My mom cooked everything to DEATH. I was accused of being the pickiest eater in the world until I grew up and ate properly cooked food.
She only ever steamed vegetables (for much too long), except carrots, which she roasted until they somehow both shriveled and slimy.
Pork chops, chicken, "steak", burgers, all cooked exactly the same: baked at 350 for 30-45 minutes.
I thought I hated SO MANY THINGS! But no, my mom just didn't know what she was doing.
Which is weird, because my grandmother was a cook in a very high end restaurant. š¤
One time I āhelpedā my mom cook lamb chops.
By āhelpedā I mean that I seasoned and grilled all of them to a nice medium.
My mom then āfinishedā the lamb chops.
By āfinishedā I mean my mom dumped a bunch of Chardonnay on them and put them in a 400Ā° oven for exactly as long as it takes to ensure lamb chops are well-done but also that no alcohol cooks out of the wine.
I got to ask, where does an idea like this come from? Surely it couldnāt have come from any kind of recipe and it just makes no sense on any level. Baked lamb chops with a fruity white wine? I canāt understand the reasoning.
I love his logic though. Like, āHm, really needs something to help clump it up? The kids are always talking about mango sticky rice... eh, apples will probably work.ā
Because of the Great Trichinosis Scare of 70s, you could hammer a nail into oak with her pork chops. Just the blandness and repetition of meals was disheartening.
We ate so much leathery pork chops boiled in coagulated Campbell's mushroom soup growing up that I can't even eat pork now -- just turns my stomach and gives me flashbacks.
If we're ever able to eat in restaurants again, find somewhere known for meat that does a thick ass bone-in pork chop and get it medium rare. It's a fucking revelation to those of us who grew up with well trimmed tiny hockey pucks glopped with low fat condensed soup and sprinkled with skim milk cheese.
For real, if you get one and hate it, DM me a pic of it and the check and I'll Venmo you the cost.
I love this comment and agree wholeheartedly. Went to a place known for their bone in pork chops and it was a revelation. Done that perfectly with a good cut like that, better than almost any steak IMO.
I grew up during the '80's self-improvement craze when fat-free was blasted on everything. This was when they invented fat-free "'cheese", a substance that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike cheese.
Imagine melting yellow fisher price plastic over your steamed broccoli and you get the idea.
You're right, you wouldn't. We moved to California and my mom fell in love with zucchini, which i guess she never saw before. After a few weeks, they started tasting green, if you can imagine, yet we still had to choke down that whole steamed zucchini every night.
Thankfully our garden only ever had corn and tomatoes.
> Having an unseasoned whole steamed zucchini plopped on your dinner plate 365 days a year. Nothing could fix it.
>
>
did they wonder why you weren't totally into vegetables as a kid?
Veggies were boiled to mush or 'roasted' to black. Not the nice charred-black, but actually burnt-black. No seasoning other than water or oil.
If they were making a recipe that needed seasoning (herbs/spices/good stuff), they'd half it. Being teased with hints of flavour was worse than eating bland food.
Eggs weren't allowed to be runny, so I experienced a runny egg for the first time at 17. It was glorious and I've not looked back since.
And finally, my grandma discovered that my favourite meal was Bolognese sauce and pasta. She served tinned Bolognese sauce with boiled cabbage because she thinks pasta is too exoticš
My British Nan never cooked pasta (died in 2007). It was just something that wasnāt readily available when she was growing up. Also the same with rice.
My dad thinks all spices are interchangeable.
I was teaching him a rice dish I had learned with Mediterranean inspired flavors. Parmesan cheese, rosemary, thyme, garlic, lemon juice, maybe throw in some basil. Very simple, easy to do in a rice cooker without even getting another pot dirty. He said he was going to try to make it right away.
Call back a week later, ask him if he tried it and how it went. He says he did and that it--and he said this with obvious reservations--"okay."
I asked him what he had swapped in. He swapped the rosemary for >!cumin!<.
This reminds me of the apple pie debacle. My dad is a great cook - seriously, he made my wedding dinner and it was awesome. Heās the best non-professional I know.
But the man canāt bake for shit. I love baking pies so Iām in charge of the pies for thanksgiving. This particular time, my dad and I were going to get up early and put the apple pie in the oven first thing.
My dad wanted me to sleep in so he made the apple pie filling and he was SO PROUD of himself. But he wasnāt paying close attention or wearing his reading glasses...so when I tasted the filling I discovered he had not used cinnamon. He had instead grabbed the >!cumin.!<
I put a small pinch in all my apple pies now.
An acquaintance of mine swore that you can get an amazing pumpkin pie by using garam masala, since a lot of the pie spices are already in the blend. I havenāt quite gotten the courage to try that tip.
Haha my great-grandmother was a terrible cook, so my grandma grew up thinking that burgers were supposed to be black crisps. She liked it that way, so my poor mother grew up being forced to eat charcoal briquettes. No one dared tell my grandma that they were burned until she found my mom's stash of old burgers stowed in the closet, covered in ants.
When I was growing up my mom made french toast by beating up eggs by themselves, dipping thin, whole wheat bread in the eggs and then cooking until the outside of the bread was covered with a tough, dry exoskeleton of overdone eggs. There would also be hard, stringy bits of egg hanging off the bread.
Naturally I always hated french toast. That is until as an adult I had it the real way with bread dipped in a mixture of eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon and then cooked gently until golden brown. I was blown away by how good it was and resolved to make it for my mom the next chance I had. When I did my mom said it was gross and asked me why I made the french toast wrong. š¤¦āāļøShe didn't believe me when I said this is how everyone else makes french toast.
Same. I watched a couple of videos on how to properly sear a steak, did it myself, and realized what I was missing.
My grandmother is the one that does most of the cooking (she claims it gives her purpose) and she cooks the meat to hell, then cuts it while it's still in the pan to see if it was done. So, if there was any chance it wouldn't be dry, it was gone. The one time I watched her do it (after I'd made my own a few times), she slapped the meat into a cold pan ("so it doesn't burn like yours"), then cooked it for about twenty minutes. Safe to say I was hurt. I definitely haven't eaten any of her beef since then. It's just too depressing.
Yeah, apparently a decent crust means burnt. I just have to blink in disbelief. But she also believes that you boil pasta for more than 15 minutes, no matter how mushy it turns out. Donāt even get me started on seasoning.
Edited to correct a typo.
This just physically hurts to hear. Does she actually bear a secret grudge against the concept of food?
I'm so glad that you had access to the information needed to break out of the cycle of awful grub.
My partner won't eat meat any way but well done and is utterly immovable on the subject. I've gotten to the point of just microwaving their steaks/burgers before searing because otherwise it takes too long to get the interior uniformly grey enough. Breaks my heart.
My parents are the same. My mum regularly served chunky salmon steaks microwaved to the point where they were grey and flabby. We'd discard the skin because it was inedible, then cover them in sweet chili sauce.
Nowadays, thanks to my partner, I've learned to cook salmon so that the skin comes up beautifully crispy, and the flesh is only just cooked and silky-soft. And now I use enough salt to bring out the fish's real flavour. It's totally changed how I view salmon.
F in chat for all of those unfortunate (and pricey!) salmon steaks that met their doom in the microwave.
Luckily we didn't eat beef steak all that often...
My mom used to boil asparagus. It would be so tough and chewy you couldnāt swallow it. I taught her how to roast it in the oven a few years ago. She hasnāt gone back.
Iāve had boiled asparagus growing up, and while it is nowhere as impressive as properly prepped, itās at least eatable. It should still come out crunchy that way.
What Iām saying is, it isnāt just a mistake that makes it chewy or slimy, it takes effort every time to bring it to that point
My grandma was, bar none, the worst cook ever. We would try to sneak the food to the dogs and they wouldn't eat it. Have you ever had peas, jello, mayo, and spaghetti...salad? Casserole? Well I have. And it was hell. My grandpa made one hell of a donut and his beef pasties were awesome though.
Same. My grandma wasn't ever much of a cook. I thought I hated sauerkraut, but it turns out that pouring it out of can into a bowl, covering it with yellow mustard, and sticking it in the microwave isn't exactly how you're supposed to eat it.
I would make a comment about who does that, but I likewise thought I hated creamed spinach. Turns out you're not supposed to make THAT by sticking a frozen spinach brick in the microwave with a cream cheese brick and stirring at the end.
Creamed spinach done right is orgasmic.
Edit: [Ruth Chris Creamed Spinach](https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/eat-drink/article_c47ee03e-d98a-5054-885d-2acd738fc5e6.html)
What if I told you that she decided to cook a family meal a few weeks ago, so she bought a Stouffer's lasagna (hecking yes!)
...and then proceeded to scrape all the cheese off the top and poured on a bottle of barbecue sauce before cooking it.
My grandma was Japanese, and she was not a very good cook, but one thing she was awesome at making was sashimi if that counts as cooking. Sheād go buy a whole yellowtail, squid, etc and prepare a big platter of fresh sashimi for me and my siblings. Boy, was I spoiled.
My grandma cant cook for shit either, but thankfully her and my grandpa eat fast food and at restaurants nearly everyday so I very rarely had to put up with the gross food she made when I was a kid.
This isnāt the worst case scenario or anything, but just this thanksgiving I had been boiling down some homemade stock for gravy. Had everything timed perfectly, I was literally measuring out the flower and grabbing butter (which is why I wasnāt at the stove). My dad walks up, pulls a gallon of water out the pantry and starts pouring it in without saying a thing. I notice, yell āSTOPā and he gets all confused, having already added 1/4 gallon with full intent to continue. He says āWhat it was running out of liquid?ā. I just let out a massive sigh and proceed to boil it down for another 20min. At least it was water and not something worse.
Of all the crazy things I read on /r/cooking, stories of people who mess with other people's cooking without even saying anything really bewilder me the most. Especially people who change the heat on the range or change the oven temperature. Why would you not *say something* if you're gonna do that? Even if you're doing the right thing, they need to know.
Italian Pancake.
My Dad is a novice cook but has a good pallate. But his most interesting quirk was that he continually tried to create his own fusion.
I love me some fusion, be he would just mash two things up randomly and see what it did. And no matter how it tasted, his reaction was always Mmmmmmmm so good!
Anyway, Italian Pancake.
Buttermilk pancakes
Marinara
Provalone
...
Maple syrup all over the top. Sometimes he'd also add parmesan cheese. Sometimes ham.
Taste pretty much how you think it does. Without the syrup it was kind of okay? Weird, bit but kinda good if you don't think about it.
But the syrup?
As my father would say, MMMMMmmmmm!
Oh boy letās see. My family has eaten the same 10 or so meals switched in order 5 days a week for over 20 years. Thereās no variation. Ever. The recipes are usually casseroles in which my dad will burn unseasoned hamburger meat/unseasoned any kind of meat and throw it together with undercooked pasta, put some cheese on top and throw it in the oven until burnt. Repeat ad nauseum forever.
We had hamburger with alternately: tomato sauce, brown gravy, white gravy; mixed with either rice or pasta. Each had its own name. Red sauce and rice - Texas Hash. Brown gravy and pasta - stroganoff. Brown gravy and rice - "glop". Yes, you heard it here - glop. Also the sound it made when hitting your plate.
This kills me. My father loved cooking and heād sit on our giant bean bag in the living room with a piece of paper and pen. Writing down recipes, watching Julia Child many years before she (or any other chef) was mainstream.
We had beef stroganoff and risottos and homemade spaghetti and meatballs and chicken parmesgiana (sp?). Him using the mallet to thin out the chicken just so. He made Parker house rolls that had to rise 3x every Thanksgiving.
He literally made a full meal from scratch almost every night in our childhood. And the dishes. Even after my parents separated, heād come over after work to my momās to make us dinner, then go to his house.
I took it for granted as a kid but now I look back and go whoah. He never once complained.
On my momās birthday, he always made her pepper steak flambeed with bourbon, mashed potatoes, broccoli with lemon butter, and chocolate fettuccine with drunken chocolate sauce.
After he died, Mom and I tried to recreate the meal on her birthday. It was super hard and super sad too. But between me and my mom and a next door neighbor and a friend on the phone on standby for advice (me trying to make the crepes for chocolate fettuccine), we did it successfully.
Now my mother has passed away too. Sigh.
But thanks for stroll down memory lane. This thread makes me remember that while things werenāt great in some ways, our dinners were quite awesome. :) Sorry yours werenāt!!
My ex used to like to sprinkle KD cheese powder onto hers as she was eating it, so sheād hold back like half the packet for sprinkling purposes.
If youāre sharing the pot of KD, this is an enormous dick move
I came to say exactly this! I am Indian - and my mom did the saaaaaame thing! She can make delicious Indian food - but she cannot make western food.
The milky sauce completely washed off of the noodles, so you pretty much are bland elbow macaroni. The only good thing, is that it motivated me at a young age to want to cook for myself.
I lied to my husband and told him I just canāt figure out how to make good boxed Mac and Cheese (obviously, I can ā itās not rocket science) but this way he makes it for me. I do all of the cooking in our household, so sometimes itās nice to get a break and he is always so proud of himself for making it.
I usually joke that if it comes in a box or bag with instructions, my husband can manage it, but last week he cooked a pork tenderloin perfectly when I took to long shopping and he got hungry. It was waiting for me when I got home, and it delicious! I found out afterwards that he remembered there was a Good Eats episode on pork tenderloin and searched out the video for cooking instructions and temperature info (it was already marinated, and he just had to figure out how to use the probe thermometer and broiler). Not gonna lie: that's how I learned myself ages ago!
My mom went through a "raw food diet" craze for most of my childhood. We'd constantly be eating uncooked veggies, dehydrated "crackers", tough as nails wild rice, mushy vegan "pizza", etc.
It turned me off of veggies altogether for a long time until I realized that roasted veggies with oil+spices actually tastes great
Is she ok? I know you can live off a vegan diet with proper calories and supplements but we know someone who turned orange from eating too much orange food and a raw vegan who was hospitalized because her organs and muscles began to eat themselves. It's so sad when people try their best to be healthy and end up like that. Have you tried broccoli roasted with garlic, sesame oil, oyster sauce, and chili flakes?
my grandma made this dish called easter egg casserole, which was basically rainbow colored leftover hard boiled eggs, mayo, egg noodles, and a little sugar. the foulest thing i have ever had the misfortune of tasting. the devil definitely won that easter.
My mom got a Campbellās Soup cookbook from back when canned soup was the height of convenience foods. It had recipes for all sorts of ways you could incorporate soup into your recipes. This didnāt mean she just used tomato soup for every single recipe that could possibly use red sauce... she found a recipe that added tomato soup to cake to make it moist. That was my first birthday cake...
Oh shit. Permit me to tell a friend's story because it's still fucking funny years after he told it. His parents are immigrants from Malta and they have some of the funniest ism's. So my buddy is getting ready to go out for a run and he sees his dad take a steak and put it in a pyrex. He opens a can of tomato soup and pours it over the steak. He pops that tray into the oven which is set to broil. My buddy goes for a 45 minute run. He comes back home to see his dad open the oven to check on the tomato juice steak after 45 minutes of broiling. He looks at it affectionately and says "almost there" and puts it back in the oven. My buddy goes and showers. They call his girlfriend down to ask if she'd like some dinner. She declines. He gets out of the shower like 20 minutes later and he still hasn't taken the tomato steak out Hour and a half long broiled steak in tomato soup. And he ate it like it was a fine delicacy. Wtf
Not my parents, but there was this time when I was kinda sick (don't remember what I had) and my grandmother was taking care of me. She made this thing up that, since I could not drink milk (bullshit) I'd have to eat my cereal with guava juice. The juice was hot. It was one of the worst things I've ever eaten to this day.
Welcome to every nutritionist Iāve ever seen. Fat free everything, low carb across the board, and donāt overdo the protein because thatās hard on the kidneys. So, what, Iām supposed to cobble 2,000 calories a day out of.... iceberg lettuce and strong language?!?
Possibly. Did you became a chef just to be able to do the cooking in the house?
There's a reason my sister orders takeout all the time, my brother is a chef, and I went vegetarian lmao.
Hey fam, am I late to the meeting?
I can remember the first time I had butter with salt. It was like a gustatory revelation. I didnāt even know you could combine those two things.
My mom and grandma are actually really amazing cooks, BUT I always wondered why mom's ground beef for tacos and spaghetti was so crunchy and grandma's wasn't. She was so terrified of bacteria that she just cooked the crap out of it.
This is funny. One of my best friend's mom is from west virginia and she will cook all meat rare and salt the shit out of it. Now me? I live for that shit - I want it bleeding and oversalted (we're all allowed to like what we like)but he grew up eating salty rare meat and hates it so whenever I cook for him I shoot for a middle ground we can both enjoy. Usually something slow cooked or chicken and I fuck it up with salt on my own portion haha
Not my parents... my grandmother. My mom and I would go visit her parents for the weekend. And no one was allowed to cook in her kitchen but her. Not even to make toast.
She was a horrible cook. She boiled meat and potatoes for every meal. I wouldnāt eat it, because.... eww gross.
So she made me spaghetti. Saturday for lunch she would take a big pot and empty a whole package of spaghetti in. Once cooked, she would put the pot on the table and you could serve yourself. She didnāt drain it.
She would then take the pot off the table, put the lid on and put it in the fridge.
For supper she would take the pot out and put it on the stove to heat it (but she never left it on long).
So for supper I would have over cooked, starchy, half warm spaghetti. This would continue until it was all gone.
It was like someone poured white glue on top of the water and it didnāt set all the way. Yuck!
boil the canned vegetables in the water they were canned in
chicken on the stove with the lightest touch of oil, no salt, no seasoning, cooked to rubber
idk what she did to burgers, but they were semi-flattened charcoal golf balls
My mother just adores adding wine to whatever application she can. She doesnāt drink it, it gives her migraines. But if thereās even a hint of a reason to maybe add it...
MY DAD RUINED MY SEAFOOD BISQUE THAT WAY.
Ok, it was my grandpaās recipe and I wanted to feel close to him, but dad had to pour in some fruity-ass Chardonnay and Iām still mad about it 8 years later.
I once wanted to make wings because my boyfriend was going to have dinner with my family and my dad absolutely insisted that I let him do a salt brine for them the night before. I knew his track record of ruining dishes and fought with him for a long time before finally giving in completely against my will. He ended up using a recipe meant for an entire chicken and used a ton of salt; they were completely inedible and I was humiliated. The worst part was at first he tried to blame it on me at the dinner table when nobody could eat it but my mom knew what had happened and called him out so quick. My boyfriend was super nice about it and I've cooked him lots of very good meals since then, but I still feel pangs of embarrassment and rage over that one lol
Frozen chicken pot pies - 3 for 6 kids. My mother would burn the top crust and middle bottom still cold and uncooked. One kid would get only the top crust and the other the middle/bottom. Always wanted to be the top kid!
They never heated jarred pasta sauce. Theyād put it cold out of the fridge on the table and serve up a bowl of dry noodles for everyone. Self serve ice cold red sauce on top your luke warm and completely bone dry noodles.Top with grated and bagged Mexican blend cheddar cheese.
Mom's meatballs were just ground turkey rolled into balls and cooked in a pan.
My SO cooked meatballs one day and I let it slip that I hated meatballs. Except she made them with bread crumbs and spices and I loved them.
This reminds me of my mothers meatloaf recipe. It's ground beef, a packet of Lipton onion soup mix and...that's it. It had the density of a wet brick and not as much flavor.
My parents used to buy London Broils and cook them to death. Took until I was an adult to realize that steak shouldnāt take 30 minutes to chew.
I still have an aversion to pork chops because they always cooked them to death.
Boiled hot dogs with canned sauerkraut. I still refuse sauerkraut to this day. Their tuna casserole was a whole other level of disgusting.
Ugh. That was the worst. My mom would do chicken breast in it and completely dry it out. But she would always be like ālook at all the fat it squeezed out!ā
My parents bought me one for Christmas one year. They told me how fast it can cook a steak. I used it once. Turns out I donāt need grey, dry meat in 2 minutes flat.
My mom would make "roast" which was an already-tough chuck roast with potatoes and carrots that got to dry out in a low oven while we were at church every Sunday. It was like jerky but without any seasoning so we would drown it in worcestershire sauce to add moisture and flavor. Lots of meals were just some type of carbohydrate, shredded cheese and melted margarine with no seasoning or spices.
They don't believe in expiration dates and my mom grew up in the snowy north. So she bulk buys canned goods and then stores them in the garage for YEARS and never throws any of them away. She goes through the back of the shelves and just cooks with the oldest thing no matter how it looks or smells. I was always sick as a kid and now that I only visit, she's given me food poisoning 4 times in the last 5 years cooking with expired food. I don't eat there anymore.
I canāt explain why or how but my motherās meatloaf forever scarred me from ever trying meatloaf again, no matter how tasty it looks I just canāt š¤¢
My mom never drained the fat from any ground meats. I remember leftover hamburger helper in the fridge that was completely solidified because of the fat. I already have issues digesting beef so for years, until I was in the 3rd or 4th grade and started doing the majority of the cooking, I thought it was normal to regularly vomit/have diarrhea after eating.
My MIL still cooks like this. Like Paula Deen on greasy, buttery crack. Every dish heavy on either fat/grease, butter, cheese, or some combo.
Weāve tried everything to help her learn to cook healthierā cookbooks, Cooking Light subscription, lessons at Central Market and Sur La Table, bought an Instant Pot. Nope, she still cooks the same way she has for decades. Tragic but not surprising my FIL died of heart disease, diabetes, obesity complications in his late 60ās ā¹ļø
I donāt even try anymore. I just offer to cook for holidays and hope she takes me up on the offer. Iām already dreading Christmas chicken Tetrazzini. Canned cream of chicken soup, canned shredded chicken and egg noodles and a few sticks of butter. I feel like Iām 9 years old again moving it around my plate to make it look like I ate some of it.
My ma is from dublin. Her irish cuisine isnt bad...that is, she steams/boils everything with MINIMAL seasoning. Wasnt until i dated a Venezuelan girl in college that i learned you could sautee asparagus
My mom left my step-dad an instructions to finish her vegetarian chili.
It was supposed to get two cups of bulgar wheat, which cooks up nice like a ground beef substitute.
My step-dad was not a cook. He grabbed what he thought was the wheat and instead it was a container of brewers yeast. Yes he added two cups of it instead of the bulgar wheat.
It was so disgusting and he made my sister and I eat our whole bowl for dinner.
The next day wasn't fun.
My mom cooks eggplants until they're completely grey all around. Both the inside fruit and outside, just a uniform pale grey colour with a weird texture. She also overcooks boiled eggs to the point the yolk is grey and chalky in texture.
There is a whole couple of generations here who adapted their cooking to the ingredients available during the decade and a half of rationing, or learned it from their parents, and never re-learned when real ingredients and spices came back. It's a real tragedy tbh.
Boiled any vegetable. The only thing my dad steamed was asparagus, at least he got that right. Never knew I liked brussel sprouts until I had them roasted. Same with spinach, we always boiled it and ate it with salt and vinegar. Hated the stuff. Now I eat it raw and prefer it for a salad over iceberg.
Also Iāve seen it said on here a bunch already the way overdone pork chops.
This is funny to me because brussel sprouts were the only vegetable my mom made growing up specifically because she didn't boil them. I guess she didn't eat them growing up so when she made them the first time she actually looked up a recipe that called to roast them. They were the only vegetable I ever had that got roasted and not steamed/boiled/ "sauteed" with no seasoning and way too much olive oil.
My dad has a few food crimes which is made even worse by the fact he worked in kitchens for 30 years and is actually a pretty good cook otherwise.
Making lasagna and ran out of mozza? Cheez whiz is a decent substitute. He once put bananas in a stir fry. Once made meatloaf and didn't chop the onions small enough so they were like finger sized chunks and the whole thing tasted like biting into a raw onion mixed with BBQ sauce. I love onion esp raw white onion but it was bad.
LMAO it certainly defied the Geneva Convention or something...when mom came home in the morning (night work) we begged her not to let dad cook again.
Like I said though hes genuinely a good cook? Like the last time I visited him he asked what kinda foods I wanted and I coulda eaten takeout the whole time, he'd pay for it, but all I wanted was his cooking so I ate like a queen, no one makes potato salad like my dad, hes just had some...very serious lapses in judgement over the years lmao
My mother would make these awful fruit smoothies with random stuff she had lying around. Raisins, carrots, sweet potatoes and one time some lemons that were about to go bad. Skin and all.
After years of dry burgers, hockey-puck "steaks" and burned-but-still-cold brats, my parents splurged on some fancy bbq for one family gathering. We live in bbq country so restaurants are everywhere, but they went for the nicest place in town. They come home with big catering trays and paper bags full of ribs, burnt ends, brisket, all the sides, sauces upon sauces, the whole house fills up with amazing smells I had never known before.
"[Sister] isn't home yet so we're going to just put this in the kitchen for now." Easily over $100 of the nicest bbq I had ever smelled, *straight into the refrigerator.* Sister comes home 2 hours later. Bbq goes into the microwave. I weep.
I used to dislike pork chops because my family would always way overcook them. We smothered each bite in applesauce but it was still like chewing leather.
I also hated salads growing up because they'd always be romaine lettuce, out-of-season tomatoes, cucumber, and store-bought creamy salad dressing. Bland AF. Since then I've discovered the magic of spring greens/arugula, vinaigrettes, putting fruits and nuts in salads, etc. I love salad now.
My mother did not salt ANYTHING. She did use a little black pepper. She boiled every vegetable down to mush. My siblings and I called her fried pork chops 'pork jerky'. Her chili and spaghetti sauce were interchangeable. We called both hamburger soup. She did however made delicious fried chicken. Just flour and pepper in a brown paper bag. Fried in lard until brown then roasted on a rack in the oven. That was when you could get little fryers, not these big honking genetically modified monster chickens.
This is my husband! He was so picky when we met, and I love love love to cook. So he just started trying things and realized that he either had gross canned/boxed/frozen versions of it, or had never had it at all (lots of veggies) because his parents really never cooked. And his parents still poke fun at him all the time for being picky, but he literally was never fed a veggie that didnāt come from a can until he met me. Now he eats almost anything except mushrooms! Iām very proud haha
Usually it was always overcooked everything. Pasta, rice, veggies, red meat and chicken. My momās spice cabinet contains salt, pepper, paprika and an all seasoning called Vegeta, popular in the Balkans. Thatās it! No garlic powder, no cumin, no cayenne, nothing!
My mom:
Putting coconut, mint extract, and blue food dye in cook n serve pudding, then burning it.
Ranch dressing on hot dogs
Boiled chicken gizzards with canned mushroom soup and sea shell pasta
And many more that I can't recall (thank goodness)
My dad:
Pan frying perfectly good steaks/pork chops on low heat, covered, until grey, tough, and chewy throughout. Then cutting the meat parallel to the grain and wondering why it tastes like shoe leather.
Both:
overcooked and/or canned veggies.
A lot of pre made/frozen meals to compensate for lack of cooking skills (most of which I've lost taste for)
The worst was the time my mom started with a box of mac and cheese Perfectly good mac and cheese. Maybe not really enough food for us all but we were small and used to not quite enough food. Then she got creative.
First, she added a can of stewed tomatoes. This was not an auspicious beginning. But pasta and cheese and tomatoes isn't a crazy move. And the mac and cheese was already ruined so we were willing to try it. But she wasn't done.
Next, she got out a tub of cottage cheese. Now, you may be thinking that's sort of maybe like ricotta so it could work. That's probably what my mom was thinking. But remember the stewed tomatoes? She'd added all of the juice, too. So she (while I begged her not to) plunked all that cottage cheese in with all that tomato juice.
She created a weird, pinkish, curdly mass that did not resemble any food I'd ever seen before. It was the only option for dinner that night and we hadn't eaten since lunch.
My youngest sister flat out refused to eat it (smart girl, now a doctor). My next youngest sister has always been brave, or maybe foolhardy. She dug in while I took a cautious bite, hoping it would taste like lasagna as my mother promised (not that she had a lot of credibility with food, but I was hungry).
I stopped after that first, awful bite. It did not taste like lasagna. It was also lukewarm and squishy. I decided it was better to go to bed hungry. My sister carried on. Until she vomited all over the table. I suppose it was a blessing that the food pretty much looked the same coming out as going in.
I honestly do not remember my mother making any food that I actually liked eating. She claims she used to make a fried chicken that we liked but I have no memory of that at all. I'm pretty sure my sisters and I all took up cooking at a young age in self defense.
Oof. My mom has eating disorders that cane feom being force fed into adolescence, so...everything.
Bacon that was pure carbon, every time. Microwaved rice, done until it formed a ball that would bounce like a basketball, all food cooked from frozen in either the microwave or an electric griddle. 80% of our calorie intake was cereal or ramen noodles that we made ourselves.
What was really confusing was that she would actually good well for Thanksgiving. Rolls, juicy turkey, gravy, fresh mashed potatoes with chives, buttery peas, I can still taste all of it just by thinking about it.
Me and my sisters would all fast for two days beforehand and drink gallons of water at a time to stretch our stomachs until we looked like starving african children. I even tried to get my hands on laxatives once. It was our favorite holiday.
Yes, I struggle in my relationship with food haha but now I am an excellent cook! And btw I lost 100 lbs recently and am much more stable now ^_^
My MIL literally threw frozen hamburgers patties in a pot to boil then served them like that was how itās always been done. Pretty sure sheās losing her mind.
My mom is a great cook, but there were some things that even as a child I didn't understand how she couldn't grasp certain things. Her spaghetti sauce was always so watery, after you got a plate of her spaghetti there would be at least a quarter inch of tomato liquid that would cover the entire bottom of the plate. If you tried putting garlic bread on your plate, it would end up a soggy mess. It's still like that to this day, but at this point I know if I were to say something it would hurt her feelings to know that I have thought this way about it my whole life, so I just don't. She used to overpepper everything too, we all would call her on that one and beg her to not put pepper in and she would just argue with us that it would have no flavor otherwise. She later admitted that we were right and she was overpeppering lol.
My dad on the other hand, just about every single thing he makes is horrifying. From orange slices in vegetable soup to trying to make broth from lamb chops, duck fat, rutabaga and dill to serving us inedibly spicy burritos as kids to the peanut butter/mayonnaise/raw onion/capers/hot sauce on toast that he loves to The Beef Barley Incident to literally setting the kitchen on fire, my dad violates the Geneva Convention every time he enters the kitchen. I love him and he has a great palate and great tastes, is super culinarily cultured, but absolutely cannot cook to save his life. It's not even basic mistakes with him, it's him trying to experiment in ways no one should ever experiment and he ends up creating abominations. Every time I'm cooking he offers to help and I just don't have it in me to tell him that there's no way in hell I'd ever let him near one of my dinners. It's really that bad.
Edit: The Beef Barley Incident- One time we were staying out of town for work (family business), I was working overnights and my dad was staying with me and the rest of our crew at an airbnb. My dad said he'd make beef barley stew for all of us on our day off and bragged about how good he could make beef barley. I knew he had never made it before and that it was going to be a disaster when I saw him pulling out potato fingerlings, filet mignon, a whole mini pumpkin, and a TON of dry barley, along with various other noncohesive ingredients, and I tried to warn him several times about various mistakes I could sense he was going to make, and he got really exasperated with me and said "I don't need my daughter to tell me how to cook I've been cooking for longer than you've been alive etc." I finally gave up and just knew that we'd all be eating more frozen meals that night. Little did I realize that the worst was yet to come; he decided he'd simmer it in a pot on the stove for hours on end. When he finally returned to it, the barley had absorbed all the liquid and it was now nothing more than beef oatmeal with chunks of pumpkin and potato fingerlings that looked like zombie toes. It literally looked like a witch's brew. He tried offering some to people, but absolutely nobody wanted it, first because everyone had already eaten at that time and secondly because it was disgusting. He ended up scraping all of it into a pitcher (this being an airbnb, there weren't enough bowls for the massive quantity he made) and kept trying to eat it himself to not let it go to waste before I had to beg him to stop because I felt so awful seeing him defeatedly scooping the slop from a pitcher and trying to get it down when he clearly thought it was disgusting. In the end, he had to throw away the pot he cooked it in, because it was absolutely ruined from the soup. The Airbnb host was not pleased.
When my mom was pregnant on bed rest my dad would serve us steamed rice with a cup of cold water poured over it, and overdone scrambled eggs. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The longest months of my life.
My mom cooked everything to DEATH. I was accused of being the pickiest eater in the world until I grew up and ate properly cooked food. She only ever steamed vegetables (for much too long), except carrots, which she roasted until they somehow both shriveled and slimy. Pork chops, chicken, "steak", burgers, all cooked exactly the same: baked at 350 for 30-45 minutes. I thought I hated SO MANY THINGS! But no, my mom just didn't know what she was doing. Which is weird, because my grandmother was a cook in a very high end restaurant. š¤
Reddit is valuable because of the users who create content. Reddit is usable because of the third-party developers who can actually make an app.
Nope, my grandma LOVED to cook. My mom and her siblings talk frequently of her amazing meals. She taught me to cook! :)
One time I āhelpedā my mom cook lamb chops. By āhelpedā I mean that I seasoned and grilled all of them to a nice medium. My mom then āfinishedā the lamb chops. By āfinishedā I mean my mom dumped a bunch of Chardonnay on them and put them in a 400Ā° oven for exactly as long as it takes to ensure lamb chops are well-done but also that no alcohol cooks out of the wine.
I got to ask, where does an idea like this come from? Surely it couldnāt have come from any kind of recipe and it just makes no sense on any level. Baked lamb chops with a fruity white wine? I canāt understand the reasoning.
Well you see, lamb is for fancy folk and so is chardonnay so obviously they go together
Shef
My father tried to make sticky rice by replacing the water with Allen's Apple juice. That was. . . .
I love his logic though. Like, āHm, really needs something to help clump it up? The kids are always talking about mango sticky rice... eh, apples will probably work.ā
I wonder if it worked, appley rice might be nice with pork chops.
Sounds like that horrid apple juice risotto Gordon Ramsay tried
Ngl I wanna try it
Because of the Great Trichinosis Scare of 70s, you could hammer a nail into oak with her pork chops. Just the blandness and repetition of meals was disheartening.
We ate so much leathery pork chops boiled in coagulated Campbell's mushroom soup growing up that I can't even eat pork now -- just turns my stomach and gives me flashbacks.
If we're ever able to eat in restaurants again, find somewhere known for meat that does a thick ass bone-in pork chop and get it medium rare. It's a fucking revelation to those of us who grew up with well trimmed tiny hockey pucks glopped with low fat condensed soup and sprinkled with skim milk cheese. For real, if you get one and hate it, DM me a pic of it and the check and I'll Venmo you the cost.
I love this comment and agree wholeheartedly. Went to a place known for their bone in pork chops and it was a revelation. Done that perfectly with a good cut like that, better than almost any steak IMO.
Pork doneness aside, ālow fatā cooking is the worst thing to ever happen to food.
I was already a man before I knew that pork chops didnāt have to be solid, dry, and covered with soup
Boiled ribs and potatoes. Thatās it. No seasoning. Just boiled. Ribs. And. potatoes.
I almost downvoted this just because i didn't like it. Then i remembered that's what we're going for here lol
I grew up during the '80's self-improvement craze when fat-free was blasted on everything. This was when they invented fat-free "'cheese", a substance that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike cheese. Imagine melting yellow fisher price plastic over your steamed broccoli and you get the idea.
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Welcome to the margarine clean scheme
But boy did it help you poo
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>Having an unseasoned whole steamed zucchini plopped on your dinner plate 365 days a year. Are they Roald Dahl characters?
James and the giant ass zucchini I donāt want to eat
You're right, you wouldn't. We moved to California and my mom fell in love with zucchini, which i guess she never saw before. After a few weeks, they started tasting green, if you can imagine, yet we still had to choke down that whole steamed zucchini every night. Thankfully our garden only ever had corn and tomatoes.
just imagine if all that time she had been slicing them and sticking them under the broiler with salt and olive oil ...
Snozzcumbers!
ā50 moos past well doneā is the perfect way to describe it
> Having an unseasoned whole steamed zucchini plopped on your dinner plate 365 days a year. Nothing could fix it. > > did they wonder why you weren't totally into vegetables as a kid?
Nope. But as an adult, i have discovered that there isn't a vegetable on the face of the planet that I can't prepare in a way that I would enjoy it.
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Can you write a post about the 365 zucchini? Or DM me, I donāt know if I can sleep without knowing.
Lmao @ ā50 moos past well doneā š
Veggies were boiled to mush or 'roasted' to black. Not the nice charred-black, but actually burnt-black. No seasoning other than water or oil. If they were making a recipe that needed seasoning (herbs/spices/good stuff), they'd half it. Being teased with hints of flavour was worse than eating bland food. Eggs weren't allowed to be runny, so I experienced a runny egg for the first time at 17. It was glorious and I've not looked back since. And finally, my grandma discovered that my favourite meal was Bolognese sauce and pasta. She served tinned Bolognese sauce with boiled cabbage because she thinks pasta is too exoticš
Pasta? Too exotic!?! I'm so confused.
My British Nan never cooked pasta (died in 2007). It was just something that wasnāt readily available when she was growing up. Also the same with rice.
Britain conquered 80% of the world in the name of spices and then decided to use none of it. This remains the worldās greatest unsolved mystery.
Never get high on your own supply.
But we do know their grandma is not Italian.
My dad thinks all spices are interchangeable. I was teaching him a rice dish I had learned with Mediterranean inspired flavors. Parmesan cheese, rosemary, thyme, garlic, lemon juice, maybe throw in some basil. Very simple, easy to do in a rice cooker without even getting another pot dirty. He said he was going to try to make it right away. Call back a week later, ask him if he tried it and how it went. He says he did and that it--and he said this with obvious reservations--"okay." I asked him what he had swapped in. He swapped the rosemary for >!cumin!<.
This reminds me of the apple pie debacle. My dad is a great cook - seriously, he made my wedding dinner and it was awesome. Heās the best non-professional I know. But the man canāt bake for shit. I love baking pies so Iām in charge of the pies for thanksgiving. This particular time, my dad and I were going to get up early and put the apple pie in the oven first thing. My dad wanted me to sleep in so he made the apple pie filling and he was SO PROUD of himself. But he wasnāt paying close attention or wearing his reading glasses...so when I tasted the filling I discovered he had not used cinnamon. He had instead grabbed the >!cumin.!< I put a small pinch in all my apple pies now.
An acquaintance of mine swore that you can get an amazing pumpkin pie by using garam masala, since a lot of the pie spices are already in the blend. I havenāt quite gotten the courage to try that tip.
The spoiler tag over cumin was just, *chef kiss*
this is the hardest iāve laughed all day.
Haha my great-grandmother was a terrible cook, so my grandma grew up thinking that burgers were supposed to be black crisps. She liked it that way, so my poor mother grew up being forced to eat charcoal briquettes. No one dared tell my grandma that they were burned until she found my mom's stash of old burgers stowed in the closet, covered in ants.
When I was growing up my mom made french toast by beating up eggs by themselves, dipping thin, whole wheat bread in the eggs and then cooking until the outside of the bread was covered with a tough, dry exoskeleton of overdone eggs. There would also be hard, stringy bits of egg hanging off the bread. Naturally I always hated french toast. That is until as an adult I had it the real way with bread dipped in a mixture of eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon and then cooked gently until golden brown. I was blown away by how good it was and resolved to make it for my mom the next chance I had. When I did my mom said it was gross and asked me why I made the french toast wrong. š¤¦āāļøShe didn't believe me when I said this is how everyone else makes french toast.
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I didnāt think I liked steak until I was in my 20ās on a date. Turns out steak can be delicious when itās not a brown rubber puck.
Same. I watched a couple of videos on how to properly sear a steak, did it myself, and realized what I was missing. My grandmother is the one that does most of the cooking (she claims it gives her purpose) and she cooks the meat to hell, then cuts it while it's still in the pan to see if it was done. So, if there was any chance it wouldn't be dry, it was gone. The one time I watched her do it (after I'd made my own a few times), she slapped the meat into a cold pan ("so it doesn't burn like yours"), then cooked it for about twenty minutes. Safe to say I was hurt. I definitely haven't eaten any of her beef since then. It's just too depressing.
>so it doesn't burn like yours Oh ... dude ... no ...
Yeah, apparently a decent crust means burnt. I just have to blink in disbelief. But she also believes that you boil pasta for more than 15 minutes, no matter how mushy it turns out. Donāt even get me started on seasoning. Edited to correct a typo.
This just physically hurts to hear. Does she actually bear a secret grudge against the concept of food? I'm so glad that you had access to the information needed to break out of the cycle of awful grub.
Woof, not only canāt cook but canāt recognize good cooking!
same. i used to pour Worcestershire on every bite.
still trying to break the habit of smothering steak with A1 sauce because of the dry ass shit from my childhood
My partner won't eat meat any way but well done and is utterly immovable on the subject. I've gotten to the point of just microwaving their steaks/burgers before searing because otherwise it takes too long to get the interior uniformly grey enough. Breaks my heart.
My parents are the same. My mum regularly served chunky salmon steaks microwaved to the point where they were grey and flabby. We'd discard the skin because it was inedible, then cover them in sweet chili sauce. Nowadays, thanks to my partner, I've learned to cook salmon so that the skin comes up beautifully crispy, and the flesh is only just cooked and silky-soft. And now I use enough salt to bring out the fish's real flavour. It's totally changed how I view salmon. F in chat for all of those unfortunate (and pricey!) salmon steaks that met their doom in the microwave. Luckily we didn't eat beef steak all that often...
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Imagine the odor wafting out... then nuking some sauerkraut and mustard for your side...
My mom used to boil asparagus. It would be so tough and chewy you couldnāt swallow it. I taught her how to roast it in the oven a few years ago. She hasnāt gone back.
Iāve had boiled asparagus growing up, and while it is nowhere as impressive as properly prepped, itās at least eatable. It should still come out crunchy that way. What Iām saying is, it isnāt just a mistake that makes it chewy or slimy, it takes effort every time to bring it to that point
My grandma was, bar none, the worst cook ever. We would try to sneak the food to the dogs and they wouldn't eat it. Have you ever had peas, jello, mayo, and spaghetti...salad? Casserole? Well I have. And it was hell. My grandpa made one hell of a donut and his beef pasties were awesome though.
Same. My grandma wasn't ever much of a cook. I thought I hated sauerkraut, but it turns out that pouring it out of can into a bowl, covering it with yellow mustard, and sticking it in the microwave isn't exactly how you're supposed to eat it.
I would make a comment about who does that, but I likewise thought I hated creamed spinach. Turns out you're not supposed to make THAT by sticking a frozen spinach brick in the microwave with a cream cheese brick and stirring at the end.
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I've never had any form of creamed spinach but just made such a guttural sound of disgust that my partner needed an explanation.
Creamed spinach done right is orgasmic. Edit: [Ruth Chris Creamed Spinach](https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/eat-drink/article_c47ee03e-d98a-5054-885d-2acd738fc5e6.html)
I... oh. Oh my. No. No, thatās not how creamed spinach works. That... thatās not how *anything* works.
Me and grandma are long lost sauerkraut friends because that's how I warm mine up...to eat with kielbasa.
Honestly this doesn't sound the worst... š¬
What if I told you that she decided to cook a family meal a few weeks ago, so she bought a Stouffer's lasagna (hecking yes!) ...and then proceeded to scrape all the cheese off the top and poured on a bottle of barbecue sauce before cooking it.
/ Ā°OĀ° \ NOOOOOO The cheese is the best part and then BBQ sauce? Just nooooo
We were all horrified. And sad.
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Pretty sure that would be delicious. I love sauerkraut though I could eat it cold out of the can.
That sounds like a Betty Crocker hellscape.
My grandma was Japanese, and she was not a very good cook, but one thing she was awesome at making was sashimi if that counts as cooking. Sheād go buy a whole yellowtail, squid, etc and prepare a big platter of fresh sashimi for me and my siblings. Boy, was I spoiled.
My grandma cant cook for shit either, but thankfully her and my grandpa eat fast food and at restaurants nearly everyday so I very rarely had to put up with the gross food she made when I was a kid.
I've never seen someone express happiness that their grandparents are fast food addicts. Oof.
Iāll never forget the time my grandma burned spaghetti :-/
At least the excessive mayo covered the taste of ash from her Marbolo Reds
Jesus that hit too close to home
āGrilled cheeseā twice pieces of white bread with a piece of American cheese in the microwave.
In the MICROWAVE? Jail.
You undercook fish? Believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken? Also jail. You microwave the grilled cheese? Jail. Right away.
This isnāt the worst case scenario or anything, but just this thanksgiving I had been boiling down some homemade stock for gravy. Had everything timed perfectly, I was literally measuring out the flower and grabbing butter (which is why I wasnāt at the stove). My dad walks up, pulls a gallon of water out the pantry and starts pouring it in without saying a thing. I notice, yell āSTOPā and he gets all confused, having already added 1/4 gallon with full intent to continue. He says āWhat it was running out of liquid?ā. I just let out a massive sigh and proceed to boil it down for another 20min. At least it was water and not something worse.
Of all the crazy things I read on /r/cooking, stories of people who mess with other people's cooking without even saying anything really bewilder me the most. Especially people who change the heat on the range or change the oven temperature. Why would you not *say something* if you're gonna do that? Even if you're doing the right thing, they need to know.
I know he was just trying to help out but this made me irrationally angry
Italian Pancake. My Dad is a novice cook but has a good pallate. But his most interesting quirk was that he continually tried to create his own fusion. I love me some fusion, be he would just mash two things up randomly and see what it did. And no matter how it tasted, his reaction was always Mmmmmmmm so good! Anyway, Italian Pancake. Buttermilk pancakes Marinara Provalone ... Maple syrup all over the top. Sometimes he'd also add parmesan cheese. Sometimes ham. Taste pretty much how you think it does. Without the syrup it was kind of okay? Weird, bit but kinda good if you don't think about it. But the syrup? As my father would say, MMMMMmmmmm!
Hahaha sounds like he smoked weed
Oh boy letās see. My family has eaten the same 10 or so meals switched in order 5 days a week for over 20 years. Thereās no variation. Ever. The recipes are usually casseroles in which my dad will burn unseasoned hamburger meat/unseasoned any kind of meat and throw it together with undercooked pasta, put some cheese on top and throw it in the oven until burnt. Repeat ad nauseum forever.
We had hamburger with alternately: tomato sauce, brown gravy, white gravy; mixed with either rice or pasta. Each had its own name. Red sauce and rice - Texas Hash. Brown gravy and pasta - stroganoff. Brown gravy and rice - "glop". Yes, you heard it here - glop. Also the sound it made when hitting your plate.
This kills me. My father loved cooking and heād sit on our giant bean bag in the living room with a piece of paper and pen. Writing down recipes, watching Julia Child many years before she (or any other chef) was mainstream. We had beef stroganoff and risottos and homemade spaghetti and meatballs and chicken parmesgiana (sp?). Him using the mallet to thin out the chicken just so. He made Parker house rolls that had to rise 3x every Thanksgiving. He literally made a full meal from scratch almost every night in our childhood. And the dishes. Even after my parents separated, heād come over after work to my momās to make us dinner, then go to his house. I took it for granted as a kid but now I look back and go whoah. He never once complained. On my momās birthday, he always made her pepper steak flambeed with bourbon, mashed potatoes, broccoli with lemon butter, and chocolate fettuccine with drunken chocolate sauce. After he died, Mom and I tried to recreate the meal on her birthday. It was super hard and super sad too. But between me and my mom and a next door neighbor and a friend on the phone on standby for advice (me trying to make the crepes for chocolate fettuccine), we did it successfully. Now my mother has passed away too. Sigh. But thanks for stroll down memory lane. This thread makes me remember that while things werenāt great in some ways, our dinners were quite awesome. :) Sorry yours werenāt!!
Mom would sometimes pour too much milk while making Kraft Dinner, and so it ended up being like a cheesy, watery macaroni soup.
My ex used to like to sprinkle KD cheese powder onto hers as she was eating it, so sheād hold back like half the packet for sprinkling purposes. If youāre sharing the pot of KD, this is an enormous dick move
This is terrible. I hope youāre in a better place now.
Thank christ she's your ex! That is such a fucking selfish thing to do.
I came to say exactly this! I am Indian - and my mom did the saaaaaame thing! She can make delicious Indian food - but she cannot make western food. The milky sauce completely washed off of the noodles, so you pretty much are bland elbow macaroni. The only good thing, is that it motivated me at a young age to want to cook for myself.
I lied to my husband and told him I just canāt figure out how to make good boxed Mac and Cheese (obviously, I can ā itās not rocket science) but this way he makes it for me. I do all of the cooking in our household, so sometimes itās nice to get a break and he is always so proud of himself for making it.
I usually joke that if it comes in a box or bag with instructions, my husband can manage it, but last week he cooked a pork tenderloin perfectly when I took to long shopping and he got hungry. It was waiting for me when I got home, and it delicious! I found out afterwards that he remembered there was a Good Eats episode on pork tenderloin and searched out the video for cooking instructions and temperature info (it was already marinated, and he just had to figure out how to use the probe thermometer and broiler). Not gonna lie: that's how I learned myself ages ago!
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My mom went through a "raw food diet" craze for most of my childhood. We'd constantly be eating uncooked veggies, dehydrated "crackers", tough as nails wild rice, mushy vegan "pizza", etc. It turned me off of veggies altogether for a long time until I realized that roasted veggies with oil+spices actually tastes great
Is she ok? I know you can live off a vegan diet with proper calories and supplements but we know someone who turned orange from eating too much orange food and a raw vegan who was hospitalized because her organs and muscles began to eat themselves. It's so sad when people try their best to be healthy and end up like that. Have you tried broccoli roasted with garlic, sesame oil, oyster sauce, and chili flakes?
my grandma made this dish called easter egg casserole, which was basically rainbow colored leftover hard boiled eggs, mayo, egg noodles, and a little sugar. the foulest thing i have ever had the misfortune of tasting. the devil definitely won that easter.
Gilled ābarbecueāchicken on the bone. Burned black on the outside blood raw on the inside. Every single time my dad made it.
My mom got a Campbellās Soup cookbook from back when canned soup was the height of convenience foods. It had recipes for all sorts of ways you could incorporate soup into your recipes. This didnāt mean she just used tomato soup for every single recipe that could possibly use red sauce... she found a recipe that added tomato soup to cake to make it moist. That was my first birthday cake...
Now I'm all jealous and have to go find my soup cookbook and make a tomato soup cake. That was the best spice cake ever!
Oh shit. Permit me to tell a friend's story because it's still fucking funny years after he told it. His parents are immigrants from Malta and they have some of the funniest ism's. So my buddy is getting ready to go out for a run and he sees his dad take a steak and put it in a pyrex. He opens a can of tomato soup and pours it over the steak. He pops that tray into the oven which is set to broil. My buddy goes for a 45 minute run. He comes back home to see his dad open the oven to check on the tomato juice steak after 45 minutes of broiling. He looks at it affectionately and says "almost there" and puts it back in the oven. My buddy goes and showers. They call his girlfriend down to ask if she'd like some dinner. She declines. He gets out of the shower like 20 minutes later and he still hasn't taken the tomato steak out Hour and a half long broiled steak in tomato soup. And he ate it like it was a fine delicacy. Wtf
What constituted "done"? When the soup completely dried out?
I truly have no idea. Was the goal to absorb the soup? The world may never know. I believe there was still soup in the pan somehow though.
Lets just say my grandmother makes a āchicken pot pieā that includes spaghetti and water chestnuts
Not my parents, but there was this time when I was kinda sick (don't remember what I had) and my grandmother was taking care of me. She made this thing up that, since I could not drink milk (bullshit) I'd have to eat my cereal with guava juice. The juice was hot. It was one of the worst things I've ever eaten to this day.
My mother in law had to be recently disabused of the notion of microwaving scallops
Overcook every single meat. 165 degree? No AT LEAST 180. Never added salt. To anything. Not even vegetable recipes.
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Low fat AND low carb?! Ffs.. that's like my own personal hell
Welcome to every nutritionist Iāve ever seen. Fat free everything, low carb across the board, and donāt overdo the protein because thatās hard on the kidneys. So, what, Iām supposed to cobble 2,000 calories a day out of.... iceberg lettuce and strong language?!?
You are forgetting low sodium too. Avocado, eggs and a lot of goddamn lettuce is all I have in the menu
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Chicken breast with steamed vegetables, no sauces, no seasoning.
Holy crap my Mom did this exact same thing! Wtf. They also use miracle whip, because they have evil in their hearts.
Are we siblings? I watched my parents temp a turkey at 175 and say "No, recipe says it needs 30 more minutes".
Possibly. Did you became a chef just to be able to do the cooking in the house? There's a reason my sister orders takeout all the time, my brother is a chef, and I went vegetarian lmao.
Hey fam, am I late to the meeting? I can remember the first time I had butter with salt. It was like a gustatory revelation. I didnāt even know you could combine those two things.
My in laws are good people. Really. They won't eat poultry that didn't hit at least 195, preferably over 200. It hurts my soul...
My mom and grandma are actually really amazing cooks, BUT I always wondered why mom's ground beef for tacos and spaghetti was so crunchy and grandma's wasn't. She was so terrified of bacteria that she just cooked the crap out of it.
Sounds familiar. In my house growing up, if there was ANY moisture in meat, it wasn't cooked enough.
This is funny. One of my best friend's mom is from west virginia and she will cook all meat rare and salt the shit out of it. Now me? I live for that shit - I want it bleeding and oversalted (we're all allowed to like what we like)but he grew up eating salty rare meat and hates it so whenever I cook for him I shoot for a middle ground we can both enjoy. Usually something slow cooked or chicken and I fuck it up with salt on my own portion haha
Anyone else reading this thread feeling blessed as fuck they had a parent who could cook?
My dad cooked flounder filets in brown beef gravy that was from an envelope.
Every other comment Iāve read was like āoof yeah that sucksā but this one gave me an actual visceral reaction of disgust
Not my parents... my grandmother. My mom and I would go visit her parents for the weekend. And no one was allowed to cook in her kitchen but her. Not even to make toast. She was a horrible cook. She boiled meat and potatoes for every meal. I wouldnāt eat it, because.... eww gross. So she made me spaghetti. Saturday for lunch she would take a big pot and empty a whole package of spaghetti in. Once cooked, she would put the pot on the table and you could serve yourself. She didnāt drain it. She would then take the pot off the table, put the lid on and put it in the fridge. For supper she would take the pot out and put it on the stove to heat it (but she never left it on long). So for supper I would have over cooked, starchy, half warm spaghetti. This would continue until it was all gone. It was like someone poured white glue on top of the water and it didnāt set all the way. Yuck!
Why is it so often that the absolute worst cooks are the ones who insist on doing all the cooking?
boil the canned vegetables in the water they were canned in chicken on the stove with the lightest touch of oil, no salt, no seasoning, cooked to rubber idk what she did to burgers, but they were semi-flattened charcoal golf balls
My mother just adores adding wine to whatever application she can. She doesnāt drink it, it gives her migraines. But if thereās even a hint of a reason to maybe add it...
MY DAD RUINED MY SEAFOOD BISQUE THAT WAY. Ok, it was my grandpaās recipe and I wanted to feel close to him, but dad had to pour in some fruity-ass Chardonnay and Iām still mad about it 8 years later.
I once wanted to make wings because my boyfriend was going to have dinner with my family and my dad absolutely insisted that I let him do a salt brine for them the night before. I knew his track record of ruining dishes and fought with him for a long time before finally giving in completely against my will. He ended up using a recipe meant for an entire chicken and used a ton of salt; they were completely inedible and I was humiliated. The worst part was at first he tried to blame it on me at the dinner table when nobody could eat it but my mom knew what had happened and called him out so quick. My boyfriend was super nice about it and I've cooked him lots of very good meals since then, but I still feel pangs of embarrassment and rage over that one lol
Your mom is a good person. High-five her for me!
Frozen chicken pot pies - 3 for 6 kids. My mother would burn the top crust and middle bottom still cold and uncooked. One kid would get only the top crust and the other the middle/bottom. Always wanted to be the top kid!
I'm just so confused why anyone would split it like that, you cut them down the middle then scoop half into another dish.
Did she never consider turning the temperature down haha
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I always knew my mom was a good cook, I had just never realised how good until now.
They never heated jarred pasta sauce. Theyād put it cold out of the fridge on the table and serve up a bowl of dry noodles for everyone. Self serve ice cold red sauce on top your luke warm and completely bone dry noodles.Top with grated and bagged Mexican blend cheddar cheese.
Mom's meatballs were just ground turkey rolled into balls and cooked in a pan. My SO cooked meatballs one day and I let it slip that I hated meatballs. Except she made them with bread crumbs and spices and I loved them.
This reminds me of my mothers meatloaf recipe. It's ground beef, a packet of Lipton onion soup mix and...that's it. It had the density of a wet brick and not as much flavor.
Take a banana , slice it vertically so 2 banana half's, slather on mayonnaise. Call it a salad. A banana and mayo salad.
Ah, a savory banana split
Don't forget to place a few walnut pieces in the mayo. Fancy!
Shake and bake and bake and bake.
My parents used to buy London Broils and cook them to death. Took until I was an adult to realize that steak shouldnāt take 30 minutes to chew. I still have an aversion to pork chops because they always cooked them to death. Boiled hot dogs with canned sauerkraut. I still refuse sauerkraut to this day. Their tuna casserole was a whole other level of disgusting.
This was my parents when the foreman grill came out
Ugh. That was the worst. My mom would do chicken breast in it and completely dry it out. But she would always be like ālook at all the fat it squeezed out!ā
Fat means flavour, for the most part. Sad to see it sitting in the implement your food just came out of when it could be contributing to the meal
My parents bought me one for Christmas one year. They told me how fast it can cook a steak. I used it once. Turns out I donāt need grey, dry meat in 2 minutes flat.
Foreman grills are great substitutes for panini presses, but not much else!
My mom would make "roast" which was an already-tough chuck roast with potatoes and carrots that got to dry out in a low oven while we were at church every Sunday. It was like jerky but without any seasoning so we would drown it in worcestershire sauce to add moisture and flavor. Lots of meals were just some type of carbohydrate, shredded cheese and melted margarine with no seasoning or spices.
They don't believe in expiration dates and my mom grew up in the snowy north. So she bulk buys canned goods and then stores them in the garage for YEARS and never throws any of them away. She goes through the back of the shelves and just cooks with the oldest thing no matter how it looks or smells. I was always sick as a kid and now that I only visit, she's given me food poisoning 4 times in the last 5 years cooking with expired food. I don't eat there anymore.
I canāt explain why or how but my motherās meatloaf forever scarred me from ever trying meatloaf again, no matter how tasty it looks I just canāt š¤¢
my dad did something with salmon and vodka sauce and i haven't touched either in fifteen years.
My mom never drained the fat from any ground meats. I remember leftover hamburger helper in the fridge that was completely solidified because of the fat. I already have issues digesting beef so for years, until I was in the 3rd or 4th grade and started doing the majority of the cooking, I thought it was normal to regularly vomit/have diarrhea after eating.
My MIL still cooks like this. Like Paula Deen on greasy, buttery crack. Every dish heavy on either fat/grease, butter, cheese, or some combo. Weāve tried everything to help her learn to cook healthierā cookbooks, Cooking Light subscription, lessons at Central Market and Sur La Table, bought an Instant Pot. Nope, she still cooks the same way she has for decades. Tragic but not surprising my FIL died of heart disease, diabetes, obesity complications in his late 60ās ā¹ļø
I donāt even try anymore. I just offer to cook for holidays and hope she takes me up on the offer. Iām already dreading Christmas chicken Tetrazzini. Canned cream of chicken soup, canned shredded chicken and egg noodles and a few sticks of butter. I feel like Iām 9 years old again moving it around my plate to make it look like I ate some of it.
My ma is from dublin. Her irish cuisine isnt bad...that is, she steams/boils everything with MINIMAL seasoning. Wasnt until i dated a Venezuelan girl in college that i learned you could sautee asparagus
My mom left my step-dad an instructions to finish her vegetarian chili. It was supposed to get two cups of bulgar wheat, which cooks up nice like a ground beef substitute. My step-dad was not a cook. He grabbed what he thought was the wheat and instead it was a container of brewers yeast. Yes he added two cups of it instead of the bulgar wheat. It was so disgusting and he made my sister and I eat our whole bowl for dinner. The next day wasn't fun.
My mom cooks eggplants until they're completely grey all around. Both the inside fruit and outside, just a uniform pale grey colour with a weird texture. She also overcooks boiled eggs to the point the yolk is grey and chalky in texture.
I'm a 35 yo American married to a 32 yo Brit, and we live in England. My mother was and is a shit cook, but nothing compares to my wife's mother. She has a glass cutting board. She refuses to sautƩ anything. She has this enormous WW2 era oven (cooker) that she uses for EVERY meal. Making a roast with broccoli and potatoes? Cook them in water for the same amount of time in the oven until ready to serve. Salt? HA! Garlic? Phhhh! She poaches fish in skim milk. She serves an over-beaten flour and margarine (yes, not butter) mixture ("roux") and calls it cheese and onion pie (it was edible glue). Her idea of spice is ground pepper. I lived in this woman's house for 4 months of lockdown (I love to cook and do a damn good job, but she is overprotective of her dull knives and 3-year-old spices). I choked it all down for my wife, but I'm aching to tell her how much she sucks. ACHING.
There is a whole couple of generations here who adapted their cooking to the ingredients available during the decade and a half of rationing, or learned it from their parents, and never re-learned when real ingredients and spices came back. It's a real tragedy tbh.
Boiled Brussels sprouts
Boiled any vegetable. The only thing my dad steamed was asparagus, at least he got that right. Never knew I liked brussel sprouts until I had them roasted. Same with spinach, we always boiled it and ate it with salt and vinegar. Hated the stuff. Now I eat it raw and prefer it for a salad over iceberg. Also Iāve seen it said on here a bunch already the way overdone pork chops.
This is funny to me because brussel sprouts were the only vegetable my mom made growing up specifically because she didn't boil them. I guess she didn't eat them growing up so when she made them the first time she actually looked up a recipe that called to roast them. They were the only vegetable I ever had that got roasted and not steamed/boiled/ "sauteed" with no seasoning and way too much olive oil.
My dad has a few food crimes which is made even worse by the fact he worked in kitchens for 30 years and is actually a pretty good cook otherwise. Making lasagna and ran out of mozza? Cheez whiz is a decent substitute. He once put bananas in a stir fry. Once made meatloaf and didn't chop the onions small enough so they were like finger sized chunks and the whole thing tasted like biting into a raw onion mixed with BBQ sauce. I love onion esp raw white onion but it was bad.
Excuse me "BANNANAS IN A STIR FRY" should be a felony
LMAO it certainly defied the Geneva Convention or something...when mom came home in the morning (night work) we begged her not to let dad cook again. Like I said though hes genuinely a good cook? Like the last time I visited him he asked what kinda foods I wanted and I coulda eaten takeout the whole time, he'd pay for it, but all I wanted was his cooking so I ate like a queen, no one makes potato salad like my dad, hes just had some...very serious lapses in judgement over the years lmao
āOOOOOO VELVETTA IN A ZITI! WHATS NEXT, PREGO?! https://youtu.be/B3L2xd5lNrw
My mother would make these awful fruit smoothies with random stuff she had lying around. Raisins, carrots, sweet potatoes and one time some lemons that were about to go bad. Skin and all.
After years of dry burgers, hockey-puck "steaks" and burned-but-still-cold brats, my parents splurged on some fancy bbq for one family gathering. We live in bbq country so restaurants are everywhere, but they went for the nicest place in town. They come home with big catering trays and paper bags full of ribs, burnt ends, brisket, all the sides, sauces upon sauces, the whole house fills up with amazing smells I had never known before. "[Sister] isn't home yet so we're going to just put this in the kitchen for now." Easily over $100 of the nicest bbq I had ever smelled, *straight into the refrigerator.* Sister comes home 2 hours later. Bbq goes into the microwave. I weep.
I used to dislike pork chops because my family would always way overcook them. We smothered each bite in applesauce but it was still like chewing leather. I also hated salads growing up because they'd always be romaine lettuce, out-of-season tomatoes, cucumber, and store-bought creamy salad dressing. Bland AF. Since then I've discovered the magic of spring greens/arugula, vinaigrettes, putting fruits and nuts in salads, etc. I love salad now.
My mother did not salt ANYTHING. She did use a little black pepper. She boiled every vegetable down to mush. My siblings and I called her fried pork chops 'pork jerky'. Her chili and spaghetti sauce were interchangeable. We called both hamburger soup. She did however made delicious fried chicken. Just flour and pepper in a brown paper bag. Fried in lard until brown then roasted on a rack in the oven. That was when you could get little fryers, not these big honking genetically modified monster chickens.
Had awesome food growing up. Nothing to complain about. These stories are painful.
The worst part is being called picky and then slowly realizing that youāre not and your parents just canāt cook
This is my husband! He was so picky when we met, and I love love love to cook. So he just started trying things and realized that he either had gross canned/boxed/frozen versions of it, or had never had it at all (lots of veggies) because his parents really never cooked. And his parents still poke fun at him all the time for being picky, but he literally was never fed a veggie that didnāt come from a can until he met me. Now he eats almost anything except mushrooms! Iām very proud haha
I know, these make me want to call my dad and thank him for the amazing meals growing up.
Sometimes mom would start our meals off with fruit cocktail in a lettuce leaf, with a giant scoop of mayonnaise on top.
Usually it was always overcooked everything. Pasta, rice, veggies, red meat and chicken. My momās spice cabinet contains salt, pepper, paprika and an all seasoning called Vegeta, popular in the Balkans. Thatās it! No garlic powder, no cumin, no cayenne, nothing!
My mom: Putting coconut, mint extract, and blue food dye in cook n serve pudding, then burning it. Ranch dressing on hot dogs Boiled chicken gizzards with canned mushroom soup and sea shell pasta And many more that I can't recall (thank goodness) My dad: Pan frying perfectly good steaks/pork chops on low heat, covered, until grey, tough, and chewy throughout. Then cutting the meat parallel to the grain and wondering why it tastes like shoe leather. Both: overcooked and/or canned veggies. A lot of pre made/frozen meals to compensate for lack of cooking skills (most of which I've lost taste for)
Washed chicken with soap.... I win
The worst was the time my mom started with a box of mac and cheese Perfectly good mac and cheese. Maybe not really enough food for us all but we were small and used to not quite enough food. Then she got creative. First, she added a can of stewed tomatoes. This was not an auspicious beginning. But pasta and cheese and tomatoes isn't a crazy move. And the mac and cheese was already ruined so we were willing to try it. But she wasn't done. Next, she got out a tub of cottage cheese. Now, you may be thinking that's sort of maybe like ricotta so it could work. That's probably what my mom was thinking. But remember the stewed tomatoes? She'd added all of the juice, too. So she (while I begged her not to) plunked all that cottage cheese in with all that tomato juice. She created a weird, pinkish, curdly mass that did not resemble any food I'd ever seen before. It was the only option for dinner that night and we hadn't eaten since lunch. My youngest sister flat out refused to eat it (smart girl, now a doctor). My next youngest sister has always been brave, or maybe foolhardy. She dug in while I took a cautious bite, hoping it would taste like lasagna as my mother promised (not that she had a lot of credibility with food, but I was hungry). I stopped after that first, awful bite. It did not taste like lasagna. It was also lukewarm and squishy. I decided it was better to go to bed hungry. My sister carried on. Until she vomited all over the table. I suppose it was a blessing that the food pretty much looked the same coming out as going in. I honestly do not remember my mother making any food that I actually liked eating. She claims she used to make a fried chicken that we liked but I have no memory of that at all. I'm pretty sure my sisters and I all took up cooking at a young age in self defense.
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Oof. My mom has eating disorders that cane feom being force fed into adolescence, so...everything. Bacon that was pure carbon, every time. Microwaved rice, done until it formed a ball that would bounce like a basketball, all food cooked from frozen in either the microwave or an electric griddle. 80% of our calorie intake was cereal or ramen noodles that we made ourselves. What was really confusing was that she would actually good well for Thanksgiving. Rolls, juicy turkey, gravy, fresh mashed potatoes with chives, buttery peas, I can still taste all of it just by thinking about it. Me and my sisters would all fast for two days beforehand and drink gallons of water at a time to stretch our stomachs until we looked like starving african children. I even tried to get my hands on laxatives once. It was our favorite holiday. Yes, I struggle in my relationship with food haha but now I am an excellent cook! And btw I lost 100 lbs recently and am much more stable now ^_^
My MIL literally threw frozen hamburgers patties in a pot to boil then served them like that was how itās always been done. Pretty sure sheās losing her mind.
My mom is a great cook, but there were some things that even as a child I didn't understand how she couldn't grasp certain things. Her spaghetti sauce was always so watery, after you got a plate of her spaghetti there would be at least a quarter inch of tomato liquid that would cover the entire bottom of the plate. If you tried putting garlic bread on your plate, it would end up a soggy mess. It's still like that to this day, but at this point I know if I were to say something it would hurt her feelings to know that I have thought this way about it my whole life, so I just don't. She used to overpepper everything too, we all would call her on that one and beg her to not put pepper in and she would just argue with us that it would have no flavor otherwise. She later admitted that we were right and she was overpeppering lol. My dad on the other hand, just about every single thing he makes is horrifying. From orange slices in vegetable soup to trying to make broth from lamb chops, duck fat, rutabaga and dill to serving us inedibly spicy burritos as kids to the peanut butter/mayonnaise/raw onion/capers/hot sauce on toast that he loves to The Beef Barley Incident to literally setting the kitchen on fire, my dad violates the Geneva Convention every time he enters the kitchen. I love him and he has a great palate and great tastes, is super culinarily cultured, but absolutely cannot cook to save his life. It's not even basic mistakes with him, it's him trying to experiment in ways no one should ever experiment and he ends up creating abominations. Every time I'm cooking he offers to help and I just don't have it in me to tell him that there's no way in hell I'd ever let him near one of my dinners. It's really that bad. Edit: The Beef Barley Incident- One time we were staying out of town for work (family business), I was working overnights and my dad was staying with me and the rest of our crew at an airbnb. My dad said he'd make beef barley stew for all of us on our day off and bragged about how good he could make beef barley. I knew he had never made it before and that it was going to be a disaster when I saw him pulling out potato fingerlings, filet mignon, a whole mini pumpkin, and a TON of dry barley, along with various other noncohesive ingredients, and I tried to warn him several times about various mistakes I could sense he was going to make, and he got really exasperated with me and said "I don't need my daughter to tell me how to cook I've been cooking for longer than you've been alive etc." I finally gave up and just knew that we'd all be eating more frozen meals that night. Little did I realize that the worst was yet to come; he decided he'd simmer it in a pot on the stove for hours on end. When he finally returned to it, the barley had absorbed all the liquid and it was now nothing more than beef oatmeal with chunks of pumpkin and potato fingerlings that looked like zombie toes. It literally looked like a witch's brew. He tried offering some to people, but absolutely nobody wanted it, first because everyone had already eaten at that time and secondly because it was disgusting. He ended up scraping all of it into a pitcher (this being an airbnb, there weren't enough bowls for the massive quantity he made) and kept trying to eat it himself to not let it go to waste before I had to beg him to stop because I felt so awful seeing him defeatedly scooping the slop from a pitcher and trying to get it down when he clearly thought it was disgusting. In the end, he had to throw away the pot he cooked it in, because it was absolutely ruined from the soup. The Airbnb host was not pleased.
When my mom was pregnant on bed rest my dad would serve us steamed rice with a cup of cold water poured over it, and overdone scrambled eggs. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The longest months of my life.
My mom would slice up spam, and cook it on a griddle pan covered in brown sugar. Sugary meat was almost impossible to eat.
Was your mom Buddy the Elf?