older. Eventually I can see myself just living off cold stuff from the fridge. I still enjoy excellent food if someone else is happy to cook it for me, or when I can afford to go to a decent restaurant. But at this stage of life I’m not interested in spending a lot of time or thought on feeding myself.

I think in your situation she's just a bad cook and gets little enjoyment from it which will make a massive difference. I doubt it's weaponised incompetence though if she had to do it all through your childhood with no one else going to take over, who would she have been weaponising against?

I admit that I can’t be bothered to cook now and DH does it but I have always struggled with cooking. We only had six weeks of cooking at my grammar school and I managed to break the mason cash mixing bowl much to the teacher’s annoyance. I think that has made me nervous. I am not a disorganised cook. I use recipes, measure carefully, set timers etc but still seem to have trouble perfecting the dishes.

Long ago I trained as a chef, and still do some catering for local groups now. I find it effortless (albeit home cooking for the two of us quite boring).
I used to think that cooking was like completing a jigsaw, and that anyone could do it. Then it came to why didn’t their food taste as it should.
I’ve now come to the conclusion that people that just can’t cook must have a lower taste threshold and just don’t really enjoy good food anyway, which is why they allow themselves to be drawn to beige freezer food as it seems the easiest option. Expecting them to reproduce a full flavoured meal is like asking them to fly to the moon.

I hate seeing chefs just dump a load of salt, sugar and a ton of butter in everything. If it is flavourful to begin with, it shouldn't need that. And was it Jamie Oliver who drained rice?

I am a bad cook, I can do the occasional thing well and I try, but results vary. Anything beyond a steak or a roast dinner is a challenge.
DD taught herself to cook, and then taught DS so they can make nice things for us all.

I agree in part. But mixed foods - say a bolognaise, which I’ve just made - needs layers of flavour introduced to ‘round’ the taste out. Mince and finely diced onion yes, but also with garlic, mixed herbs, a bolognaise spice mix, red wine and tomatoes. Later I’ll correct the seasoning with salt and pepper, and maybe a little sugar, depending on how acid the tomato profile is, with some sliced mushroom. Sometimes a little Worcestershire sauce. Sometimes I’ll even use anchovies - try it.

I think to taste good and ‘rounded’, bolognaise needs a lot of time and most people don’t have enough of that, unfortunately.

@Rubydobydo i usually add a wee bit of Marmite to a bolognese or chilli. Hot honey in a chilli to knock back the acidity of the tomatoes and add a bit more spice is another good one.