A woman used to work here (I’ve mentioned her before: she’s the one who had a bridal shower that she invited even the men form the office to, and it turned out that there was no wedding plans and no one had ever met or could verify the existance of the fiance).
She had never prepared a meal in her entire life. We had a Salad Potluck Day at work, and she tried to help. She was asked to open a can of lima beans, then was horrified to discover there was also liquid in the can. There is no strainer in the office kitchen you see and was dismayed that it would be difficult to get rid of the liquid. I just held the lid in place and drained the can, and she was amazed. She then started helping by trying to chop a head of lettuce, but cutting one leaf at a time into little squares.
When she finally did get a verifiable boyfriend, who told us that he did all the cooking because she destroyed two of his pots while trying to heat up some instant porridge oand make scrambled eggs. He didn’t elaborate, but said that the pots were totally unrecoverable and his building’s fire alarm went off.
I have (screwed up meatloaf, that is) - and it’s a lot to do with my inability to follow simple instructions. And to be a bit absent minded. And to be picky.
Chances are, if I’m cooking for a group (potluck or family or something), I make pretty good food. I’ll pick out the recipe and follow it almost exactly and out will come something very much like the recipe writer intended. I’ll pick at it, because often the recipe writer intended things like mushrooms or tomatoes or sauces or something else I don’t eat (it’s a long, long list).
But when I’m cooking for myself, I’ll read the recipe and then think “but if I do _______” instead. Or leave out something that is adding both flavor (that I didn’t want) and moisture (which I do), or something that added what I feel is a nasty texture, but also helped bind the dish together. Or try making a single portion instead of the “serves 6” the way the recipe was written, I’ll end up with a mess.
Plus, I tend to lose focus in the kitchen, so things get dry or too cold or too blended frequently.
My mom always said “if you can read, you can cook” which is not untrue - but it isn’t the whole story.
Lack of training, and lack of following instructions. Or, being so used to dreadful cooking that you think what you’re producing is OK.
I’m firmly of the belief that, for most everyday recipes, you’ll usually produce something at least edible if you basically just follow the directions. For some recipes, there’s a bit of, I dunno, instinct / magic touch / whatever, that requires either lots and lots of practice, or psychic power, or something… My homemade bread attempts have been, well, nonpoisonous, I have yet to attempt brioche, and when I try to make pie crust from scratch the results are pretty much forgettable - but few other foods are completely impossible. Though there was that “twice-cooked pork”… I followed the instructions explicitly, which resulted in bite-sized pieces of charcoal in a nice sweet-and-sour sauce with veggies. This is the only food I’ve made that was literally inedible. I guess I was missing something in the cooking-time judgement, or the oil was to hot or something - something experience would have helped.
I do however have a brother who ruined Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. No, I’m not kidding. I forget what exactly he did wrong, except I think it involved (among other things) dumping the powdered cheesoid stuff into the boiling water…
I’m not a BAD cook, but a lot of people find my food inexcusably bland. It’s because personally I hate 99% of seasoning, for example anything spicy is out. Glazing a steak with anything sweet is a sin etc. I also hate mixed tastes “ewwwww beans in mashed potatoes!?” I can BARELY and RELUCTANTLY tolerate casserole. I guess I like a few things that have multiple “tastes” like some soups, but even if I have spaghetti with meatballs I have to keep the meatballs separate from everything else, lest I take noodles and meat in at the same time. My tastes also seem a bit arbitrary, for instance I like Ketchup, but not BBQ Sauce (which people contend I SHOULD like because I like ketchup for some reason). When I go to a potluck or over to someone else’s house I always only take two or three of the simpler things at the table and then everyone always has to comment on how I finish one food before I move on to the next one on my plate, like it’s some kind of sin or something.
The only exception is Pizza, people love my homemade Pizza. I guess cookies and cake too, but those are sort of hard to make “bland” (though people do tend to think my frosting isn’t quite sweet enough, it’s a little more buttery in texture, which I like).
My mom was a terrible cook when we were growing up, basically because she had no interest in cooking. Her priority was to feed us with the least amount of effort and wasted ingredients.
Her ally in this quest was the pressure cooker.
Her speciality was a dish we called the “everlasting stew”. Take a chicken, disjoint it, throw it in the pressure cooker with a bunch of potatoes and vegitables. Pressure cook. Feed family. Store leftovers in pot in fridge. And the most important step: when family eats say half of it, fill the pot up again to the top with fresh bits - pressure cook it again. Repeat.
Feeds a family of five for around a decade.
What I found most difficult to bear was that she never took out the bones and gristle - it was added back in to “add flavour”. The result after many rounds of "addition"was something that looked more like a pot used in Santaria ceremonies than anything edible.
A proper simple roast chicken is deceptively nuanced–my SO is a master of poultry and he roasts chicken with nothing but a sprinkle of garlic salt on it. Of course, he splits the bird in two, bakes it on a rack with the skin side up and partially disjoints the wing, leg and thigh. When baked in this manner, the dark meat (which is the thickest part of the bird and takes the longest to cook) is done exactly at the same time as the breast, which is always perfectly juicy. The skin is crisp and all the fat is down in the bottom of the pan. No pink drizzles, no distressingly underdone tendons, no nasty innard bits to avoid. It’s an art, but then again he’s probably roasted over a thousand birds in his life–also barbecued, sauted and fried.
He is in general a more nuanced cook than I, very good at subtle flavors and balanced dishes that complement each other. I’m the bravura cook, the one who does the ethnic food, the one who can make half hour scraped icebox casserole that tastes like I slaved for hours over a hundred bucks worth of ingredients. He has a hard time cooking my signature dishes because he has no talent for overdoing things–I’m a “spice it 'til you cry; more is better” type. We’re both good cooks, but I’m good because of natural talent and a “what the hell” attitude and he’s good because he’s very methodical and takes pains to perfect his dishes.
I’m much better at timing my meals and at lightning quick prep and execution. He’s infinitely better at presentation and eye appeal. I’m the better baker–he just has no hand for it, but I think that’s due to inexperience.
I think some people just can’t get the hang of it in the same way some people just can’t be good drivers–there’s an element of natural talent involved that can’t be faked or learned. Anyone can be taught to operate a car–very few can drive Formula 1, and there’s a continuum between those poles that applies to cooking as well.
He doesn’t persuade me. I note that he chooses the fattiest part of the meat for himself and also chooses to flavor the bird after cooking (butter and mustard?).
I find chickens to be bland. Salting and peppering the outside result in a yummy, tasty skin, but the meat, especially in the breast which has the smallest ratio of skin to meat, needs help. Depending on what’s accompanying the bird, I like different rubs under the skin which stay on the bird for 60-90 minutes before cooking. Dry brining works the same as moist brining, without sogging the skin. This gives a bird which doesn’t need any accompaniment after carving, though a simple jus doesn’t hurt.
I have other problems with recipes like that one. It doesn’t mention that it is better to raise the chicken out of its juices to promote all around crisping (I like starting the bird upside down and flipping it halfway through). It doesn’t say what is “done”, only that it takes 50-60 minutes. It assumes the chef knows this, and as this thread points out, not every chef does.
My mother had two speeds of cooking – very good and very, very, very bad. After years of watching her and more years of trying things myself, I figured out that some disasters could be traced to specific things.
The meat wasn’t fully defrosted. Oh sure, it looked thawed out, it felt thawed out, but deep in its heart, there was a frozen chunk. As a result, the Thanksgiving turkey had to cook for hours until the center was finally done (and the rest of the meat was dried out and leathery) or the roast had to go back into the oven because the center was nearly raw (which meant the outer slices were dried out and leathery. We had a lot of leather for dinner over the years.)
The oven thermostat was off. You set the oven for 325 and wait for it to preheat, right? What if the thermostat clicks at 310, or 340? The pie will have a soggy crust, and the cake will fall.
The ingredients got damp. We lived in humid climates all my life, often without air conditioning. Even with “air tight” containers the flour, baking soda, etc. often went juuuuuust a little damp.
Fresh ingredients weren’t really fresh. My mother had a quick fix for overripe bananas and mushy fruit – she used them for baking. Or else she used fruit so green it needed to be overcooked just to soften it up a little – and she wouldn’t overcook it.
OTOH, my first wife was a fantastic cook. She knew how to prep, how to season, what to substitute and what not to. The one thing she couldn’t do, however, was fry – and she was born a Southerner. She didn’t use a deep fryer, and I’m convinced her problem was that she always got the oil too hot or not hot enough.
That’s okay. You don’t have to listen to him (however, note the zillions of rave reviews on that site for the recipe–they are not unwarranted. And this recipe is coming from, arguably, one of the greatest chefs in the world). I raised my chicken using a rack, but I don’t eat the back usually, anyway, so it’s not a big deal unless you eat the back. For me, it was done exactly after 60 minutes, once the skin was nicely crisped and brown. It produced the juciest breast meat I have ever eaten (no exaggeration), and I dislike white meat.
What’s wrong with keeping the fattiest part of the meat for yourself? That’s the best part and the reward for cooking the chicken.
I think that the final sentence is an absolutely key ingredient. A lot of people are brought up eating bad food. If mom served you a hockey puck in bland goo, you assumed it was good. And besides, who’s going to tell mom that her cooking sucks? It’s a cycle that is very difficult to break.
If you’ve ever seen the show “Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares” you can see this in a lot of episodes. If the food is bland or overcooked or just plain shit, he will tell guy who cooked it exactly what he thought. He isn’t afraid of offending anyone - he knows he’s doing that. The problem is the chef is so wrapped up in their own little bubble of ego that they have never even considered that they might be rubbish at what they do.
I’ve been reading this thread and tonight my brother in law is doing something that is straight off of it. He found a recipe online that looked a little odd to begin with, but could be good. It calls for baking chicken breasts coated in mustard, bread crumbs, and thyme. We don’t have any bread crumbs, but the recipe suggests substituting crushed whole grain cereal. We don’t have that either. What does my BIL use? Honey Bunches of Oats cereal. In the oven right now are two chicken breasts coated with deli mustard, Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, and cayenne pepper. He doesn’t like thyme, so he didn’t use any other seasoning. I added the cayenne in hopes that it could cut some of the sweetness of the cereal. Also, I just found out that he’s cooking the breasts at 450, but I did tell him to cut the heat. My house smells funny and I’m glad I made a very strong mixed drink as he was making dinner. Typing is becoming more and more difficult as this post goes on, but maybe dinner will be palatable.
A few days ago he made chicken on the stove top that combined about eight different types of seasoning mixes (including bacon salt!). It was very, very, very salty. I’m glad that he likes to experiment, but I’ve been encouraging him to think before he adds ingredients. Just because things taste nice on their own doesn’t mean that they’ll taste good together.
This, I have to say, is one of those “experience” things. The neophyte looks at the dial and goes by the little numbers, and then is puzzled by inconsistent results. The expert hangs a high-temp thermometer off the rack and ignores the numbers on the dial from day one.
(Unless you spent the money to get one of the newer ovens with the digital temperature readout. And even then you probably stick a thermometer in the cavity just to make sure.)
Just an FYI - that isn’t what trussing means. I think you were right to suggest simply tying the legs together for someone with limited cooking experience, but trussing looks like this.
ETA: That’s a beautiful recipe. I really like TK, and recipes like that are part of the reason why.
Heh, that’s funny, and definitely goes in the “there’s substituting, and then there’s substituting” category.
You can make a good trailer park trash chicken by dredging the chicken in egg, then coating it in your favorite flavor of finely crunched up Lay’s Potato Chips. To be extra trashy, use cheapo store-brand generic chips.
Thanks for the info. I’ve always referred to the full truss and just tying the legs together both as “trussing.” For a 2-3 pound bird, just tying the legs together works fine. You don’t have to go the whole nine yards.
Preach it, Jack! I really enjoy cooking and sometimes things don’t turn out right, so I tweak until I get it right. I make killer spaghetti sauce, but I started from a recipe, and it didn’t come out like I wanted. So I experimented and got other opinions and would not relent until it satisfied me. It took about a year. Trust me: you’re jealous of my sauce.
Gardening is a perfect comparison…the Twilight Zone music should be playing. Fact is, I don’t really give a shit about gardening—flowers, vegetables, anything. I might go along with it but I’ll never give it the same care and attention I would give to cooking. I won’t plant this seed just a little deeper next year or put that one where it will get more sun, etc. I just don’t care.
I don’t think there are that many truly bad cooks who genuinely try. I myself cannot make bread…yeast just doesn’t work for me like it should. But I make plenty of other things very well.
I’m somewhat like this but nowhere near on the level of your friend. I’m good at putting together ingredients in my head so I can season even without tasting the food - not recommended for anyone, frankly, but I’ve only rarely gone astray doing this, and only do it when I’m unwilling to taste the food (being a vegetarian who is more than willing to cook meat for others) and don’t have someone to do it. Sense memory and smell help a lot in this. I can also successfully substitute in recipes even without ever having made the recipe before.
My husband said his mom was either spot-on as a cook or terrible. Her worst problem was cooking to his father’s taste, which was to overcook the hell out of vegetables and meat.
Oh, I can do you one better! My dad (back when he still didn’t know what brussels sprouts were) and his college roommates had an “Everlasting Stew” on the stovetop. All day and all night it just sat there on the pilot light, and whenever someone had a few bucks, they’d get something to add to the stew. They kept it going for more than a semester, too, until some dingbat decided raisins sounded like a good idea.
