Weird Cooking Things Your Parents Do (Or Other Family/Friends) That Makes You Question Their Sanity

[Huskee]

What stories do you have about your parents, or any family or friends really, that they do when cooking that makes you cringe? And especially so if you've tried teaching them otherwise?

My dad insists that his favorite way to cook a hamburger is microwaving it. "Oh yeah", he'll tell me, "just make your patty, stick it on a plate and into the microwave for x-minutes, and good to go!". I keep asking him about the lack of Maillard and that seared surface that you get with a skillet or grill, that's flavor! And his standard response is "Hey, you might care about that, but I don't, it tastes MIGHTY FINE to me, and no mess!".

Ugh. It's true that we can each do what works for us, regardless of what anyone else thinks. But still, a microwaved hamburger??

What are your stories?

[CaptainMike]

Mom cooked Brussels sprouts.

[captainlee]

Mine too! And those were the days when you had to eat everything on your plate. Where was Child Protective Services when we needed them?

[HawkerXP]

My CPS was my grandmother. She would slip me some ketchup so I could choke down those last two fish sticks on my plate. captainlee

[Alan Brice]

HawkerXP that was our back up when we ran out of the packet to make tarter sauce inside the box of frzn fish parts sticks.

[Huskee]

FireMan is my witness, he's been around a couple of these discussions about my dad's burgers...

[FireMan]

Yup!

[WI Bubba]

No disrespect intended, but you might want a better eye witness than FireMan.

[FireMan]

WI Bubba , to quote a reference by Lebeaux from True Grit, you do mean my eye as a witness.

[LA Pork Butt]

My son-in-law goes on kicks. His latest is parsley is good on everything.

[prepperjack]

Well, at least it's not cilantro.

[surfdog]

My mum pretty much overcooks everything. Everything. I get that in the past, but when she asked why my chicken is so much better than hers…I told her. (And it wasn’t just chicken.) And then I proceeded to purchase them a ThermoPop and a DOT…figuring that simple was best, especially for people unaccustomed to using thermometers. (Ani didn’t know if they’d use them anyway.) My father likes & uses them. She’s still convinced that things need to cook for x-amount of time.

The maddening thing is that, knowing my education, she’ll call me and ask how to do something and then proceed to cook it into oblivion anyway. If my father gets involved, it will be saved…because he’ll actually use the tools. She’s still stuck in the “x amount of time per pound” mode…despite that rarely working.

As an aside, years ago in the UK, there was a show called “Chef!.” Lenny Henry as the lead character once said that he “learned to cook in self defense.” I think that might be what brought about my interest as well. LOL

[Jfrosty27]

That’s my mom too. She was a horrible cook. Dad was mo help either. He couldn’t boil water.

[Murdy]

My Grandma, who was a great cook, tended to overcook certain things. She'd bake turkey until it was dry, but she made the best goose I've ever eaten. I assume she used the same technique on both and the fattier goose could stand up to the long cook. Same with pork roasts. I suspect she grew up making bone-in roasts and never adapted to the boneless roasts that have become the standard.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

Not my parents, but I used to love microwaving scrambled eggs

My dad burns biscuits, everytime. Home made, premade... they're getting burned, even after he mentions he always burns them and maybe he won't this time.

[smokenoob]

count me in on the uwave scramble!

[HawkerXP]

Throw an egg in a large coffee mug mix and nuke. Perfect egg of a McMuffin!

[prepperjack]

I cook scrambled egg "omlettes" in the microwave all the time. Two eggs then stir in some vegetables, cheese and a bit of ground sausage or chopped bacon. Nuke it for 30 seconds, give it a stir, and then another 30-45 seconds. The trick, like with scrambled eggs on the stovetop, is to take them out when they look almost but not quite where you like them and then let the carry over heat finish them off. Easy peasy, and a perfect filler for a breakfast burrito.

[yakima]

My mother, gone now, did well with vegetables, casseroles, chicken and cakes. Beef steak, not so much. Roasts were fine. Summer, farming, she liked steaks at noon. Quick, easy. But I think she got distracted doing other things, and let them go too long.
But I still liked them. Went to college, fall of 1969, dorm. After about a month I started whining, why no steak in cafeteria. Learned that most of the kids were not used to steak, let alone at lunch. Went home at Thanksgiving, had gained 20 lbs on dorm carbs. Mother was horrified that she had been starving me.
I still have that 20.

[Henrik]

One of my gripes with other people’s cooking. Me? I’m perfect, LoL!

Not my parents, but a lot of people in Sweden can’t fry ground beef, standalone or as part of a recipe.

The whole deal is to get some Maillard reaction, but most people (including some of my best friends) put way too much ground beef in the pan, and they don’t wait around for the water to evaporate, so all you get is boiled beef. Which tastes quite different.

Yes, maybe nitpicking, but done right the flavor is soo much better.

[prepperjack]

I grew up poor, and a lot of my comfort foods are what I lovingly refer to as "trailer park food." Most of it, my daughter looks at and won't even taste, much less eat. But, every time she and my wife are out of town, you better believe that the first thing I'm going to cook is ground beef with onions & gravy over mashed potatoes.

[Henrik]

That sure sounds good prepperjack 👌 I like comfort food like that.

[Murdy]

We used to make a dish we called hamburger hash, which was basically a home made hamburger helper. You'd fry crumbled beef, add in some finally diced potatoes, carrots, onions, and maybe peas toward the end, and thicken the fat the burger dropped with flour.

[captainlee]

My dad said as a kid he used to have, and loved, spaghetti and jelly. He mentioned that quite often. When we were adults my sister and I made a serving of spaghetti and gave it to him with a jar of jelly. He ate it and said it was good. Maybe people did that during the Depression.

[Mosca]

My dad was extremely proud that he not only knew how to use a toaster, but that he could also butter toast without cutting his fingers. As long as he used tub margarine, anyhow. He was also pretty good at filling a glass with liquid. My mom was a pretty decent cook, and so was her mom, my maternal grandmother.

My brother-in-law is awesome. He is a stand-up guy in every sense of the word. I wish I were as complete a human as he is. But when he takes charge of a cookout or a holiday meal, we go for the company, not the food.

He is one of those people who have given turkey its dry and tasteless reputation. He has made shoe leather hams. Those I can deal with, because my sister-in-law is a pretty decent cook, and she turns out some killer sides. But the burgers. My goodness. Ground beef, mixed with crushed goldfish crackers (no egg), then grilled beyond well done. I cry, thinking about those poor burgers.

Since our nephew has gotten involved, things have markedly improved, to the point where for the last few years the turkeys and hams are remarkably good, even excellent. BiL is a retired process engineer. Nephew is a fluid and airflow dynamics engineer. Nephew can talk to his dad and make some headway where I couldn’t; about 5 years ago I saw nephew checking the turkey with an instant read thermometer, and I looked at him and smiled and nodded, and gave a look that said “yes, exactly”, and he smiled and nodded back. And we never discussed any of it (because you just don’t do that), but turkeys and hams have been pretty damn good since then, and they are getting better each year.

The burgers are a lost cause, though. BiL grew up with depression era parents, and that’s how his mom made burgers, and that’s just the way it is. That’s fine. I love those people until the end of time, so it doesn’t matter.

[realdocBBQ]

I cry at the thought of those burgers as well. lol

It's funny how you can sear the shit out of them and dry them out and make them terrible, but on a griddle you can sear the shit out of them and smash them and they DON'T dry out and they are awesome! lol. It's all about technique and paying attention to what you're doing.

[Mosca]

I’m not sure what he’d do with a griddle. When he was in high school he worked in a diner, but I don’t think he was on the grill. But maybe?

He likes the burgers this way. It’s not that he doesn’t like them the way I make them, too. I think it’s the only time he can get them the way his mom made them.

[Oak Smoke]

I grew up with a depression era, farmer’s wife, mom in the kitchen. She went to the grocery store to get what we didn’t raise or grow on the farm. Which at times was Crisco, S&P, and macaroni. Bless her heart she tried. Mom boiled or fried all main dishes, seasoned with salt and pepper, and put it on the table with a bottle of ketchup for me. Mom’s roast beef was a piece of beef boiled into submission then covered with gravy made from the liquid with corn starch added. We had pastures full of big gorgeous Charolais cattle and beef in the freezer that was incredible but it was cooked to death. Honestly have you even finished a rib eye and had beef crumbs on your plate?

[Mosca]

Oh lord, I forgot about the “roast beef”. We weren’t poor, far from it, but with 6 of us kids and my mom having grown up poor, she did practice home economics. Roast beef was round roast, and sometimes London broil, cooked well done with that same gravy. Me being a growing teenager who played sports, all I saw (and ate hungrily, of course) was BEEF!

[fzxdoc]

I forgot about those "beef crumbs". Even as a little kid, I wondered why something cooked in so much liquid could be so dry.

K.

[acorgihouse]

My mom did pretty well. She had a large table to feed, every meal, and she whipped it right out. Her electric skillet may have stayed hot for years, and some of the things she turned out there were great. Her chicken dishes were great, she grew up on her grandfather's large chicken farm in Missouri, and she could butcher/dismantle a chicken in about two minutes. Her downfall was vegetables. She had the 60's selection of housewife convenience appliances, including her electric skillet and pressure cooker. I still can hear that ring-ring of the pressure cooker. She put veg in there, and it was all a soft mush when it came out. I never had the crunch of a brussels sprout or green bean until I was an adult. The worst is my youngest sister, Mel. She is the worst cook I've ever been forced to be around, and the sad thing is she thinks she is a fantastic chef. I won't belabor with the endless awful meals I've been presented by her, but will give you the worst. I clearly remember being served garlic toast, taking a bite, and well... BITE! Toasted bread, smeared with margarine and then heavily sprinkled with raw chopped garlic. RAW chopped garlic on toast.

[Oak Smoke]

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that occurs when people overestimate their abilities in an area where they lack knowledge or skill. This definition was coined to describe a
relative of mine in the kitchen!

[surfdog]

I have relatives that firmly believe that they each cook the best brisket ever. Ever!
Sorry boys, not even close. Besides being able to repair shoes, they would probably also make fine wheel chocks. Being polite, I try it each time. Then shut my mouth and head over to the sides & desserts. LOL

[Hulagn1971]

Luckily, both my parents were good cooks. Dad still is, he'll be 82 this year.

[Jfrosty27]

My very best life long friend since first grade (I’m 69. Do the math) has a habit of opening the oven, grill, smoker, whatever every 5 minutes to check on what’s cooking. Drives me nuts. No matter how many times I tell him that he’s slowing down the cooking process etc, he keeps doing it. 🙄

[Alan Brice]

If yer lookin.......

[Openfire]

The dried out, tough crock pot roasts were the one thing that influenced me to start cooking myself. I still don't know how I got it down. Maybe it was the ketchup that helped because now I'm not a big fan of ketchup either.

[jfmorris]

THIS!

My grandmother made the BEST pot roast. In her pressure cooker, after browning in a cast iron skillet. My mother, an RN who worked the 3-11 shift starting around the time I was in 6th grade, would leave us a tough pot roast in the crock pot probably 2-3 times a week, for my dad, sister and I. I grew to hate pot roast. That stuff in the crock pot that she made was always tough, probably also a cheap bad cut of beef.

[prepperjack]

Oh, don't even get me started on people who think that you can just throw chicken breast into a crock pot and come back 8 hours later to a wonderful meal.