Tell Tefal about your Mum’s best evening meals - win a digital cooker worth over £300! NOW CLOSED

[AmeliaMumsnet]

Many of us look back longingly at our Mums’ home cooking but, with full-time jobs and busy lifestyles not to mention that take-away restaurant just around the corner it can be hard to get your own cooking up to her standards. That’s why Tefal want to know about the best things your Mum used to make for you on weeknights - that you wish you had the skills, confidence and time to cook for your family.

Here’s what Tefal have to say: ‘You don’t need to be a masterchef to achieve delicious meals in no time! Tefal have innovated again, and now give you Cook4Me.

Cook4Me is a one-pot digital cooker, ideal for mums looking to make fast and fresh meals. It is easy to use and intuitive: Cook4Me comes with 50 built-in recipes, and features a digital screen with guided cooking steps. Cook4Me cooks under pressure, which means you will save a lot of time. For example, after browning and pre-heating, it cooks a Chicken Tikka Masala in 3 minutes, a Thai Green Chicken curry in 4 minutes and a Risotto in 9 minutes (and no need to stir!)… It is the ideal all-in-one cooker, with up to 6 cooking manual modes: not only does it pressure cook, but it also steams, browns, simmers, gentle-cooks and automatically keeps your food warm. Its dishwasher-safe bowl can feed 6 people, perfect for the whole family or for batch-cooking.

Cook4Me comes in a standard version, with 50 built-in recipes, and in a Connected version, that works with My Cook4Me app, giving access to over 100 recipes.

You can use this link to purchase a Cook4Me of your own, at a fantastic 50% off retail price.’

Whether it’s a signature risotto, a flavoursome curry or the classic chili con carne, post on the thread below your Mum’s best dishes that you wish you could replicate. Everyone who posts will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will be randomly selected to win a Cook4Me.

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw.

MNHQ

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My mum is a great cook, as children we would have stews as lot my favourite was sausage stew!

My mum made a fab fish pie. I wish I could replicate it!

My mother (a war baby) was not into making fancy food but she's a good cook and seemed to always make tasty meals (which were devoured at the dinner table) when we were growing up. We used to get the following on a rotational basis (sure there may have been other dishes which featured less often but can't remember them):

mince and leek pudding (my favourite!)
shepherd's pie
cottage pie
fish and chips
liver and bacon
steak and kidney
ratatouille
chilli-con-carne
spaghetti bolognese
risotto
roast leftovers rehashes (including the most lovely pork rissoles ever!)
roasts
casserole
corned beef hash
Navarin of Lamb
curries
sausages with baked potatoes
toad-in-the-hole (but that was more of a 'nursery' food recipe that we would only have if DF was out at an evening do/meeting)

These were all evening meal or weekend lunch options BTW. No non-meat/fish options ever which makes me slightly shudder with the benefit of hindsight. Although to her credit there would have always been at least two veggies (and sometimes three) with the meal.

And everything was made from scratch - no cheating at all.

Two particular recipes come to mind - firstly, a traditional Sri Lankan celebration / special occasion dish called kiri bath (milk rice)! It is a luxurious, sweet rice cooked in coconut milk (rather than in plain water only) which means you can shape it into 'slices' and serve with curries, sambols etc - absolutely delicious! It can apparently also be made in a rice cooker (rather than in pans), which I would love to try.

The second is Mum's pasta served with a with creamy chicken sauce (the latter being a very mildly spiced and thin curry made with double cream) which marries East and West beautifully and which we adored as children.

My mum was a horrendous cook - and still is. However, when I was about 6 she went back to work FT and my dad would be the one to pick us up from childcare and start dinner, thankfully he's pretty good cook!

His chilli is amazing !

My mum made the best chips but they took ages with two lots of cooking and we're proper deep fried chips. I wouldn't reallocation to replicate them though as I'd prefer my children to be used to healthier oven chips. Her Sunday roasts (every week!) though, I wish I had the skill and time to replicate those.

My Mum does the best lasagne, it's by far my favourite meal she makes and I still ask her for it now :)

Her slow cooked lamb. In a roasting tin she used to put quartered potatoes, throw in a few carrots and any other vegetable she wanted to use up, slice an onion on top of it, sprinkle with a little plain flour, salt and pepper, and then place a breast of lamb (which is as cheep as chips) on top of the lot. Add water and a stock cube and bake in the oven on low for hours and hours. MMMMMM the memories.

Christ my Mum's a dreadful cook. Monday nights guys were spaghetti with a tin of mushroom soup over the top.

Thank God my Dad could cook or we would probably have starved.

Her apple pie, it's a thing of beauty! Despite having the recipe I can never get the pastry right. Must be her icy cold hands that help!!!

Can I include my gran?

She eould make fresh bread with cheese and onion in the dough - fabulous hot from the oven.

My mum makes an amazing roast dinner, but I really love her beef in red wine casserole with mashed potato!

My Mum's dinners have far too much overcooked vegetables but her soups are wonderful made with homemade beef stock.
Mum's Soda Bread is so tasty and despite following the recipe exactly no one in the family can make it as good. She learned to make daily soda bread aged 8 after Gran broke her arm.

Mum still does amazing roasts but my Nan's curries were to die for, still miss her so much after all these years.

My Mum helped Dad in the family business, but was also a marvellous cook, making the lightest pastry ever!

One of my favourite dishes was her Pot Herbs. Soup packed full of vegetables and herbs, with a spring of Bouquet Garni. You could smell the delicious aroma coming home from school and It always tasted marvellous.

At weekends she would roast a huge joint of beef, complaining that it cost 16 shillings! We also used to wander the marshes collecting samphire, which she would pickle.

Apple pie. I can not get the apples to be both sweet, yet still tart

Her gravy. She always made the most amazing gravy and sauces for meals from scratch with only ever an occasional half an oxo cube if the meat hadn't produced all the juices she'd wanted. She even made it for sausages, using a little plain flour to thicken it and the juices from the sausage. Now when I try to do the same all I end up with is a fatty, floury mess. I can make a decent gravy for a roast dinner using gravy granules and the meat juices/veg water but would love to be able to work out how she did it without the gravy granules.

My mum was a great cook and working full time bringing up six children making good, cheap and nutrious meals was vital. I remember her buying cheap cuts of beef and making great stews in a pressure cooker in the seventies so I would love to be able to recreate her good quality stews in a fraction of the time for my family.

I don't know if you think we're all 60(??) but my Mum had a busy lifestyle and career same as most of my friends mums and had the same issues we have now in making healthy midweek meals - and our Dad too, he also worked and cooked / looked after the family.
However they did a great job and so can pass on lots of tips to me and DH. They often got a 'one-pot' meal on at breakfast time and gave it an hour or so before we all left the house (like chilli) then they could just turn the pan back on when they got home. They say slow cookers are a big modern help!!
Also quick but tasty teats like grilled pork steaks topped with apple sauce and grilled cheese were favourites.

My mum and dad both made memorable meals. My dad made a showcase paella on Saturday nights. I've never been able to recreate the level of moistness! My mum would make a 'fake' moussaka. It consisted of beef mince ragu layered with slices of potato and cheese sauce, which was baked in the oven. It was lovely but I got a shock the first time I went to Greece!

My mums mince stuffed cabbage leaves, delicious! My mum couldn't really cook much else very well, roast meat was like leather!

I'm afraid I wouldn't want to replicate anything my mum cooked. She isn't a cook. When I was growing up it was meat and veg generally just plain because that is what my parents liked. I don't really eat meat at all now. I like spicy pastas and currys and trying lots of different experimental tastes!

My mum made a beautiful Shepherds Pie using veg grown in her garden. Mine is never as tasty as I remember hers to be.

Mmmmm fishermans pie for me, made with boiled eggs and prawns and super smooth mash...

Roast beef with all of the trimmings! I never get the beef right, it's always a bit over done or a bit under done. She also manages to get the crispiest roast potatoes and mine always seem to fall a bit flat.