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 🤣

Worst things for me are under-catering, undersalting and low fat / fake versions of anything - fake meat, vegan cheese, flora marg instead of butter, fat free dairy, anything with a load of sweetener instead of sugar 🤢. No thank you

LOL- if you are in Middlesbrough I recommend that you don't order a London Pizza!

@GingerIsBest Yes! I also react to gravy made with granules and also to Chinese food sometimes! I’ve come to the conclusion that’s an MSG intolerance. You can get ‘free from’ gravy granules which are free from MSG.
oh, and I’m also sensitive to Aspartame 😩
God, eating out has become such a nightmare…

Is this chips on pizza???? What sauce is on the chips?

I love British eccentricity in its generality, but not all of the culinary particulars. Perhaps you need to be born here to appreciate London pizza!

We're having homemade lasagne and chips tonight 😋

Multiple carbs are a no-no for me.
My local pub used to do lasagne, chips, & garlic bread as a meal.
They also did a curry with poppadums, naan & rice.

An MN massive salad with either would have been better.

Thanks for sharing, @PrincessHoneysuckle . Can you please explain the appeal to a foreigner with a classical European culinary background?

Washing mince. SIL does this - she browns it, then pops it into a colander and rinses it under the tap. Goodbye, flavour, it was nice knowing you.

And I totally agree that paranoia about undercooking chicken/turkey leads to massive overcooking. MIL is another one who cooks the turkey for several hours on Christmas Eve, then puts it back in the oven again on Christmas Day. She's poking away at a dry and dessicated bird, saying "do you think it's cooked enough?"

All the debate about carrot-cutting - may I recommend oblique cut? Also known as roll cut. You get lovely long diamond-shaped pieces of carrot which are all a similar size, so minimises and over/undercooking you might get if cut into rounds.

I have no ambition to be able to cook well.
I eat to live.
Must admit I’ve not caused a death with my food, yet.

I think it's garlic mayo on the chips. But it has nothing to do with London, I've only ever seen it in Middlesbrough. You can get deep fried battered pizza there too, and their local speciality, the "Parmesan". I think the life expectancy may be shorter than average in the area...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmo

Good garlic mayo on chips sounds delicious. But on a pizza? I will leave that to others, thanks

If I could skip the breading I think the ‘Parmesan’ might be worth a try a least. But I am aware I sound finicky

When people cook rice without washing it.
Yyk .
A Roast Dinner with Potato Rations!!!!!! Or No Gravy!!!!!!
Scrambled Eggs which are like chopped egg.

Not other people's cooking, per se but I can't stand it when someone starts stirring a pot, unasked, when I'm cooking. It's being left alone for a reason; if it needed stirring, then I'd be stirring it... 🤯

Not quite the same but I can't stand people watching me cook. I don't mind my
Mum, kids or DH but anyone else and I feel like they're judging. Probably not but it really puts me off when they're hovering and watching what I'm doing!

100%

But a friend has just sent me a pic of Heston's toast sandwich. I mean the truffle and bone marrow elevate it, but I love a carb butty. Chip or crisp butty. Must be good white bread and lurpack

I have the ikea wooden carrier/trug thing that is full of condiments and gets brought out with every dinner

That sounded like IKEA supple the condiments. That's Sainos, ikea is just the carrier

Broccoli probably doesn't go with gravy (beef) probably delightful chicken & ham pie , homemade of course .

When PIL cook Christmas dinner they cook the meat on Christmas Eve and serve it cold on cold plates but everything else is warm. It's not good and there's no reason for it, they have a huge range cooker, an air fryer and a pressure cooker and they only ever buy a turkey crown and a gammon.

People who put loads of random stuff in things like cottage pie, bolognese, chilli con carne. I used to get stressed out at friends houses as a child when the parents asked if I liked whatever dish it was and I'd say yes then they'd serve up some abomination with sweetcorn,baked beans,mushrooms or boiled eggs in.

Bad gravy.

Undercooked bacon, overcooked broccoli.

People who cut cheese on a cheeseboard the wrong way.

Grazing platters.

Another PIL one (sorry PIL) but their butter is a, not butter and b, looks like a Jackson Pollock. They double dip with anything else they are spreading and do that awful thing of scraping the knife on the edge of the container so it's extra crumby and gross.

@Vonesk - why do you need to wash rice before you cook it?

Mostly people do it to wash off the excess starch which makes the rice stick together when it's cooked. But another reason is to reduce the amount of arsenic in it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38910848

I think I'll survive - I cook rice in lots of water anyway. And I quite like a bit of stickiness - keeps it on the fork. 😆

Trying to decide which is worse, washing mince or my relative who microwaves beef just to make sure it's cooked through 🤢

My DH used to come along and turn down the temperature on the hob as "you're going to overboil the pot/burn the onions"

Not used to, he doesn't anymore or we'd be divorced 😉