What's your cooking pet peeves?

[LoftyTurtle]

As the title says - what are your pet peeves when it comes to other people's cooking? Meant to be a lighthearted thread, not a bashing one 😉

Personally, amongst my extended family, I witness the following and it makes me die a little inside:

• Slathering absolutely everything in chilli. I like chilli, but not EVERYTHING needs chilli in it!
• Refusal to use any salt whatsoever so all their cooking just tastes a bit sad and bland. By all means have a low salt diet if you need it for personal or health reasons, fine, but a little salt really isn't the end of the world!
• Refusing to cook anything above 150 degrees because it might burn it. Listen, some things are fabulous slow cooked, but some things just need to be bloody cooked at a high temperature. Don't keep your oven permanently set to 150 and then wonder why your roast potatoes are always a bit soggy and crap
• Careless substitution of ingredients when the person cooking doesn't have the skill/knowledge to substitute well. Had a family member very excited to use a new recipe for beetroot brownies once. The recipe called for fresh beetroot, which you grated and incorporated into the brownie mix bit like a carrot cake. She used jarred pickled beetroot because she figured it was "close enough" 🤢 likewise, same person substituted frozen salmon for fresh salmon but didn't thaw it first (or even change the cooking time) and was quite perplexed the fish wasn't entirely cooked through!
• Cremating all their meat just to make sure they don't accidentally get food poisoning. One family member has been known to be so paranoid about food poisoning that she will cook meat well past being done, and then also microwave it just to be "on the safe side"
• Weird toxic hatred of jarred sauces or similar. My preference is going to be cooking from scratch but sometimes I can't be arsed & serving my family spag bol with a jarred sauce occasionally really isn't the culinary crime a "friend" makes it out to be 🤣

@donteatthedaisies0 Not just put it on serve it swimming in the stuff. I loathe it

I never add salt but I love black pepper and add to say a risotto or tomato salad because I can see if there's enough already before tasting.

Same for mashed potatoes, eggs etc especially since no one uses white pepper anymore (besides me, I love pepper).

I can better that, MIL (now deceased and surprising not from food poisoning) used to half cook turkey christmas eve then leaves it sitting on table overnight and put it back in next morning for the rest of the cooking!

What no one can have chip butty without sauce?!

My main one is cooking for everyone myself with all their mad food rules, allergies and preferences. Therefore anyone who cooks for me is off the hook!

My sister eats every bite of salad I put in front of her, and now regularly asks me to bring salads to events. Which I'm happy to do.

To be fair, she openly admits she finds making salad boring so is happy to eat them but doesn't want to be bothered making them.

But she's not the only one I know!

Undercooked potato or any kind.

Over cooked vegetables of any kind.

No salt/seasoning.

Massive portions.

Oh, hang on, I've thought of two which are restaurant related.

1. not enough gravy. This is so common I ask for extra when I'm ordering
2. Warm water in a cup with teabag beside it. WTAF?

I love cooking and people seem to like my food. My pet peeve is when people never invite us for food and then say things like, "oh, but I would be embarrassed to cook for you". I have never ever been anything but grateful for food made by someone else. One friend thinks she can't do a BBQ because I'm a South African and will be disappointed by her sausages and burgers. Why? I love a good sausage and/or burger. I like cooking because I love food. Not because I'm fussy.

Anyone that puts ground pepper in their mashed potatoes .
It tastes so much better with loads of butter (no milk) and white pepper and mixed in nicely 😋 .

You don't need to defend your own liberal use of salt or condiments to me, nor was I suggesting people shouldn't according to their taste.

People just need to get over themselves and realise other have different opinions.

I've got extended family that does something like this - cooks a joint of meat or a casserole or something the night before, then leaves it on the back of the cooker (with the heat off) overnight! It makes me incredibly anxious about food poisoning. I didn't know anyone else did stuff like that!!

Mine are restaurants using too much salt and everything just tastes of it. I rarely use salt in my cooking as I don't like the taste of it.

The other is pouring gravy on a meal. I hate gravy and don't eat it on anything other than stew). I want my food to taste of what it is not gravy and I also don't want crisp foods (roast potatoes, yorkshires, chips) made soggy with it. Chips and gravy don't even go together

Oh there is loads of people that still cook like that , dare I say that there is MN 'ers that cook like that .
When I saw it for the first time I dared say my children didn.t like turkey . Even my BIL cooks a bit suspicious when I saw his gravy from a tub was a bit suspiciously thicker than wall paper paste .My children didn't like gravy either that day 🙄 . People will try to feed your children anything . Keep watch .
Unfortunately I did have the gravy and it was so salty .

Too much cheese.
Social media videos are to blame, when they sprinkle about an inch of cheese on every dish so they can film the 'cheese pull'.
Lots of cheese is nice, but overloaded cheese is claggy and sickly.

Tea made with teabags.
But a peeve I have when I am cooking is all the water that leaks out of meat, especially bacon, when I am trying to fry it or when a recipe says to brown the meat. I have a local butcher whose bacon is great, but it's not always convenient to go there especially.

I think it's an older generation thing but frying everything in at least an inch of lard. My DM will put at least a quarter of a block of lard into a medium sized frying pan and then everything is just swimming in lard and it's so greasy to eat. It doesn't matter what it is, if it requires frying it's going in at least an inch of lard.

Also, boiling all veg in plain water within an inch of its life so it's soggy, bland and sad.

I'm pretty sure the reason I didn't eat a lot as a child was because of my DMs cooking. I'm an adult now and pretty much taught myself to cook and as far as I'm aware my food is delicious as almost everyone who comes pretty much has seconds if not 3rds. Only my DM doesn't like my food as it's too salty/ buttery/ spicy / full of "foreign" dressings (any sauce or salad dressing apart from thin runny gravy is foreign) / not smothered in lard.

Warm the plates.

Please just warm the plates.

Home cooking:
Cutting carrots in rounds, urgh
Putting everything on my plate, please don't! I want to help myself from dishes on the table as I might not like everything you're serving

In a restaurant, generally a hotel:
Please don't toast the bread if I ask for a bacon sandwich, urgh
Please don't take the wine away from the table, leave it within reach

Dad-in-law, is that you? 😂
If you can't get a third-degree burn off his plate, he isn't happy.

@donteatthedaisies0 and @ToThineOwnSelfBe my DM also cooks things in the oven, turns it off and leaves it in there to finish off the next day. I'm pretty sure it's a generational thing as my late grandmother did the same. The other christmas the beef joint had 6 hours in total. 3 on Christmas eve and 3 Xmas morning. I bought the joint, according to weight it needed 2 and half hours. DM announced it was a big piece of meat and needed cooking in stages. It was dry, burnt and tough.

Carrots absolutely taste different in rounds....and not in a nice way 🤮😂. Also sweetcorn from a tin is disgusting but on the cob its amazing.

Yes! I tried to just minimize what I ate of the stuff that sat at room temp for hours when it was just DH and I. But once we had kids I would sometimes buy separate more kid-friendly seeming food for them and cook it myself. Thankfully, they don't seem to do it as much any more. I don't know if they noticed that certain things were being avoided, or if someone braver than me had a word.

People will try to feed kids anything. A different family member tried to give 5 month old DC1 a Milky Bar!!

🤣🤣 Did you have a nice piece of thoroughly cooked meat ?

People not seasoning stuff
I don't make my food salty but I do use salt in cooking plus pepper, herbs, spices, acids, fat, the stuff that makes it taste good!