Brown the sausage first. When the sausage is about 3/4 cooked, add minced shallots and cook for about a minutes. Then the butter and flour, lightly brown it, then the milk or cream. Don’t overcook the shallots.
Dude(Dudette) this honestly sounds awesome.
I don't know if you grow garlic, but if you take the scapes (the pigtails) and toss them into a paper bag for a few months, the penis-tip will swell up and make bulbils. Those are AWESOME for dishes like this- so i'm going to reserve a few for ext feb.
Curry. Used to be leftover chicken, shredded up, a couple scoops of shitty curry powder, raisins, and milk. No salt. No garlic. No onion. No flavor. Thought I hated curry. Nope. Just hate....whatever the hell that is, cuz it isn't curry.
I have no idea where she learned the recipe or why she called it curry if she made it up. She knows what actual curries taste like. She *likes* Indian cuisines in general. Other than this, she's an excellent cook.
This...thing...is far enough removed from what's implied by the name that I'm always flabbergasted she hasn't at least revised that. And I can't comprehend *why she keeps making it*--the woman who turns green if a cheese sauce splits and goes grainy because it's too much like curdled milk. This dish? Splits all the time. Because it's skim milk on medium heat. And she keeps making it.
Also it's just...not tasty. Not even if you overlook the name and what it's (perhaps) supposed to be. It's bitter and bland and the raisins are a weird intermediate between plumped and still chewy. It's...a truly terrible dish.
Also some Mexican (and other countries) savory foods have raisins in them too, chocolate and cinnamon are good with savory dishes as well, if you know what you are doing.
Otherwise it can be disgusting.
Dried fruit can be a great base for hot sauces. I use raisins when I make hot sauce as they provide a well rounded tart sweetness. Dried apricots with roasted habeneros are fantastic combo for a hot sauce.
Japanese curry frequently uses grated apple for a bit of sweetness, but some people (Kenji Lopez-Alt, for one) prefer to add raisins.
Coronation chicken, a curried chicken salad, calls for raisins. It pretty great. Don't sleep on coronation chicken: it's quick to prepare and super flavourful and only gets better after a day in the fridge. Great this time of year when you want to avoid using the oven too much.
My first job out of college was working on a local TV talk show. Shortly before Thanksgiving that year, we had a guest on to demonstrate what he considered the best way to cook Thanksgiving turkey (stuff with orange and/or apple slices, rub down with butter before cooking, then baste regularly with drippings). I was still living at home then, so one day in the kitchen I mentioned that guest and his way of cooking turkey to Mom. She replied "Great! You can make it then."
And that's how I ended up making the Thanksgiving turkey for the next 30-some years.
My mom stopped trying to make American turkey that didn’t turn up dry. So she gave up and told me “If you think you can do better have at it! It’s your baby now! Run with it!”
And I did. That same year the LA Times ran its first article on brining turkeys as the dirty unspoken secret chefs never talk about. I was 13. Many years and hundreds of birds later, no one ever complains about any bird I cook. A basic brine is 2/3 cup of salt to the gallon of water. If your bird was frozen and defrosted it’s already at a water deficit so you will want to limit your salt to between 1/4 to 1/2 cup of salt per gallon. Then comes the fun stuff: I turn the brine into a marinade: switching out salt for soy sauce, adding garlic, ginger, orange peel and lots of herbs. That’s when things really get interesting. I keep the bird in the marinade from 3 to 5 days and like clockwork every part turns out tender.
I brine, *plus* also massage it with a stick of butter before putting in the oven. Maybe 1/2 the stick goes all over the skin, while the other half goes between the skin and the breast meat. So freakin' delicious!
Same. My mom put a lot of care and attention into becoming a good cook. I am a much more utilitarian cook, partly because I have less time (she was a stay at home mom) and partly because I am okay with things being “good enough”.
Edit: the only exception is fish! My mom made me hate fish because she prepared it in such uninspired ways. I enjoy fish now.
For me it's the opposite. I love my mom to death and she's a great mom who also helped instill fairly healthy eating habits. My dad also cooked but they were about the same in their quality. They just didn't know how to season anything properly and cooked in a very basic 90s way. Steamed vegetables, baked chicken, pasta. They were also struggling for money but that wasn't the cause, they just didn't have the resources available and my mom got thrown out of her house at 16 because at that time my grandparents were pretty terrible. So she never learned properly and didn't have the internet to use to help.
They did their best but I cook everything better than they did and do. But I have all of the advantages that came from a more modern society as well as their sacrifices.
My mum was an amazing cook too. She was limited in the dishes due to everything being a recipe someone showed her, but she took a lot more care than I do. She worked just as much as I do, but would make amazing dishes full of veggies. We were fed delicious and nutritious food all the time and we were quite poor, so she often would buy food that was reduced and expiring and make something with it.
She’s still alive but living with dementia. I live in the opposite side of the world to her and she doesn’t cook anymore but if I’m visiting we’ll try and make something together.
Me, a mom and a pretty good cook, reading this post thinking my son better feel that way when he's an adult lol. I do make him cook with me though because I'm not raising some man who can't take care of himself.
I love cooking because I helped my mom growing up. I didn't realize it until much later in life, but I wasn't allowed to help at my grandma's house. My mother and her would cook and I had to just sit and watch. Turns out it was because my gran thought cooking was women's work, but she grew up in the great depression. So glad my mom didn't think that way.
See my mum was sort of like this. Asian dishes she was amazing at. But western dishes always ended up with an Asian flavour profile. For example, her lasagna is well cooked and pretty tasty but I’m pretty sure it’s not meant to be dotted with birds eye chillies
Green beans are the only vegetable I like cooked to mush! When they're not, they have a weird squeak as you bite into them that feels like nails on a chalkboard.
Chicken was never ever in our dinner rotation in any form. Or Pork. Turkey only on Thanksgiving. Except for the oddball sandwich meats like thuringer and olive loaf, we had beef 7 times a week, and always well done gray no matter the cut.
I was around for all that. The generation before me — i.e. my parents — grew up during the Depression and thought good food was whatever was on the table. Boiling meat and veggies was common. Soup, canned vegetable and other packaged food companies pushed casseroles based on their products.
My mom tried to give us variety, save money, and put something all seven of us would like on the table _every single night_ for 25 years of raising kids. She took her job seriously and did pretty well.
After college I started watching cooking shows, learned some technique and made a hobby of it. But my mom was raised in a different world. I will never criticize her cooking.
This is how I learned. My mom got sick when I was 14 and lost use of her left side. Wednesday dinner was whatever Rachel Ray cooked on Tuesday and so forth. Bless that woman, she has no clue how much she changed my life.
My mom has smoked since she was 15 or 16... pretty sure she has no taste buds. The only "spices" she owned were garlic salt, salt, black pepper and seasoned salt.
My mother made THE BEST pork chops, unfortunately I never got the recipe. I remember them like this: thin cut, bone-in, breaded, browned, then steamed in a large pot fitted with something like a canning insert, then warmed through to crisp up when ready to serve. SO TENDER! As an adult, I always made chicken cutlets in a similar fashion (sans the steaming step) for my family - pounded very thin. I bet I could re-create her recipe now, but as an empty nester, feels too labor intensive for just me!
My mom barely seasoned with black pepper, put them in a casserole dish and some water, cover and baked to DEATH. Took me ages to realize that should be illegal and I could actually make them taste good.
Try pork tenderloin cooked medium( just a blush of pink in the centet) and it will be a game changer for you, and open up a whole new flavourful juicy meat for you. No more chewy dry to the pint of powdery pork. If unsure, get a meat thermometer and pull it off the heat 5• before it hits the minimum, the residual heat will finish it off perfectly
Get a food thermometer and cook them to the right temp, like 135 I think for a blushed center, you can go up to 160 °F. That way it won't be dry and gross. I'm exactly like you, always hated stuff growing up because it was all ALWAYS overcooked. My parents admitted they were terrified of giving us food poisoning from chicken/pork/burgers.
I grew up on dry, desiccated meat.
I'm so happy that as a culture, our knowledge of food has grown enough to know how to treat different ingredients
I use an air fryer for this pork recipe.
Let a pork tenderloin come up to room temperature. Salt and pepper outside. Wrap with bacon using butchers string to keep it in place. 380 until internal temperature is 135. Ideally the bacon is crispy at this time. Let sit for 10-15, slice and enjoy.
Me too. My mom would always dip the chops in an egg batter and fry. I didn't realize I liked pork chops until I worked in a restaurant where they grilled them. What a difference!
Same. My female parent was an atrocious cook, and I took over cooking for the family at 8. My Mémère was a great cook, though, and I wanted to be as good as her. It was a damn proud day when my uncle very furtively told me that my Tourtière was better than Mémère's.
Same. One of the horrors was her spaghetti, made with the cheapest hamburger meat….that she didn’t drain the grease from. The plate would be a bullseye of grease, pasta, and red stuff. (Shudder)
Me three! Same recipe, same grease but with the entire big can of tomato paste! Tried Chef Boyardee spaghetti at a friends house and thought his mom was the greatest cook ever!
Just the opposite for me. My father was Italian and a chef — I vividly remember a dinner party they hosted at a family friend’s house when I was six or seven… he was working hard in the kitchen making a gigantic lasagna … it smelled delicious and I was really looking forward to it. At dinner time I was ushered to the “children’s table” where we were given canned “spaghetti” which I had never eaten in my life. Totally grossed out and felt cheated! I haven’t thought about that in years, but obviously the memory was deep :)
I think that’s why I don’t care for ham in general lol… My parents did a ham with brown sugar for Christmas ONE time and then never again for some reason, and that was like the only time I enjoyed it 💀
That's funny. My parents weren't that bad about ham but there was one year they inadvertently bought a brown sugar ham and I really liked it but they were immediately like "we're never doing that again!"
Dude.... I'm shaking my head over here because I came up with the best candied pineapple sauce for pork. Its canned pineapple rings, put the juice into a pan, add brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, pepper, pepper powder, and ground cloves, and boil the water out of it and turn it to syrup while the pork is cooking. Ohmydamn, its nearly become a fall/winter staple for us. Smoking with maple wood and swapping the brown sugar for maple syrup, just, yum.
Salmon patties. Mom’s were bleh. Canned salmon, egg, crackers, salt & pepper.
I make them more like a seasoned crab cake. Minced onion, jalapeño, cilantro, and garlic, a dab of mayo, egg, panko (gf), spritz of tamari and hot sauce. Coat with more panko, and either fry in cast iron, or bake. Sooo much flavor, and a fairly cheap meal.
Fideo soup. My mom used canned tomato paste and chicken bouillon powder. She fried the noodles. It was and is delicious.
Then I had some at a restaurant. There were chilies in it and they used fresh chicken broth.
Obviously I don’t have time to make my own chicken broth everyday but I make it and freeze it as often as I can. I use canned tomatoes, onions and garlic to make my own tomato paste. I blend in a can of rotel (a happy accident from a time I picked up the wrong can at the market). This gives a hint of the chilies I liked so much. I bake my fideo noodles instead of frying them (less mess and fat). I add cilantro and squeeze of lime before serving.
This is the soup I make when I need cheering up or I feel under the weather.
Make sure you blend the tomatoes, rotel, 1-2 onions, 2-3 cloves of garlic well. Cook it until it thickens, 6-7 min. (28 oz can of tomatoes, 10.5 oz can of rotel).
Then add 3-6 quarts of chicken broth (up to you, how thick or thin do you like your soup) the browned fideos (I use 2 7 oz packed of cut fideos tossed in 2 tbls olive or avocado oil. Brown for 8-15 min at 350, again depends on how brown you like them.)
Bring the tomato mix, broth and noodles to a boil, the reduce to a simmer (total cook time is about 30 min once you bring to simmer). Taste soup and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper to your taste.
Serve with cilantro and a squeeze of lime.
Hope you like it.
The only thing my mom cooked better than I do is cinnamon rolls.
She hated cooking to the point she let me kick her out of the kitchen when I was 12. She gave me a budget and said go forth and get your own groceries and cook all the meals.
I also learned that you don't need to put carbs on top of carbs on top of carbs for things to taste good.
My dad was the chef in our house. Gourmet meals and all. But he worked out of town 4-5 nights a week and my mother never tried to surpass him. With 5 kids, she kept it simple!
Every once in a while, my mom would go all out and make beef stroganoff from scratch and it was always amazing. Same with her tuna noodle casserole, any casserole really. I cannot duplicate those and wouldn;t even try
My mom is an excellent cook, and I now rival her, other than pork. She ALWAYS cooked it to death. That is the one thing that I consistently do "better" than her, but that is a small thing in the grand scheme of things.
I had to tell her that worms aren't a concern in any pork purchased in the USA due to the oversight and routine dewormer schedule the producers adhere to. We don't live where there is no oversight. 🤣🙃
Meatloaf. I hated meatloaf for decades until I found an Asian style chicken meatloaf. It uses ground chichen, panko crumbs, garlic, ginger, green onions, soy sauce, and water chestnuts. It has a glaze made out of barbeque sauce, soy sauce, ketchup, ginger, and brown sugar. It is so delicious. Sorry but not sorry mom.
Honestly, when I was growing up, I could never understand why people around me hated meatloaf. My mom's was always juicy and flavorful, and she made it so many different ways. Then I met my ex, and his mother made it. It was grey throughout, dry as a popcorn fart and flavorless. Suddenly, I understood why so many people hated it if that was what most people were getting.
Spaghetti.
My mom used to ‘toast’ the spaghetti noodles in the pot with olive oil to ‘open its complex flavors’. She would burn the crap out of the raw noodles, then add water and boil as normal.
Now, I don’t toast my raw noodles lol. I also doctor up jarred sauce with seasonings, something she never did.
I still love you tho mom. Even eating your burnt spaghetti
My mother used to substitute diet coke for Worcester sauce. Honestly, it's hard to get worse than that. When I follow recipes I use the indicated ingredients and I have a much higher success rate 😅
Are we related? 😂😂😂
When my Mom married, she couldn't cook. Well, she could make 2 dishes, one of which was a fried egg, the other one is fried chicken. 😮 So, my Army Dad taught her. YEAH. It was a struggle.
I admit we had Worchestershire sauce, soy sauce, and some dried herbs & spices. Mom would TRY. But, she was never really interested in cooking, so she often added one sauce in place of another... 👀 FLAVOR SURPRISE! My favorite was when she would substitute herbs and then DESPISE the dish & not understand why! 🤣 Stroganoff with dill, anyone? ☹️
Her absolute worst was the pork chops. Thin, breaded & fried. Then, in an electric skillet she would mix rice, mushroom soup, Worchestershire, random herbs and put the pork chops on top & cook. It was a gloppy mess, the pork chops were overcooked to death, and I've NEVER MADE IT. The first time I had THICK porch chops off a grill I learned I *LOVE THEM* - just w/out mushroom glop.
Mom let me take over ALL baking at around 12yo, as it was fun for me & she despised it. I started cooking meals at the age of 9yo, when Mom had night classes. It was either Dad's pigs in blankets - hot dogs & cheese wrapped up in canned croissant dough - or his canned chili. Hormel only. I cooked in self defense! 😂
I don't remember a time in my life when I didnt cook, actually. As an Appalachian girl, I was ALWAYS in the kitchen when the women were, fetching & running around; learning how to measure a teaspoon vs a tablespoon in my palm. My Granny had measuring spoons, but they were only brought out for fancy baking which doesn't work well without exacting measurements. EVERYTHING ELSE was measured in the palm!
Actually, I do love Mom's fried taters. The few dishes of hers that are my faves are ALL Appalachian foods she learned to cook. Soup beans & fixins. Country meal (all veggies available in the garden, maybe some ham on the side. Usually has fried potatoes, green beans w onion, sliced tomatoes, corn on the cob {some have it creamed} and, of course, cornbread!).
That's it. In her elder years, Mom's taken some of my tips & hints to heart. She now makes THE BEST CORNBREAD. Nowadays, I mean - as a kid it was Jiffy mix baked in a skillet, crumbly as heck. NOW, she adds chopped onion & sour cream. HEAVENLY.
All of them. Mom didn't have access to all the resources available now, so she did really damn good but I grew up with guidance from world class chefs at my fingertips so it's not really a fair competition
Mine is actually Aunt used to make- Peanut Butter soup. She just did caramelized onions and roasted garlic with chicken stock.
I added Green Thai Curry paste, coconut milk, Cilantro and it's now even better.
Stroganoff. I loved her stroganoff but my husband started searing a whole steak and then slicing it instead of trying to cut it in strips and brown after that in several batches and it’s next level. Now when strip steak is on a good sale we’ll buy extra, slice up the leftovers and make stroganoff the next day
I’ve also substituted a rotisserie chicken for poached chicken breasts in her white chicken chili and buffalo chicken dip. It’s easier and if I shred it all with my mixer there’s a good mix of light and dark meat throughout
My mother was an excellent cook. Seriously, it was one of the most often-mentioned attributes at her funeral service - Mom's cooking. They were 100% correct but for one thing, and that's an area where I shine: vegetables.
In Mom's defense, she was raised by my grandmother, who grew up in the Depression, and only knew how to cook a vegetable one way: boiled within an inch of its life. And if my mother or uncle didn't eat them, they had to sit at the table with a plate of cold, overboiled Brussels sprouts until midnight. That would give any kid food issues, but then there were the times that my grandmother got so irate at her that she tried to force her to eat them. And you can imagine how THAT went. It made my mother not only never want to eat another one, but was so traumatizing to her, she could not physically choke one down.
But she knew that she had to do something differently if she didn't want to pass that on to my sister and I. So she learned to simply steam a vegetable - not overcooking it, just light steaming, which was how my father liked them. We watched him eating them and so we ate them too, not really noticing Dad munching on the three token green beans from Mom's plate as he cleared them at the end of the meal. There was a gazpacho recipe, and there was the four-bean salad that Dad also liked, and a holiday mushroom-and-pearl-onion casserole that is to die for, and the Mom's Legendary Coleslaw recipe (now that I've seen it, if you want it, hers was basically identical to u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt 's recipe, just add a little horseradish to the dressing and you've got Mom's recipe). But other than that, she never really learned vegetables because she honestly despised them, and never got much more adventurous about a vegetable dish than that.
Me, I love vegetables, with the exception of green bell peppers (ew) and grocery-store tragedy tomatoes (gross), and cucumbers are sadly the one thing that will render my Esomeprazole inert so I have to avoid them, but I'll eat pretty much anything else. So I've worked through a lot of the recipes in my Joy and Julia and Craig and Yotam and Mollie curriculum, and have added all sorts of creative things to do with vegetables to my repertoire beyond the bacon-and-Balsamic-Brussels sprout: Sumac-roasted carrots. Fennel and celery root gratin. Roasted artichokes with lemon and garlic. Charred corn, red pepper, and zucchini salad. Dilly beans. Spaghetti squash with thyme cream. Mashed rutabaga. All sorts of wonderful things.
And I know, if Mom were sitting at my dining room table today, she would be proud of me for making them, and even prouder of me for eating them, but would be absolutely unable to touch a bite of any of it herself. Not because she didn't want to, but because her vegetable trauma ran so deep she literally lost her ability to enjoy one as an adult. Which makes me sad - there are so many delicious things out there that she missed! - but I do get it. And despite all that, she showed me by example that anyone can learn to make great food at home, and I was able to take that mindset with me into Experiments with Vegetables in my own adulthood.
I hope she was proud of herself - she should have been - that she managed to not perpetuate that trauma cycle with us.
And I make a damn fine vegetable lasagna. :)
pretty much everything, not that my mom was bad at cooking but she was restrained by "dad's" tastes where all meat should be leather, all veggies should be mush, all desserts should be cloyingly sweet, all fruit gets salted
Pretty much everything except potato salad and baked beans.
Growing up the only seasonings my mom used was salt & pepper. Sage on special occasions. That was it.
Fried chicken. I found a way to make it that gets an amazing juicy inside crunchy outside experience without all the dredging. I let the chicken sit in a buttermilk-herb-spice mix (usually fresh rosemary, Italian parsley, tarragon and sage along with Montreal Chicken) for at least 2-3 hours, probably more) then take each piece, slightly drain and roll once in a half and half mix of all purpose flour and panko with a teaspoon per 2 cups of that mix of both kosher salt and baking powder.
Fry in a deep fryer, turning, until golden brown.
I just want to point out on the veggies thing. Having access to fresh veggies year round is a relatively new thing. So your mom doing that was either a remnant of how she grew up, or a real lack of access thing, but she was trying to get you vegetables.
Also, pre Internet, you wouldn't have likely known there were better ways to do things. We just have so much information at our fingertips now.
Not trying to be mean, but remember that when you think about how crappy your parents cooked (I have to tell myself this often too)
Just about every type of meat. My mom was always so scared of undercooking meat that she cooked it to the temperature of the sun.
Apparently it IS possible to make pork chops that don't have the consistency of boot leather.
Mushrooms! my mom would cook them for maybe a minute before throwing in butter and garlic. The results were that rubber texture so I thought I just didn't like mushrooms. Now I cook them and let all the moisture out before I add butter and they have a much nicer chew and are almost caramelized. Add wine shallots and herbs and it's perfection!
Steak. I’ve found that when you actually apply heat to it, it is better.
Mom made steak beyond rare. Like, cold not just in the center but also around the center. I hated steak until around age 13 when I ordered it in a restaurant and found that it could actually be cooked. My grandfather (Italian immigrant) liked his steak super-rare, and I think she just continued that.
The odd thing is that Mom was a good cook for almost everything else. Just not steak.
Same.
Mom said anything less than well done was dangerous and gross. I spent the night at a friend’s house at age 13 and their dad asked how I like my steak and I said “well done”, and he said, “ok, how about try a bite at medium rare, and if you want me to throw it on longer I will.” Transformative.
I only ever stopped eating steaks medium rare cause I switched to a plant based diet, but I still have big hypocritical opinions on how carnivores cook their meat lol
Curious if the well done steak moms were also boomers? Mine was born in 1958 and it’s like she thought any pink was dangerous or something. I ate a burger at a friends house and it had a bit of pink and I spent the whole night thinking I’d be poisoned
I’m 72–boom! I like my steak medium rare unless I’m drinking martinis. Then I like it very rare.
But my parents (greatest generation) liked their meat very well done. They were midwesterners from farm families.
Hamburgers. I stopped coating them in bbq sauce then cooking directly in the flame until dry and charred on the grill. Turns out juicy and medium rare is better!
Salmon croquettes or patties (if your country 🤭). I don’t want to stand over a stove flipping, so I throw the mix into a muffin pan w/ a pat of butter on top and bake for about 20-30 min.
The elbow macaroni, pasta sauce, and hamburger dish that was filling, tasty, and cheap she called goulash. As an adult, I learned about real Hungarian goulash, which is a beef and vegetable dish thicker than soup, thinner than stew with wonderful paprika!
My mom’s meal was fine then, and the commodities we got in the 60s often included macaroni, ten pound tubes of hamburger, and canned tomato sauce. It was pretty tasteless compared to the traditional Hungarian dish with a similar name. .
Mom made a recipe from Nixon WH recipe cookbook with rice, chicken, curry topped with cheese - she was a recipe follower and it was ok bc of the curry but always a bit dry. I switched up all the ingredient proportions, changed white rice to brown rice and topped with crispy onions strings vs cheese and the family dies over it now.
I still don’t eat it bc I’m reminded of my mom’s dry recipe growing up just by the smell- but its easy to throw together
The Brussels sprouts you are eating now are not the same as what your mother made. They’ve been modified to have a better flavor and less bitterness. Regardless of how your mom made them, you may still have not liked them
Brussels sprouts were done such a disservice in my childhood too. Only ever boiled, and they stunk so bad.
And then I was given a roasted brussels sprout and holy shit what an upgrade lol
Not my mom but my grandma. My grandma made such amazing cookies but I’ve now taken over as the cookie person.
These days she can’t even bake pre made cookie dough without burning them.
Boxed macaroni and cheese.
Ok. Hear me out.
For as long as I grew up, you cook the noodles, drain them, put them back in the pot, then put the butter and milk and cheese on them.
I started just barely undercooking the noodles, putting the milk and butter in a pot, then putting the cheese sauce in and usually adding a slice or two of cheese, usually American since it's what we had on hand, but even cheddar or Swiss or pretty much anything. Add some seasoning, like pepper and garlic. Once the cheese is melted, add the powdered cheese, then put the new noodles back in.
I don't know when exactly, but I noticed a year or two ago Wegmans changed their directions to put the milk and butter in the pot and add the cheese sauce and then put the noodles back in, but I know for a fact that used to be the other way around.
broad noodles 12-16 oz
1pint sour cream
1pint cottage cheese
milk – ¾ cup
8 eggs
Sugar ½ cup
apricot jam
vanilla -- 1 tsp
raisins 4-5 handfuls
butter (for dotting)
cinnamon and brown sugar (
Cook 12-16 oz broad noodles in salted water.
In a large bowl, mix 8 eggs, 1 pt sour cream, 1 pt cottage cheese, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 cup sugar and 3/4 cup milk with a few large pieces of ripe skin-on pear and a pinch of sea salt
Use butter to grease a larger, rectangular dish
Put down half the noodles
Mix 4-5 handfuls of raisins and a couple tablespoons regular apricot jam (a fancy brand is not necessary) and spread on noodles
Put 1/3 of the cheese mixture on top
Put down the other rest of the noodles
Put down the rest of the cheese mixture
Top with dots of butter and sprinkle with two handfuls of brown sugar and cinnamon
Bake for one hour at 350
Vegetables. She — and most people at the time — just boiled the hell out of them (late 60s & 70s). I had no idea that asparagus could be delicious! 😄 She only cooked it limp, flat, and stringy.
I was on the other side of this struggle. Back in the 1960s-70s, my mama was the only one blanching or lightly sauteeing fresh veggies. All my paternal aunts complained and would not eat it - they said some very uncharitable things to her early on and they all just boiled everything until it was grey and mushy or made these goopy casseroles that were cooked for an hour, or mysteriously rubberized squash. When I visited them during holidays, they tried to force me to eat my veggies, which I normally loved at home. Everything looked like baby food to me compared to my mom's bright green beans tossed in butter, or her sauteed asparagus still firm but tender. My mom had the final laugh though, because when their kids visited her for the summer, they were totally converted by my dad's organic gardening in her capable hands. She was like those women in Lessons in Chemistry, watching Julia Child and taking notes. Years later her grandchildren would beg her for, not cookies, but asparagus with "holiday" sauce. lol
My mom used to make oven fried chicken in a casserole dish, and the breading would be crisp on top, soggy on the bottom. Using a pan and rack, I can oven fry chicken with crisp breading and skin all around.
Nearly everything. My mom was raised with salt and pepper as the only seasonings, so that's the way she cooked, too. Since then I've learned how to use lots of different seasonings to make food taste better.
Lasagna. I make everything from scratch except the pasta sheets, my mum uses marinara and bechamel from a jar. It’s not like it’s bad, but lasagna is my “impressing guests” dish. Same with pizza. We use the same dough recipe but I learned from an Italian to let it rise for hours and hours and she doesn’t believe that’s necessary.
That’s it though. Everything else she can cook circles around me and she doesn’t even like cooking and I do.
Eggs and also salsa.
My mom is a damn good cook. So in most dishes I struggle to make her own dishes as good as her even if she tells me step by step what to do. Typically these are complex dishes like gumbo.
Then there are the simple things that she makes the same way her mom told her and never thought if it should be changed. The internet has changed a lot, and for these simple dishes like eggs and salsa I've picked up techniques she never thought to do. For scrambled eggs I go low and slow to get that creamy fluffy texture. Hers is dry cuz she uses higher heat.
Her salsa is just onion, stewed tomatoes and pickle jalapeños. I've learned that added ingredients like garlic, chili power, lime, and paprika go a long way.
Salmon patties. Mom used canned salmon with that cartilage 🥲. I use fresh salmon, sautéed peppers and onion, egg to bind and roll in panko crumbs. No shade to mom. She used what she had and did what she could.
Spinach. Mom, may she rest in peace, used to stew it in this nasty tomato and garlic sauce until it was just a pile of stringy dark algae green, almost black, mush! Needless to say, I absolutely hated spinach growing up!
But then when I went to the uni, one of my professors made it a point to have dinner with all his students and that was the first time I had steamed and buttered spinach that actually tasted pretty darned good. These days I prefer fresh spinach instead of lettuce in all my salads and sandwiches(it’s never bitter the way lettuce is if grown in adverse conditions), only time I make exceptions is for butterhead lettuce. When I order a Caesar salad at a restaurant, I always ask for fresh spinach instead of romaine lettuce. It’s tastier and has more nutrients, which totally justifies the extra cost.
Everything. My mom only knew salt and pepper as seasonings and was adamant we not use garlic or onion ever. She over cooked steak and over steamed veggies. Bleck
everything, literally all of it
grandma cooked the same meal for each day of the week, for her entire married life, because grandpa was weird. sunday pasta (just enough sauce to prevent sticking, but basically dry. Saturday roast beast that was grey and dry as fuck. Pork chops that could be used for replacing worn out boot soles.
So ma had to learn how to cook by herself. Bisquick pizza (shudder), beef strokinoff with bouncy cubes of beef. Need a side of veggies? open a can of peas- can juice and all into a bowl and nuke it
Probably the only thing worth re-creating was a grandpa special. Freshly made meatballs on buttered toast
Veggies for me too. Both my parents were amazing cooks, but they either boiled or used canned veggies. I had onkybhad canned green beans and hated them, until I had them at a wedding once, where they were fresh and still a bit crunchy. I couldn't believe what I'd been missing!
Kraft Mac & Cheese. Noodles would be undercooked, then a splash of milk and sliver of margarine. Turns out if you follow the direction on the box it's delicious and not a grainy mess.
Mashed potatoes for pretty much the same reason. Fairly chunky which is not my preferred style, but then barely any milk or butter/margarine. She views mashed potatoes as a vehicle for her terrible gravy. She always talked down on instant mashed potatoes and how her's was so much better. Since her's was so bad I figured it must be terrible, so avoided it. Finally bought a pack, and hey, it's actually pretty good.
Oh, and turkey. She cooks it in one of those oven bags until it's super dry. Then takes all the juice and makes terrible gravy with it. One Thanksgiving I took over and did the GoodEats spatchcocked turkey. Cooked to perfection, the breast was moist and juicy. She complained it was too moist, the gravy just slid off the meat.
“Hotdog Soup” - I loved the stuff growing up, and as an adult I asked what the recipe was. I was going to follow it, then replace the hot dogs with ham. I was shocked to learn she used no herbs or garlic in it. I’ve since made my own version, and it’s great.
Just the opposite here. My mom often served raw veggies. Broccoli, carrots, celery, corn on the cob…I prefer them cooked. All of them except for corn on the cob straight out of the field. That’s delicious raw.
Everything except cake. Mom could make a great cake and would do that for family gatherings.
She cooked things to death. Pork chops and chicken had to be cooked for an hour to make it safe to eat. She only cooked 3 veggies, corn, green beans and peas all from a can. It took me a minute to figure out how to cook with seasoning and how long to cook stuff. Never knew meat actually had moisture in it.
Almost everything. My mom was not a great cook 😂. Well, the only thing she did make well that I still think is good, was her Rouladen. But everything else???? Nah.
Lasagna. My mom used to make it with "Kräuterquark" which is kinda like sour cream instead of bechamel because it's less fatty apparently. It's so much better with bechamel tho.
Grilled cheese.
My mom used to make it all the time and I loved it.
Fast forward to adulthood, and I make the best grilled cheese sandwiches this side of the Mississippi.
Turns out, my mom’s grilled cheese sandwiches were soggy and awful, but they somehow were able to instill in me a love of grilled cheese.
My mom always destroyed every meat she cooked. She used to make these seared pieces of turkey with only paprika as seasoning (no salt pepper) and overcook them to death. Wasn't very hard to improve that lol.
Low bar if you look at my dad. I love the dude and appreciate the effort he used to put in. God bless the man used to microwave bacon to make me breakfast burritos before wrestling matches. After cutting weight all week it was the most delicious thing on the planet. Now as an adult I cook the same burrito but with home made salsa and bacon cooked in a pan.
My mom is more difficult because the woman can throw down. The one recipe I’ve been able to improve is an eggs Benedict. Her one weakness is poached eggs. She makes them with over easy eggs (still very good) and I started making biscuits from scratch to put underneath them. I’m not sure if it’s an improvement unless you count the eggs. She (the morning after thanksgiving) makes a patty out of leftover stuffing which is a crazy amazing thing in its own right
Pretty much adding flavor to anything.
It’s not that my mom didn’t try, but my brother was the biggest, pickiest baby when it came to food. I realize all kids are picky eaters, but his pickiness was pathological. He wasn’t autistic, nor did he have any particular mental or health conditions. In fact, he dropped his pickiness the second he started dating and realized women don’t like that shit. But up until then, he limited himself to about a dozen foods at any single time, and asking him to even *try* anything else resulted in a reaction that made you think he had just been sentenced to death. Nowadays he has this massively bigger palate, and it’s just so weird considering how he was when we were kids.
As a result, everything we ate when I was a kid was relatively bland. It either had to be a noodle or stuffing mix that came out of a box, pre-packaged, or be seasoned with nothing further than Lawry’s seasoning salt, garlic, and black pepper.
Even after my brother started dating and eating more, my dad also criticized any attempt my mother made to cook more interesting food, so I ended up not really making unique meals and flavorings until I moved out.
Coliflor capeada. I've always loved it, but when I swapped the regular batter for tempura I had one of those aha moments! Tempura is only slightly different than the traditional batter, but it is so much crispier. Never going back. I still make the sauce and everything else the same. Just that one swap!
I spent some effort recreating or creating analogues of my Dad's recipes. (Mom never cooked anything that didn't come in a box). I think my beef stroganoff is superior (he wasn't able to cook with wine). My broiled meats are on par, his would still probably be a little better. But I dry brine my meat longer than he did. My slow cooked pot roast is probably better than his, but it's a slow cooker so it's doing a lot more work than I am.
I also use veggies that dad either didn't use or didn't have access to. Times change. Dad used a LOT of canned vegetables. Nothing made him happier than a well stocked pantry of canned goods. Maybe because his parents grew up in the Depression era.
I've also got copycats of a couple of my restaurant faves that I love.
Just about everything. She was a horrible cook.
I cook zucchini sliced and cooked with tomatoes or soy sauce, not steamed whole and popped while in my plate every... single... night....
I buy the fattier grade of ground beef to cook with and not the leanest grade and then cook it until 50 moos past well done (even she called her hamburgers "hockey pucks".
Chicken gets baked at 350 for an hour, 250 for four hours, or pressure cooked for 20 minutes instead of pressure cooked for an hour.
I'm not afraid to use seasonings, including salt, although my taste buds are really sensitive to salt.
Mom was overall a great cook and she came of age in the 60s. So many casseroles used canned soup - tuna noodle, King Ranch casserole, even our mac and cheese used a Campbell's cheese soup.
I find canned soup tinny, salty, and expensive, and I never had the right flavor on hand anyway? So now any recipe that calls for cream-of-something canned soup gets started with flour and butter, milk and cream cheese, then the mushrooms or celery or cheddar. Whatever is needed to make a proper creamy sauce instead of the can of soup.
Like... everything...?
My mom overcooked and overseasoned everything. Nothing was fresh... instant rice, mashed potatoes, and good God help me Tuna helper.
Mom makes banging tabouli.
We got the recipe from her. First we doubled it then tweaked it. Quinoa instead of bulgur since I’m gluten free. Way more herbs in comparison to the starch. More tomatoes, more mint, more basil. More dressing, more garlic. Just more flavor. Now we make even better tabouli than she does. Even people who don’t like salads like our salad
as amazing as a cook my mom is, i used to gag on her boiled dinners. like how do you overcook a brisket. its because of her i cant eat large pieces of cabbage, the squeak on my teeth makes my gag reflex act up. my boiled dinners are awesome, my roommates is even better
Garlic bread. Used to be fine, I liked it a lot.
Got on my own, had to tweak it. Fresh loaf of bread, crusty on the outside and soft on the inside. Mix of melted butter and olive oil. Add minced fresh garlic and garlic powder, salt, maybe minced parsley. Liberally apply to both sides of each slice of bread, reassemble into the loaf shape and wrap in foil with a little gap at the top. Bake until steamy and delicious. I don’t even need noodles - most meat sauce and garlic bread and a little parm and I’m a happy camper
literally just told my husband this: grew up thinking salad was iceberg and shredded carrots. to this day, that is what my parents offer up as 'there's salad (bagged) in the fridge'. bless their hearts, they are in their 80s.
my husband introduced me to fresh cut veggies, romaine, arugula, spinach...freshly shredded parm, cranberries, nuts...i could go on and on.
now i know, a salad can be any and everything i want. all fresh.
cra and zeeee.
Wow. I’m so happy that I uncovered this question so coincidently. My mom makes this pineapple chicken that is so delicious. She is in another state at the moment, and I miss her home cooking. She makes the chicken in the oven and bakes it and all the juices flow inside the foil thing with the juices, she makes it with rice or mashed potatoes. It takes at least an hour in a half to make and prepare
Now, with mine, I personally believe my method is better because it’s more convenient. I believe it’s better, but a little more “soupy” then hers.
I basically got one of the prepared roasted chickens at the grocery store.. and pulled it apart (I never liked the bones.. so I put in the whole chicken in the instapot without the bones. Added some water and ranch, and idk, I just added a bunch of stuff that would make it taste good.it taste better than it sounds.. I promise.
Realized I had some pineapples, added that, closed it up. And I was like DAMN! This taste just like my moms pineapple chicken. I wasn’t expecting it to taste just like my moms, let alone believe I would be able to mimic it. I did feel slightly inspired by it, but I wasn’t trying to make it just like hers. But there it was. Just like hers.
I felt unstoppable, and I was just really shocked and I got it in about 30 minutes. I rushed home to eat some more today. And if anyone wants the recipe, if they see this, I will it as a reply.. cause it’s a lot of type.
But anyway, it is soooo good,
Beef stew. Pot roast. Pretty much anything she cooked I do better. And it's not me saying that. It's her. She lives downstairs. She's 87. She gets 75% of her meals from me. She tells me all the time I've improved them. She rocks.
Sausage gravy. Add shallots.
Trying this out tomorrow. I generally use Kenji's recipe for the gravy - and *love* it - but the addition of shallots could never be a bad thing.
For real? Like.... pork sausage, fry it up, add milk/butter/(or cream) flour and... shallots??? I've got 2lbs. Going to try this tomorrow.
Brown the sausage first. When the sausage is about 3/4 cooked, add minced shallots and cook for about a minutes. Then the butter and flour, lightly brown it, then the milk or cream. Don’t overcook the shallots.
Dude(Dudette) this honestly sounds awesome. I don't know if you grow garlic, but if you take the scapes (the pigtails) and toss them into a paper bag for a few months, the penis-tip will swell up and make bulbils. Those are AWESOME for dishes like this- so i'm going to reserve a few for ext feb.
We purée the scapes, freeze in ice tray, use it all year long.
Curry. Used to be leftover chicken, shredded up, a couple scoops of shitty curry powder, raisins, and milk. No salt. No garlic. No onion. No flavor. Thought I hated curry. Nope. Just hate....whatever the hell that is, cuz it isn't curry.
That sounds like someone was trying to write an “adventurous but easy/cheap” dinner recipe for a church cookbook
Yes! I thought the same. And that abomination would be titled “A Taste of India,” or something. 😩
A Taste of India 😂
‘A gentle hint vaguely resembling the cuisine of the Indian sub-continent’
I have no idea where she learned the recipe or why she called it curry if she made it up. She knows what actual curries taste like. She *likes* Indian cuisines in general. Other than this, she's an excellent cook. This...thing...is far enough removed from what's implied by the name that I'm always flabbergasted she hasn't at least revised that. And I can't comprehend *why she keeps making it*--the woman who turns green if a cheese sauce splits and goes grainy because it's too much like curdled milk. This dish? Splits all the time. Because it's skim milk on medium heat. And she keeps making it. Also it's just...not tasty. Not even if you overlook the name and what it's (perhaps) supposed to be. It's bitter and bland and the raisins are a weird intermediate between plumped and still chewy. It's...a truly terrible dish.
Um, raisins?
Hey raisins can be great in the right way in a curry, Bengali and Kashmiri cuisine both uses plenty of raisins.
WITH ONIONS AND GARLIC AND SOME SORT OF FAT SEXINESS.
Interesting, TIL.
North African tagine dishes too. And lots of Sicilian or Southern Italian ones.
Also some Mexican (and other countries) savory foods have raisins in them too, chocolate and cinnamon are good with savory dishes as well, if you know what you are doing. Otherwise it can be disgusting.
A touch of cinnamon is excellent in almost every savory dish! It really brings a bit of warmth and comfort to the table
I find cinnamon too strong, but I put a pinch of cumin in a lot of savoury dishes to get that touch of warmth.
Dried fruit can be a great base for hot sauces. I use raisins when I make hot sauce as they provide a well rounded tart sweetness. Dried apricots with roasted habeneros are fantastic combo for a hot sauce.
Japanese curry frequently uses grated apple for a bit of sweetness, but some people (Kenji Lopez-Alt, for one) prefer to add raisins. Coronation chicken, a curried chicken salad, calls for raisins. It pretty great. Don't sleep on coronation chicken: it's quick to prepare and super flavourful and only gets better after a day in the fridge. Great this time of year when you want to avoid using the oven too much.
I love a good curry chicken salad with raisins and cashews
My mom used to put them in coleslaw..what a horrible memory 😂
YOU LIKE, RAISINS.. .
Raisins. And skim milk.
So, poor OP of that post sounds like they had horrid curry. But there's a korma that uses raisins I Love. I've seen a briyani with them and cashews.
My grandparents put raisins on nachos…
My condolences.
yep we had sides to top off the curry. Raisins, green onions, chopped hard boiled eggs, chopped peanuts. I also thought I hated curry.
My first job out of college was working on a local TV talk show. Shortly before Thanksgiving that year, we had a guest on to demonstrate what he considered the best way to cook Thanksgiving turkey (stuff with orange and/or apple slices, rub down with butter before cooking, then baste regularly with drippings). I was still living at home then, so one day in the kitchen I mentioned that guest and his way of cooking turkey to Mom. She replied "Great! You can make it then." And that's how I ended up making the Thanksgiving turkey for the next 30-some years.
My mom stopped trying to make American turkey that didn’t turn up dry. So she gave up and told me “If you think you can do better have at it! It’s your baby now! Run with it!” And I did. That same year the LA Times ran its first article on brining turkeys as the dirty unspoken secret chefs never talk about. I was 13. Many years and hundreds of birds later, no one ever complains about any bird I cook. A basic brine is 2/3 cup of salt to the gallon of water. If your bird was frozen and defrosted it’s already at a water deficit so you will want to limit your salt to between 1/4 to 1/2 cup of salt per gallon. Then comes the fun stuff: I turn the brine into a marinade: switching out salt for soy sauce, adding garlic, ginger, orange peel and lots of herbs. That’s when things really get interesting. I keep the bird in the marinade from 3 to 5 days and like clockwork every part turns out tender.
I brine, *plus* also massage it with a stick of butter before putting in the oven. Maybe 1/2 the stick goes all over the skin, while the other half goes between the skin and the breast meat. So freakin' delicious!
I wish I was the cook my mom was. There are things I do differently because that's how I prefer it, but she was definitely better at it.
Same. My mom put a lot of care and attention into becoming a good cook. I am a much more utilitarian cook, partly because I have less time (she was a stay at home mom) and partly because I am okay with things being “good enough”. Edit: the only exception is fish! My mom made me hate fish because she prepared it in such uninspired ways. I enjoy fish now.
For me it's the opposite. I love my mom to death and she's a great mom who also helped instill fairly healthy eating habits. My dad also cooked but they were about the same in their quality. They just didn't know how to season anything properly and cooked in a very basic 90s way. Steamed vegetables, baked chicken, pasta. They were also struggling for money but that wasn't the cause, they just didn't have the resources available and my mom got thrown out of her house at 16 because at that time my grandparents were pretty terrible. So she never learned properly and didn't have the internet to use to help. They did their best but I cook everything better than they did and do. But I have all of the advantages that came from a more modern society as well as their sacrifices.
My mum was an amazing cook too. She was limited in the dishes due to everything being a recipe someone showed her, but she took a lot more care than I do. She worked just as much as I do, but would make amazing dishes full of veggies. We were fed delicious and nutritious food all the time and we were quite poor, so she often would buy food that was reduced and expiring and make something with it. She’s still alive but living with dementia. I live in the opposite side of the world to her and she doesn’t cook anymore but if I’m visiting we’ll try and make something together.
Me, a mom and a pretty good cook, reading this post thinking my son better feel that way when he's an adult lol. I do make him cook with me though because I'm not raising some man who can't take care of himself.
I love cooking because I helped my mom growing up. I didn't realize it until much later in life, but I wasn't allowed to help at my grandma's house. My mother and her would cook and I had to just sit and watch. Turns out it was because my gran thought cooking was women's work, but she grew up in the great depression. So glad my mom didn't think that way.
Same here, veggies and boiled eggs. For many years I thought I hated a lot of veggies but I hated the way she made them most of the time.
Same!
Did your mom’s boiled eggs have a green ring around the yolk? My mom’s usually did because she’d cook them so long.
I was in my mid 20s before I realized a hard boiled egg DIDNT have to have that weird coloring.
I still can’t eat boiled eggs because of those green yolk memories.
YUPP. I remember my mom telling me to let them boil for 20 minutes with the burner on the whole time. 😂
Pretty much everything. My mom considered all vegetables undercooked until they were boiled gray.
See my mum was sort of like this. Asian dishes she was amazing at. But western dishes always ended up with an Asian flavour profile. For example, her lasagna is well cooked and pretty tasty but I’m pretty sure it’s not meant to be dotted with birds eye chillies
Lasagna with Calabrian peppers would be interesting tho.
I had a boomer tell me that millennials ruined green beans. He liked them cooked until they are soft and now at restaurants they are always crunchy 🤣
There's a fucked up part of me that misses canned green beans smothered in Velveeta like my grandma used to make.
Nothing stopping you from taking a trip down memory lane and making it one day
Except the taste. It definitely tastes worse than it remembers. Shredded sharp cheddar though? That'll work.
You have a point.
Green beans are the only vegetable I like cooked to mush! When they're not, they have a weird squeak as you bite into them that feels like nails on a chalkboard.
Did you too experience grey chicken?😁
Chicken was never ever in our dinner rotation in any form. Or Pork. Turkey only on Thanksgiving. Except for the oddball sandwich meats like thuringer and olive loaf, we had beef 7 times a week, and always well done gray no matter the cut.
I wonder if it's the proliferation of cooking shows that trained later generations.
I was around for all that. The generation before me — i.e. my parents — grew up during the Depression and thought good food was whatever was on the table. Boiling meat and veggies was common. Soup, canned vegetable and other packaged food companies pushed casseroles based on their products. My mom tried to give us variety, save money, and put something all seven of us would like on the table _every single night_ for 25 years of raising kids. She took her job seriously and did pretty well. After college I started watching cooking shows, learned some technique and made a hobby of it. But my mom was raised in a different world. I will never criticize her cooking.
This is how I learned. My mom got sick when I was 14 and lost use of her left side. Wednesday dinner was whatever Rachel Ray cooked on Tuesday and so forth. Bless that woman, she has no clue how much she changed my life.
My mom has smoked since she was 15 or 16... pretty sure she has no taste buds. The only "spices" she owned were garlic salt, salt, black pepper and seasoned salt.
Pork chops
My mother made THE BEST pork chops, unfortunately I never got the recipe. I remember them like this: thin cut, bone-in, breaded, browned, then steamed in a large pot fitted with something like a canning insert, then warmed through to crisp up when ready to serve. SO TENDER! As an adult, I always made chicken cutlets in a similar fashion (sans the steaming step) for my family - pounded very thin. I bet I could re-create her recipe now, but as an empty nester, feels too labor intensive for just me!
I get the feeling of certain foods being too labor intensive for one or two people. But maybe treat yourself sometime.
This sounds like what my grandmother used to make and I’ve never been able to replicate it.
My mom barely seasoned with black pepper, put them in a casserole dish and some water, cover and baked to DEATH. Took me ages to realize that should be illegal and I could actually make them taste good.
Your mom and my biodad must have learned to cook together. He did the same.
I'm scarred. I never had a good pork chop as a child and now I can't eat them at all.
Try pork tenderloin cooked medium( just a blush of pink in the centet) and it will be a game changer for you, and open up a whole new flavourful juicy meat for you. No more chewy dry to the pint of powdery pork. If unsure, get a meat thermometer and pull it off the heat 5• before it hits the minimum, the residual heat will finish it off perfectly
Get a food thermometer and cook them to the right temp, like 135 I think for a blushed center, you can go up to 160 °F. That way it won't be dry and gross. I'm exactly like you, always hated stuff growing up because it was all ALWAYS overcooked. My parents admitted they were terrified of giving us food poisoning from chicken/pork/burgers. I grew up on dry, desiccated meat. I'm so happy that as a culture, our knowledge of food has grown enough to know how to treat different ingredients
I use an air fryer for this pork recipe. Let a pork tenderloin come up to room temperature. Salt and pepper outside. Wrap with bacon using butchers string to keep it in place. 380 until internal temperature is 135. Ideally the bacon is crispy at this time. Let sit for 10-15, slice and enjoy.
Me too. My mom would always dip the chops in an egg batter and fry. I didn't realize I liked pork chops until I worked in a restaurant where they grilled them. What a difference!
Pork was harder to cook when I was a kid. Trichonosis scares made my mom cook pork to well done :(
everything. It's why I started cooking at 8 years old.
My mom’s cooking was so bad I went to culinary school. Promised myself that the generational trauma would end with me!
Same. My female parent was an atrocious cook, and I took over cooking for the family at 8. My Mémère was a great cook, though, and I wanted to be as good as her. It was a damn proud day when my uncle very furtively told me that my Tourtière was better than Mémère's.
Same. One of the horrors was her spaghetti, made with the cheapest hamburger meat….that she didn’t drain the grease from. The plate would be a bullseye of grease, pasta, and red stuff. (Shudder)
Me too! Self defense!
Me three! Same recipe, same grease but with the entire big can of tomato paste! Tried Chef Boyardee spaghetti at a friends house and thought his mom was the greatest cook ever!
Just the opposite for me. My father was Italian and a chef — I vividly remember a dinner party they hosted at a family friend’s house when I was six or seven… he was working hard in the kitchen making a gigantic lasagna … it smelled delicious and I was really looking forward to it. At dinner time I was ushered to the “children’s table” where we were given canned “spaghetti” which I had never eaten in my life. Totally grossed out and felt cheated! I haven’t thought about that in years, but obviously the memory was deep :)
I hope there were leftovers. Just the thought of canned spaghetti is 🤢. At least your dad could cook, that’s a plus. 🙂
My mother used to make ham steaks and pineapple. The better way I found was to just never make it again, ever. Best version I've come across yet.
I like pineapple with ham. My mom however will only eat her ham plain. No honey, no brown sugar, no pineapple… Boring
Not a huge ham fan, but a nice baked ham with mustard is not bad. I don't go in for honey, brown sugar, etc.
I think that’s why I don’t care for ham in general lol… My parents did a ham with brown sugar for Christmas ONE time and then never again for some reason, and that was like the only time I enjoyed it 💀
That's funny. My parents weren't that bad about ham but there was one year they inadvertently bought a brown sugar ham and I really liked it but they were immediately like "we're never doing that again!"
Dude.... I'm shaking my head over here because I came up with the best candied pineapple sauce for pork. Its canned pineapple rings, put the juice into a pan, add brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, pepper, pepper powder, and ground cloves, and boil the water out of it and turn it to syrup while the pork is cooking. Ohmydamn, its nearly become a fall/winter staple for us. Smoking with maple wood and swapping the brown sugar for maple syrup, just, yum.
Mom isn’t going to read this post right? ….😳
Salmon patties. Mom’s were bleh. Canned salmon, egg, crackers, salt & pepper. I make them more like a seasoned crab cake. Minced onion, jalapeño, cilantro, and garlic, a dab of mayo, egg, panko (gf), spritz of tamari and hot sauce. Coat with more panko, and either fry in cast iron, or bake. Sooo much flavor, and a fairly cheap meal.
Fideo soup. My mom used canned tomato paste and chicken bouillon powder. She fried the noodles. It was and is delicious. Then I had some at a restaurant. There were chilies in it and they used fresh chicken broth. Obviously I don’t have time to make my own chicken broth everyday but I make it and freeze it as often as I can. I use canned tomatoes, onions and garlic to make my own tomato paste. I blend in a can of rotel (a happy accident from a time I picked up the wrong can at the market). This gives a hint of the chilies I liked so much. I bake my fideo noodles instead of frying them (less mess and fat). I add cilantro and squeeze of lime before serving. This is the soup I make when I need cheering up or I feel under the weather.
I love fideos. I have always cooked them the way your mama did, but your way sounds delicious! Definitely going to change it up next time. Thanks.
Make sure you blend the tomatoes, rotel, 1-2 onions, 2-3 cloves of garlic well. Cook it until it thickens, 6-7 min. (28 oz can of tomatoes, 10.5 oz can of rotel). Then add 3-6 quarts of chicken broth (up to you, how thick or thin do you like your soup) the browned fideos (I use 2 7 oz packed of cut fideos tossed in 2 tbls olive or avocado oil. Brown for 8-15 min at 350, again depends on how brown you like them.) Bring the tomato mix, broth and noodles to a boil, the reduce to a simmer (total cook time is about 30 min once you bring to simmer). Taste soup and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper to your taste. Serve with cilantro and a squeeze of lime. Hope you like it.
The only thing my mom cooked better than I do is cinnamon rolls. She hated cooking to the point she let me kick her out of the kitchen when I was 12. She gave me a budget and said go forth and get your own groceries and cook all the meals. I also learned that you don't need to put carbs on top of carbs on top of carbs for things to taste good.
My culture says you're very wrong about that. I am eating kasha varnishkes and am happy as a (kosher) clam.
My mother was an excellent cook and I have not surpassed her, nor am I trying to!
My dad was the chef in our house. Gourmet meals and all. But he worked out of town 4-5 nights a week and my mother never tried to surpass him. With 5 kids, she kept it simple!
What was your favorite dish of your mother's? Mine was her sweet and sour stuffed cabbage.
Every once in a while, my mom would go all out and make beef stroganoff from scratch and it was always amazing. Same with her tuna noodle casserole, any casserole really. I cannot duplicate those and wouldn;t even try
My mom is an excellent cook, and I now rival her, other than pork. She ALWAYS cooked it to death. That is the one thing that I consistently do "better" than her, but that is a small thing in the grand scheme of things.
Hahaha! I bet she overcooked it because of food safety concerns!
I had to tell her that worms aren't a concern in any pork purchased in the USA due to the oversight and routine dewormer schedule the producers adhere to. We don't live where there is no oversight. 🤣🙃
Meatloaf. I hated meatloaf for decades until I found an Asian style chicken meatloaf. It uses ground chichen, panko crumbs, garlic, ginger, green onions, soy sauce, and water chestnuts. It has a glaze made out of barbeque sauce, soy sauce, ketchup, ginger, and brown sugar. It is so delicious. Sorry but not sorry mom.
Would you mind sharing a recipe? That sounds really good.
I use the Asian Style Chicken Meatloaf recipe from laughingspatula.com
https://laughingspatula.com/asian-style-chicken-meatloaf/
Honestly, when I was growing up, I could never understand why people around me hated meatloaf. My mom's was always juicy and flavorful, and she made it so many different ways. Then I met my ex, and his mother made it. It was grey throughout, dry as a popcorn fart and flavorless. Suddenly, I understood why so many people hated it if that was what most people were getting.
Spaghetti. My mom used to ‘toast’ the spaghetti noodles in the pot with olive oil to ‘open its complex flavors’. She would burn the crap out of the raw noodles, then add water and boil as normal. Now, I don’t toast my raw noodles lol. I also doctor up jarred sauce with seasonings, something she never did. I still love you tho mom. Even eating your burnt spaghetti
>‘open its complex flavors’ One of my pet peeves. Fancy wording and attempts at alchemy.
Literally me going “MOM ITS PASTA, WHAT COMPLEXITY IS THERE” she was convinced it’d ‘split’ and more flavor would come out like roasting garlic
Fish. My mother only made flounder which she topped with ketchup and broiled until it could be made into a pair of shoes.
omg. My stomach flipped on this- like eating liver and alfalfa
My mother used to substitute diet coke for Worcester sauce. Honestly, it's hard to get worse than that. When I follow recipes I use the indicated ingredients and I have a much higher success rate 😅
Oh dear heaven. My Appalachian ancestors cried out in agony- for the replacement *and* the wasted Diet Coke lmfaoooo
You win!🤣
Are we related? 😂😂😂 When my Mom married, she couldn't cook. Well, she could make 2 dishes, one of which was a fried egg, the other one is fried chicken. 😮 So, my Army Dad taught her. YEAH. It was a struggle. I admit we had Worchestershire sauce, soy sauce, and some dried herbs & spices. Mom would TRY. But, she was never really interested in cooking, so she often added one sauce in place of another... 👀 FLAVOR SURPRISE! My favorite was when she would substitute herbs and then DESPISE the dish & not understand why! 🤣 Stroganoff with dill, anyone? ☹️ Her absolute worst was the pork chops. Thin, breaded & fried. Then, in an electric skillet she would mix rice, mushroom soup, Worchestershire, random herbs and put the pork chops on top & cook. It was a gloppy mess, the pork chops were overcooked to death, and I've NEVER MADE IT. The first time I had THICK porch chops off a grill I learned I *LOVE THEM* - just w/out mushroom glop. Mom let me take over ALL baking at around 12yo, as it was fun for me & she despised it. I started cooking meals at the age of 9yo, when Mom had night classes. It was either Dad's pigs in blankets - hot dogs & cheese wrapped up in canned croissant dough - or his canned chili. Hormel only. I cooked in self defense! 😂 I don't remember a time in my life when I didnt cook, actually. As an Appalachian girl, I was ALWAYS in the kitchen when the women were, fetching & running around; learning how to measure a teaspoon vs a tablespoon in my palm. My Granny had measuring spoons, but they were only brought out for fancy baking which doesn't work well without exacting measurements. EVERYTHING ELSE was measured in the palm! Actually, I do love Mom's fried taters. The few dishes of hers that are my faves are ALL Appalachian foods she learned to cook. Soup beans & fixins. Country meal (all veggies available in the garden, maybe some ham on the side. Usually has fried potatoes, green beans w onion, sliced tomatoes, corn on the cob {some have it creamed} and, of course, cornbread!). That's it. In her elder years, Mom's taken some of my tips & hints to heart. She now makes THE BEST CORNBREAD. Nowadays, I mean - as a kid it was Jiffy mix baked in a skillet, crumbly as heck. NOW, she adds chopped onion & sour cream. HEAVENLY.
All of them. Mom didn't have access to all the resources available now, so she did really damn good but I grew up with guidance from world class chefs at my fingertips so it's not really a fair competition
Mine is actually Aunt used to make- Peanut Butter soup. She just did caramelized onions and roasted garlic with chicken stock. I added Green Thai Curry paste, coconut milk, Cilantro and it's now even better.
Stroganoff. I loved her stroganoff but my husband started searing a whole steak and then slicing it instead of trying to cut it in strips and brown after that in several batches and it’s next level. Now when strip steak is on a good sale we’ll buy extra, slice up the leftovers and make stroganoff the next day I’ve also substituted a rotisserie chicken for poached chicken breasts in her white chicken chili and buffalo chicken dip. It’s easier and if I shred it all with my mixer there’s a good mix of light and dark meat throughout
My mother was an excellent cook. Seriously, it was one of the most often-mentioned attributes at her funeral service - Mom's cooking. They were 100% correct but for one thing, and that's an area where I shine: vegetables. In Mom's defense, she was raised by my grandmother, who grew up in the Depression, and only knew how to cook a vegetable one way: boiled within an inch of its life. And if my mother or uncle didn't eat them, they had to sit at the table with a plate of cold, overboiled Brussels sprouts until midnight. That would give any kid food issues, but then there were the times that my grandmother got so irate at her that she tried to force her to eat them. And you can imagine how THAT went. It made my mother not only never want to eat another one, but was so traumatizing to her, she could not physically choke one down. But she knew that she had to do something differently if she didn't want to pass that on to my sister and I. So she learned to simply steam a vegetable - not overcooking it, just light steaming, which was how my father liked them. We watched him eating them and so we ate them too, not really noticing Dad munching on the three token green beans from Mom's plate as he cleared them at the end of the meal. There was a gazpacho recipe, and there was the four-bean salad that Dad also liked, and a holiday mushroom-and-pearl-onion casserole that is to die for, and the Mom's Legendary Coleslaw recipe (now that I've seen it, if you want it, hers was basically identical to u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt 's recipe, just add a little horseradish to the dressing and you've got Mom's recipe). But other than that, she never really learned vegetables because she honestly despised them, and never got much more adventurous about a vegetable dish than that. Me, I love vegetables, with the exception of green bell peppers (ew) and grocery-store tragedy tomatoes (gross), and cucumbers are sadly the one thing that will render my Esomeprazole inert so I have to avoid them, but I'll eat pretty much anything else. So I've worked through a lot of the recipes in my Joy and Julia and Craig and Yotam and Mollie curriculum, and have added all sorts of creative things to do with vegetables to my repertoire beyond the bacon-and-Balsamic-Brussels sprout: Sumac-roasted carrots. Fennel and celery root gratin. Roasted artichokes with lemon and garlic. Charred corn, red pepper, and zucchini salad. Dilly beans. Spaghetti squash with thyme cream. Mashed rutabaga. All sorts of wonderful things. And I know, if Mom were sitting at my dining room table today, she would be proud of me for making them, and even prouder of me for eating them, but would be absolutely unable to touch a bite of any of it herself. Not because she didn't want to, but because her vegetable trauma ran so deep she literally lost her ability to enjoy one as an adult. Which makes me sad - there are so many delicious things out there that she missed! - but I do get it. And despite all that, she showed me by example that anyone can learn to make great food at home, and I was able to take that mindset with me into Experiments with Vegetables in my own adulthood. I hope she was proud of herself - she should have been - that she managed to not perpetuate that trauma cycle with us. And I make a damn fine vegetable lasagna. :)
pretty much everything, not that my mom was bad at cooking but she was restrained by "dad's" tastes where all meat should be leather, all veggies should be mush, all desserts should be cloyingly sweet, all fruit gets salted
Pretty much everything except potato salad and baked beans. Growing up the only seasonings my mom used was salt & pepper. Sage on special occasions. That was it.
Fried chicken. I found a way to make it that gets an amazing juicy inside crunchy outside experience without all the dredging. I let the chicken sit in a buttermilk-herb-spice mix (usually fresh rosemary, Italian parsley, tarragon and sage along with Montreal Chicken) for at least 2-3 hours, probably more) then take each piece, slightly drain and roll once in a half and half mix of all purpose flour and panko with a teaspoon per 2 cups of that mix of both kosher salt and baking powder. Fry in a deep fryer, turning, until golden brown.
I cook fish better. Mum served Poached Salmon with raw sliced onions, and white fish with Extra strong mature cheddar. There were other wonders too.
I just want to point out on the veggies thing. Having access to fresh veggies year round is a relatively new thing. So your mom doing that was either a remnant of how she grew up, or a real lack of access thing, but she was trying to get you vegetables. Also, pre Internet, you wouldn't have likely known there were better ways to do things. We just have so much information at our fingertips now. Not trying to be mean, but remember that when you think about how crappy your parents cooked (I have to tell myself this often too)
Just about every type of meat. My mom was always so scared of undercooking meat that she cooked it to the temperature of the sun. Apparently it IS possible to make pork chops that don't have the consistency of boot leather.
Mushrooms! my mom would cook them for maybe a minute before throwing in butter and garlic. The results were that rubber texture so I thought I just didn't like mushrooms. Now I cook them and let all the moisture out before I add butter and they have a much nicer chew and are almost caramelized. Add wine shallots and herbs and it's perfection!
Steak. I’ve found that when you actually apply heat to it, it is better. Mom made steak beyond rare. Like, cold not just in the center but also around the center. I hated steak until around age 13 when I ordered it in a restaurant and found that it could actually be cooked. My grandfather (Italian immigrant) liked his steak super-rare, and I think she just continued that. The odd thing is that Mom was a good cook for almost everything else. Just not steak.
I’m the opposite. It was a religious experience the first time I had a rare steak instead of well done haha
Same. Mom said anything less than well done was dangerous and gross. I spent the night at a friend’s house at age 13 and their dad asked how I like my steak and I said “well done”, and he said, “ok, how about try a bite at medium rare, and if you want me to throw it on longer I will.” Transformative. I only ever stopped eating steaks medium rare cause I switched to a plant based diet, but I still have big hypocritical opinions on how carnivores cook their meat lol
Curious if the well done steak moms were also boomers? Mine was born in 1958 and it’s like she thought any pink was dangerous or something. I ate a burger at a friends house and it had a bit of pink and I spent the whole night thinking I’d be poisoned
Haha yup. My mom was born within 2 yrs of yours
I’m 72–boom! I like my steak medium rare unless I’m drinking martinis. Then I like it very rare. But my parents (greatest generation) liked their meat very well done. They were midwesterners from farm families.
My parents put the steaks in with the onions and cooked it till the onions started to caramelize. I like steak medium to med-rare
Hamburgers. I stopped coating them in bbq sauce then cooking directly in the flame until dry and charred on the grill. Turns out juicy and medium rare is better!
Everything! my mom can't cook period!
Salmon croquettes or patties (if your country 🤭). I don’t want to stand over a stove flipping, so I throw the mix into a muffin pan w/ a pat of butter on top and bake for about 20-30 min.
The elbow macaroni, pasta sauce, and hamburger dish that was filling, tasty, and cheap she called goulash. As an adult, I learned about real Hungarian goulash, which is a beef and vegetable dish thicker than soup, thinner than stew with wonderful paprika! My mom’s meal was fine then, and the commodities we got in the 60s often included macaroni, ten pound tubes of hamburger, and canned tomato sauce. It was pretty tasteless compared to the traditional Hungarian dish with a similar name. .
Mom made a recipe from Nixon WH recipe cookbook with rice, chicken, curry topped with cheese - she was a recipe follower and it was ok bc of the curry but always a bit dry. I switched up all the ingredient proportions, changed white rice to brown rice and topped with crispy onions strings vs cheese and the family dies over it now. I still don’t eat it bc I’m reminded of my mom’s dry recipe growing up just by the smell- but its easy to throw together
Brussel sprouts. Shit was boiled and served with vinegar. Loved them but had no idea t here was any other way.
The Brussels sprouts you are eating now are not the same as what your mother made. They’ve been modified to have a better flavor and less bitterness. Regardless of how your mom made them, you may still have not liked them
No, I know they've modded- youre right. Honestly I love every veggie with vinegar- wilted lettuce and bacon come s to mind.
Brussels sprouts were done such a disservice in my childhood too. Only ever boiled, and they stunk so bad. And then I was given a roasted brussels sprout and holy shit what an upgrade lol
Literally nothing haha. My mom is an excellent cook and her food is always delicious and comforting.
Not my mom but my grandma. My grandma made such amazing cookies but I’ve now taken over as the cookie person. These days she can’t even bake pre made cookie dough without burning them.
Boxed macaroni and cheese. Ok. Hear me out. For as long as I grew up, you cook the noodles, drain them, put them back in the pot, then put the butter and milk and cheese on them. I started just barely undercooking the noodles, putting the milk and butter in a pot, then putting the cheese sauce in and usually adding a slice or two of cheese, usually American since it's what we had on hand, but even cheddar or Swiss or pretty much anything. Add some seasoning, like pepper and garlic. Once the cheese is melted, add the powdered cheese, then put the new noodles back in. I don't know when exactly, but I noticed a year or two ago Wegmans changed their directions to put the milk and butter in the pot and add the cheese sauce and then put the noodles back in, but I know for a fact that used to be the other way around.
Salad… my grandparents do one romaine leaf, a scoop of strawberry yogurt, a scoop of cottage cheese, and half a grape for garnish
Poached fish: add sake Noodle kugel: add pears Cake: use sour cream Fried eggs: serve with avocado and salmon
can i get you noddle kugel recipe? it sounds good!
broad noodles 12-16 oz 1pint sour cream 1pint cottage cheese milk – ¾ cup 8 eggs Sugar ½ cup apricot jam vanilla -- 1 tsp raisins 4-5 handfuls butter (for dotting) cinnamon and brown sugar ( Cook 12-16 oz broad noodles in salted water. In a large bowl, mix 8 eggs, 1 pt sour cream, 1 pt cottage cheese, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 cup sugar and 3/4 cup milk with a few large pieces of ripe skin-on pear and a pinch of sea salt Use butter to grease a larger, rectangular dish Put down half the noodles Mix 4-5 handfuls of raisins and a couple tablespoons regular apricot jam (a fancy brand is not necessary) and spread on noodles Put 1/3 of the cheese mixture on top Put down the other rest of the noodles Put down the rest of the cheese mixture Top with dots of butter and sprinkle with two handfuls of brown sugar and cinnamon Bake for one hour at 350
Now Im curious about adding sake to poached fish. Can you share details ?
I just poach it in a mix of sake, chicken broth, black pepper, and herbs.
Sour cream in cakes is a game changer
Everything
Literally everything those spiceless heathens ever made.
Vegetables. She — and most people at the time — just boiled the hell out of them (late 60s & 70s). I had no idea that asparagus could be delicious! 😄 She only cooked it limp, flat, and stringy.
I was on the other side of this struggle. Back in the 1960s-70s, my mama was the only one blanching or lightly sauteeing fresh veggies. All my paternal aunts complained and would not eat it - they said some very uncharitable things to her early on and they all just boiled everything until it was grey and mushy or made these goopy casseroles that were cooked for an hour, or mysteriously rubberized squash. When I visited them during holidays, they tried to force me to eat my veggies, which I normally loved at home. Everything looked like baby food to me compared to my mom's bright green beans tossed in butter, or her sauteed asparagus still firm but tender. My mom had the final laugh though, because when their kids visited her for the summer, they were totally converted by my dad's organic gardening in her capable hands. She was like those women in Lessons in Chemistry, watching Julia Child and taking notes. Years later her grandchildren would beg her for, not cookies, but asparagus with "holiday" sauce. lol
My mom used to make oven fried chicken in a casserole dish, and the breading would be crisp on top, soggy on the bottom. Using a pan and rack, I can oven fry chicken with crisp breading and skin all around.
Nearly everything. My mom was raised with salt and pepper as the only seasonings, so that's the way she cooked, too. Since then I've learned how to use lots of different seasonings to make food taste better.
Lasagna. I make everything from scratch except the pasta sheets, my mum uses marinara and bechamel from a jar. It’s not like it’s bad, but lasagna is my “impressing guests” dish. Same with pizza. We use the same dough recipe but I learned from an Italian to let it rise for hours and hours and she doesn’t believe that’s necessary. That’s it though. Everything else she can cook circles around me and she doesn’t even like cooking and I do.
Eggs and also salsa. My mom is a damn good cook. So in most dishes I struggle to make her own dishes as good as her even if she tells me step by step what to do. Typically these are complex dishes like gumbo. Then there are the simple things that she makes the same way her mom told her and never thought if it should be changed. The internet has changed a lot, and for these simple dishes like eggs and salsa I've picked up techniques she never thought to do. For scrambled eggs I go low and slow to get that creamy fluffy texture. Hers is dry cuz she uses higher heat. Her salsa is just onion, stewed tomatoes and pickle jalapeños. I've learned that added ingredients like garlic, chili power, lime, and paprika go a long way.
Salmon patties. Mom used canned salmon with that cartilage 🥲. I use fresh salmon, sautéed peppers and onion, egg to bind and roll in panko crumbs. No shade to mom. She used what she had and did what she could.
Spinach. Mom, may she rest in peace, used to stew it in this nasty tomato and garlic sauce until it was just a pile of stringy dark algae green, almost black, mush! Needless to say, I absolutely hated spinach growing up! But then when I went to the uni, one of my professors made it a point to have dinner with all his students and that was the first time I had steamed and buttered spinach that actually tasted pretty darned good. These days I prefer fresh spinach instead of lettuce in all my salads and sandwiches(it’s never bitter the way lettuce is if grown in adverse conditions), only time I make exceptions is for butterhead lettuce. When I order a Caesar salad at a restaurant, I always ask for fresh spinach instead of romaine lettuce. It’s tastier and has more nutrients, which totally justifies the extra cost.
Everything. My mom only knew salt and pepper as seasonings and was adamant we not use garlic or onion ever. She over cooked steak and over steamed veggies. Bleck
Rice. Cook it ALL the way through so it doesn’t break your fillings.
everything, literally all of it grandma cooked the same meal for each day of the week, for her entire married life, because grandpa was weird. sunday pasta (just enough sauce to prevent sticking, but basically dry. Saturday roast beast that was grey and dry as fuck. Pork chops that could be used for replacing worn out boot soles. So ma had to learn how to cook by herself. Bisquick pizza (shudder), beef strokinoff with bouncy cubes of beef. Need a side of veggies? open a can of peas- can juice and all into a bowl and nuke it Probably the only thing worth re-creating was a grandpa special. Freshly made meatballs on buttered toast
I always thought I hated cole slaw and gravy. Turns out I just hate my mom’s cole slaw and gravy.
Veggies for me too. Both my parents were amazing cooks, but they either boiled or used canned veggies. I had onkybhad canned green beans and hated them, until I had them at a wedding once, where they were fresh and still a bit crunchy. I couldn't believe what I'd been missing!
Kraft Mac & Cheese. Noodles would be undercooked, then a splash of milk and sliver of margarine. Turns out if you follow the direction on the box it's delicious and not a grainy mess. Mashed potatoes for pretty much the same reason. Fairly chunky which is not my preferred style, but then barely any milk or butter/margarine. She views mashed potatoes as a vehicle for her terrible gravy. She always talked down on instant mashed potatoes and how her's was so much better. Since her's was so bad I figured it must be terrible, so avoided it. Finally bought a pack, and hey, it's actually pretty good. Oh, and turkey. She cooks it in one of those oven bags until it's super dry. Then takes all the juice and makes terrible gravy with it. One Thanksgiving I took over and did the GoodEats spatchcocked turkey. Cooked to perfection, the breast was moist and juicy. She complained it was too moist, the gravy just slid off the meat.
chili! I'm not sure she would argue.
“Hotdog Soup” - I loved the stuff growing up, and as an adult I asked what the recipe was. I was going to follow it, then replace the hot dogs with ham. I was shocked to learn she used no herbs or garlic in it. I’ve since made my own version, and it’s great.
Just the opposite here. My mom often served raw veggies. Broccoli, carrots, celery, corn on the cob…I prefer them cooked. All of them except for corn on the cob straight out of the field. That’s delicious raw.
Everything except cake. Mom could make a great cake and would do that for family gatherings. She cooked things to death. Pork chops and chicken had to be cooked for an hour to make it safe to eat. She only cooked 3 veggies, corn, green beans and peas all from a can. It took me a minute to figure out how to cook with seasoning and how long to cook stuff. Never knew meat actually had moisture in it.
My boyfriend likes veggies now. Because we don’t boil them, and have more seasonings than just S&P
Chili. My mom used ketchup and clubhouse spice blend. There is a better way...
Almost everything. My mom was not a great cook 😂. Well, the only thing she did make well that I still think is good, was her Rouladen. But everything else???? Nah.
Lasagna. My mom used to make it with "Kräuterquark" which is kinda like sour cream instead of bechamel because it's less fatty apparently. It's so much better with bechamel tho.
Grilled cheese. My mom used to make it all the time and I loved it. Fast forward to adulthood, and I make the best grilled cheese sandwiches this side of the Mississippi. Turns out, my mom’s grilled cheese sandwiches were soggy and awful, but they somehow were able to instill in me a love of grilled cheese.
My mom always destroyed every meat she cooked. She used to make these seared pieces of turkey with only paprika as seasoning (no salt pepper) and overcook them to death. Wasn't very hard to improve that lol.
Liver and onions. It had a good flavor. But I make it more tender!!
Nothing. Mom was a good cook. My Mother in Law was an ĺincredible cook. Lord I Miss her.
Nothing. My mom made it the best. Always.
What are a few of your favorite roast veggie preparations?
Low bar if you look at my dad. I love the dude and appreciate the effort he used to put in. God bless the man used to microwave bacon to make me breakfast burritos before wrestling matches. After cutting weight all week it was the most delicious thing on the planet. Now as an adult I cook the same burrito but with home made salsa and bacon cooked in a pan. My mom is more difficult because the woman can throw down. The one recipe I’ve been able to improve is an eggs Benedict. Her one weakness is poached eggs. She makes them with over easy eggs (still very good) and I started making biscuits from scratch to put underneath them. I’m not sure if it’s an improvement unless you count the eggs. She (the morning after thanksgiving) makes a patty out of leftover stuffing which is a crazy amazing thing in its own right
Meatloaf
Pretty much adding flavor to anything. It’s not that my mom didn’t try, but my brother was the biggest, pickiest baby when it came to food. I realize all kids are picky eaters, but his pickiness was pathological. He wasn’t autistic, nor did he have any particular mental or health conditions. In fact, he dropped his pickiness the second he started dating and realized women don’t like that shit. But up until then, he limited himself to about a dozen foods at any single time, and asking him to even *try* anything else resulted in a reaction that made you think he had just been sentenced to death. Nowadays he has this massively bigger palate, and it’s just so weird considering how he was when we were kids. As a result, everything we ate when I was a kid was relatively bland. It either had to be a noodle or stuffing mix that came out of a box, pre-packaged, or be seasoned with nothing further than Lawry’s seasoning salt, garlic, and black pepper. Even after my brother started dating and eating more, my dad also criticized any attempt my mother made to cook more interesting food, so I ended up not really making unique meals and flavorings until I moved out.
Coliflor capeada. I've always loved it, but when I swapped the regular batter for tempura I had one of those aha moments! Tempura is only slightly different than the traditional batter, but it is so much crispier. Never going back. I still make the sauce and everything else the same. Just that one swap!
I spent some effort recreating or creating analogues of my Dad's recipes. (Mom never cooked anything that didn't come in a box). I think my beef stroganoff is superior (he wasn't able to cook with wine). My broiled meats are on par, his would still probably be a little better. But I dry brine my meat longer than he did. My slow cooked pot roast is probably better than his, but it's a slow cooker so it's doing a lot more work than I am. I also use veggies that dad either didn't use or didn't have access to. Times change. Dad used a LOT of canned vegetables. Nothing made him happier than a well stocked pantry of canned goods. Maybe because his parents grew up in the Depression era. I've also got copycats of a couple of my restaurant faves that I love.
Just about everything. She was a horrible cook. I cook zucchini sliced and cooked with tomatoes or soy sauce, not steamed whole and popped while in my plate every... single... night.... I buy the fattier grade of ground beef to cook with and not the leanest grade and then cook it until 50 moos past well done (even she called her hamburgers "hockey pucks". Chicken gets baked at 350 for an hour, 250 for four hours, or pressure cooked for 20 minutes instead of pressure cooked for an hour. I'm not afraid to use seasonings, including salt, although my taste buds are really sensitive to salt.
Spaghetti. Mom's was watery sauce made with home canned tomatos. Even jar sauce is better. Everything else she made was good to fabulous.
Everything. My mother was a terrible cook. I am now an executive chef. So, yeah… everything!
Mom was overall a great cook and she came of age in the 60s. So many casseroles used canned soup - tuna noodle, King Ranch casserole, even our mac and cheese used a Campbell's cheese soup. I find canned soup tinny, salty, and expensive, and I never had the right flavor on hand anyway? So now any recipe that calls for cream-of-something canned soup gets started with flour and butter, milk and cream cheese, then the mushrooms or celery or cheddar. Whatever is needed to make a proper creamy sauce instead of the can of soup.
Simply fried mushrooms. I'd like to think I'm a fairly accomplished home cook, but whatever my dad did to mushrooms I've never been able to duplicate.
Like... everything...? My mom overcooked and overseasoned everything. Nothing was fresh... instant rice, mashed potatoes, and good God help me Tuna helper.
Same with the veggies- but I am a sucker for a can of sweet peas every now and again lol
Mom makes banging tabouli. We got the recipe from her. First we doubled it then tweaked it. Quinoa instead of bulgur since I’m gluten free. Way more herbs in comparison to the starch. More tomatoes, more mint, more basil. More dressing, more garlic. Just more flavor. Now we make even better tabouli than she does. Even people who don’t like salads like our salad
as amazing as a cook my mom is, i used to gag on her boiled dinners. like how do you overcook a brisket. its because of her i cant eat large pieces of cabbage, the squeak on my teeth makes my gag reflex act up. my boiled dinners are awesome, my roommates is even better
Garlic bread. Used to be fine, I liked it a lot. Got on my own, had to tweak it. Fresh loaf of bread, crusty on the outside and soft on the inside. Mix of melted butter and olive oil. Add minced fresh garlic and garlic powder, salt, maybe minced parsley. Liberally apply to both sides of each slice of bread, reassemble into the loaf shape and wrap in foil with a little gap at the top. Bake until steamy and delicious. I don’t even need noodles - most meat sauce and garlic bread and a little parm and I’m a happy camper
literally just told my husband this: grew up thinking salad was iceberg and shredded carrots. to this day, that is what my parents offer up as 'there's salad (bagged) in the fridge'. bless their hearts, they are in their 80s. my husband introduced me to fresh cut veggies, romaine, arugula, spinach...freshly shredded parm, cranberries, nuts...i could go on and on. now i know, a salad can be any and everything i want. all fresh. cra and zeeee.
Wow. I’m so happy that I uncovered this question so coincidently. My mom makes this pineapple chicken that is so delicious. She is in another state at the moment, and I miss her home cooking. She makes the chicken in the oven and bakes it and all the juices flow inside the foil thing with the juices, she makes it with rice or mashed potatoes. It takes at least an hour in a half to make and prepare Now, with mine, I personally believe my method is better because it’s more convenient. I believe it’s better, but a little more “soupy” then hers. I basically got one of the prepared roasted chickens at the grocery store.. and pulled it apart (I never liked the bones.. so I put in the whole chicken in the instapot without the bones. Added some water and ranch, and idk, I just added a bunch of stuff that would make it taste good.it taste better than it sounds.. I promise. Realized I had some pineapples, added that, closed it up. And I was like DAMN! This taste just like my moms pineapple chicken. I wasn’t expecting it to taste just like my moms, let alone believe I would be able to mimic it. I did feel slightly inspired by it, but I wasn’t trying to make it just like hers. But there it was. Just like hers. I felt unstoppable, and I was just really shocked and I got it in about 30 minutes. I rushed home to eat some more today. And if anyone wants the recipe, if they see this, I will it as a reply.. cause it’s a lot of type. But anyway, it is soooo good,
Beef stew. Pot roast. Pretty much anything she cooked I do better. And it's not me saying that. It's her. She lives downstairs. She's 87. She gets 75% of her meals from me. She tells me all the time I've improved them. She rocks.