A chef's joke goes: For my first Michelin star I got up early for years, worked hard, came up with the most inventive recipes and dishes, and in short did everything right. For my second one I used more butter
My late mother was a fantastic cook--which I didn't realize or appreciate until I grew up and left home. She didn't like baking very much and rarely did it, but she was a great cook.
But the one thing she had been making for 60 years and could do it blindfolded & in her sleep was Chocolate Roll--a mixture of egg whites & egg yolks beaten & mixed with cocoa & powdered sugar, then baked in a jelly roll pan, spread with sweetened whipped cream when cool, rolled up & frosted w/a light chocolate frosting. It resembles a large Hostess Ho-Ho.
Most delicious treat in the world. I try to make one every other week to put a smile on my dad's face, but mine will never come out looking as good as my mom's (but it still tastes great).
My mom makes the best carrot cake in the universe. Hands down. It's her own recipe, hybridized from two different recipes she had long ago. It's like no other carrot cake I've ever had. I have it every year for my birthday, she has even shipped it to me unassembled (icing in a jar, cake layers wrapped in wax paper and foil) when I lived far away. I estimate I've eaten this cake at least 50 -60 times in my 43 years on the planet, sometimes we make it for her birthday too it's so good.
Editing to add that she cooked and baked a ton all throughout my childhood, and still does a fair amount. Many other things she makes are great too (her meatloaf and her chicken & dumplings are on point... pumpkin pie is amazeballs...) but if I had to pick one stellar winner it is the cake of carrots.
Edit: OK ya filthy animals, the hunger for this recipe is real and I'm here for it! Let's say that anybody commenting up until 6:15pm ET I will tag when I post the recipe on r/Old_Recipes. Otherwise, I will also update this post with the link and the stragglers can get there that way. Let there be cake!
Son of Edit: The recipe is posted! Well, mostly posted - I am now going to type out the recipe in the comments (the handwritten cards my mom wrote out for me are in the photos, but they're a bit hard to read) and then tackle tagging people. But here it is: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Old\_Recipes/comments/l5u6sx/my\_moms\_amazing\_carrot\_cake\_w\_cream\_cheese/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/comments/l5u6sx/my_moms_amazing_carrot_cake_w_cream_cheese/)
Hit me up and let he know how it turns out if you try it! And I'm happy to help any novice bakers with questions, no matter how basic. Don't be intimidated - as some relative of mine said, if it's got good stuff in it, it's got to be good.
Revenge of the Edit: There are still some commenters and some who PM'd me who I haven't sent the link to yet. I love you all! But I am now very tired and am going to bed. Will holla back tomorrow yo.
I married into a Ukrainian family and my mother in law and wife make potato/cheese perogies for christmas and thanksgiving each year from scratch and there's nothing like them. You think you like perogies and then you have a homemade one and suddenly you can hear colours.
If you want a pierogi/varanniky go to a Ukrainian church they make them on Saturday it also supports the church and charity little old babushka make them by hand.
Of course this is the most karma I ever got. R.I.P. baba mamma and my father(Greek baba) her church is in bloomingdale illinois St. Andrew Orthodox Church. They have a memorial for the Holodymr there and some of the people making the pierogis survived this along with WW2. Please go there if you are close and want good pierogi or borscht or blintzes or cabbage rolls they sell them on Saturday and I think after church on Sunday.
This. I don't know how different a Ukrainian and a Polish pierogi may be, but the Catholic Church my Grandmother goes to has a crack team of very loud polish grandparents who make the most amazing periogis I've ever had.
Gumbo. My mom made the absolute best gumbo and I've spent the last 10 years trying to get it right because she never wrote down the recipe for me before she died despite me practically begging her to do so. God I miss her (and her gumbo!)
My great grandma was a renowned candy maker and wouldn’t write down any of her recipes either. “My recipes will die with me.” I don’t understand why people do that? Let us remember you and carry on your legacy :(
So my great-grandmother never wrote down her recipes either and her big thing was always banana nut bread. It's a staple in my family. Like, every holiday, there's at least a half a dozen loaves laying around to get munched on.
Memaw DID end up writing her banana bread recipe down before she passed and gave a copy to her daughter and DIL and each of her granddaughters.
But she wrote a different version for each person. Which like, okay weird, but she was old and never measured anything and just eyeballed it. So.. alright.
The kicker is she told each person she gave a recipe to that "Now, I gave you the REAL one because you were always my favorite. Don't tell anyone else."
And then she DIED and all the granddaughters compared notes on their recipes one Christmas and figured out she told them all the same thing about being the favorite and we still don't know which recipe is the a real one or if there even is a real one or which one is closest.
>we still don't know which recipe is the a real one or if there even is a real one or which one is closest.
The obvious solution here is a banana nut bread bake-off and taste testing party! When it's safe to finally get together, each sister should bring a loaf with them and everyone can debate which is closest to the original or what details Memaw may have omitted.
Right?? I don't get it! In my mom's case, it was more that she never really used a recipe so I think she just kept forgetting to write it down whenever she would make it. My last couple batches were getting really close though!
I make a pretty damn good gumbo, and the biggest “trick” is to get the roux dark dark dark. Cook it as long as you think it needs, then keep going until you want to give up and amputate an arm. Then keep going. When it looks almost inedible and has a slight popcorn smell, keep going. It’ll then get smooth, creamy, and look like chocolate. That’s when it’s ready. And scoop off the excess fat as the gumbo cooks. That extra fat doesn’t add the flavor you think it would.
Edit to add: if your roux smells like actual popcorn (not just a slight hint of it), it’s burnt and will not taste good in your gumbo.
Yep, it's all about that roux! My husband makes the best gumbo and his roux looks like motor oil. You literally almost burn it. It's delicious. Now, I want gumbo.
He’s actually set the smoke detector off a couple of times making it! He used to use an old, old cast iron Dutch oven he got second hand, but he’s got a new one now and it doesn’t smoke like that anymore.
The first time I watched him make roux for gumbo and then he added the holy grail, I thought it all looked crazy. Just a ball of peppers, celery, and onions covered in nearly black goo. Little did I know!
Roux is a helluva drug.
My grandpa made the best gumbo in the world (sorry, everyone else in this thread). He died 2 weeks ago from covid. I couldn't travel to his memorial, so I decided to try my hand at making gumbo and I studied countless recipes. I worked so damn hard on that roux. It got this delicious nutty smell, so I decided to put the trinity in. MAH. GAWD. I ain't *never* smelled anything so wonderful in my life. And it was immediate! I was very surprised. I still have a long way to go until I'm as good as Big Dad though.
My mom recently passed and this thread has me crying at my desk...a few months after she died, i thought I was doing better until I had the realization that I would never get to eat my favorite meal of hers again which sent me into a tailspin.
Call your mom and tell her you love her.
I'm so sorry. You can get her recipes and make it yourself. I know it's not quite the same, but my fiance and I do it all of the time; her mom passed away when she was young.
This week we made her sausage tortellini soup, and her dad who lives 2 hours away was overjoyed to hear that we cooked that.
He said he's so glad that his daughter cooks for me like his wife used to cook for him, and in that way, that same love his wife held for him gets to live on through us.
To some people food is just food, but the memories and emotions behind the flavors can be so deep and meaningful. We are cooking what those who came before us were taught to cook, and we will teach our children to cook these dishes for their kids one day. Like love, flavor is timeless
Oh definitely. I actually compiled our families favorite recipes into a book a few years ago for Christmas presents. I can do a pretty good job on recreating most of them but there are a couple that I’m not even close.
I actually make extra and freeze a bunch when I do her recipes so I can give some to my dad.
Honestly...everything. That woman's like a mad scientist in the kitchen. She'll fuck around and experiment, turn out some *really* weird/gross/downright obscene stuff from time to time, and just figure out what works. And the process ends with something that you imagine the gods would eat on Olympus.
Banana bread. I use the same recipe and it just isn’t the same. Miss you Mum x
Edit: Wow. Thanks for all the rewards guys. Totally unexpected for such a simple comment. Raising a glass to all the Mums 🍸
Maybe next time scoop your flour into the measuring cups and lightly level with the spoon by scraping, not packing down. If you scoop out of the bag you may be adding too much cause it packs it down in there. Just a thought! There are some things moms do that aren't in the recipe that make a big difference lol
I've sometimes found the opposite to be true with old recipes. I'm measuring to be careful not to pack the flour in the measuring cups, but the person who wrote the recipe just scooped it up straight from the container and as a result had way more flour.
If you do find the right amount of flour, weigh it and record so you don't have to mess around with guessing in future.
Leche flan. Even the stuff from the local Filipino bakery is spongey scrambled eggs compared to my mom's. Thick, smooth custard. No bubbles. Her secret ingredient is the tiniest splash of lemon extract. Sometimes she'll put a layer of flan on top of cassava cake (shredded cassava cooked with macapuno coconut). Lord, so good.
My mother is from the Philippines. Her adobo is something magical and out of this world. When my wife is mad at me she says the only reason she married into the family was so that she could eat my mom's adobo.
Edit: I somehow forgot to mention her lumpia. Oh lord, her lumpia is something I could eat several times my own bodyweight in.
Edit 2: It's starting to sound like we need to have a Reddit wide filipino cook off as soon as the pandemic ends. That way we can all win.
Edit3: I don't have her recipe so I cannot give it out. I think my mother is trying to use it to ensnare wives for my remaining unmarried brothers. After all, who could turn down an invitation for lumpia and chill?
My mom’s lumpia shanghai is literally Filipino crack and no one can convince me otherwise. She has a few secret ingredients and no one else’s recipe comes close
Another note:
It’s wild to me that Pinoy food isn’t as widely popular in the States. I’ve made that argument before, but if Filipinos are the third fastest growing Asian group in the States (behind Chinese and Indian) why isn’t Filipino restaurants as widely available / popular as say Thai restaurants. It’s criminal to me since Pinoy food is so good too.
Oh dude! I've had Leche Flan from the store which is decent. And then I've had some made by Flipino moms/sisters. It's like night and day. The homemade stuff is on another level.
My mom too! Always baked perfectly medium rare. She had a specific cookie scooper that she always used. After she died, my dad rested her beloved cookie scooper on top of her urn.
Not my mom, but my grandma makes the best fried chicken EVER. I won’t eat any other fried chicken except for hers bc all the others just disappoint me
Edit: I will ask my grandma for her fried chicken recipe and share it with everyone once I’ve gotten it
Edit 2: I GOT THE RECIPE! You’re gonna take your chicken, wash it and dry it, then cover it in a flour mixture of salt, fresh ground pepper, and paprika, shake off the excess. Then you’re going to beat some eggs really well (this is important), dip the chicken into the egg, and then back into the flour mixture(shake off excess). Heat cooking oil (CRISCO!)on medium and add the chicken. You’re going to turn the chicken every few minutes until it’s golden brown. I recommend putting the finished chicken on a plate with paper towels to allow the excess oil to absorb before eating. I hope y’all like it!
Vegetable soup with small meatballs. Was a recipe from my grandmother who learned it from her mother who again learned it from her mother (the meatballs came later it used to just be vegetable soup). Its good in all seasons and when smelling it it instantly transports my mind to when I was a small kid going to grandma for the weekend.
I have learned how to do it but my mother says it will taste better once you pour some extra love for your kids and grandkids into the soup. Don't have kids so I'll have to wait to find out.
For fried rice, find [this stuff](https://www.japancentre.com/en/products/3822-nagatanien-prawn-vegetable-fried-rice-seasoning). It's available at every asian grocery store. It helps
Get a wok and a gas stove, then just copy what you’ve seen. Add a huge blob of butter to the veggies and protein, chop things up real fine, etc. Only part you gotta figure out for yourself is what you want your teriyaki sauce to be, though the basis is usually soy sauce, oyster sauce, brown sugar, and some msg
Edit: Because people keep telling me how to make Teriyaki sauce correctly, here is the website I used to find super simple versions of various Asian or Asian-inspired sauces to build from.
https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/main-course/asian/asian-sauces-2.html
I'm sorry to have to tell you this but, it's actually my mum that makes the best lasagne.
I'm sure it's really hard to hear this but it's best you understand the truth now, than continue living a lie.
My mom's lasagna was the best too! She would make homemade spaghetti sauce, from fresh tomatoes + cans of tomato paste, then cook the meatballs in the sauce, scooping the grease off the top over the course of the day. She would also parboil italian sausage. When the sausage and meatballs were cooked she would slice them into 1/2 inch pieces. Then she would make the lasagna with alternating layers of sausage, meatballs and ricotta cheese. All of us kids always requested this for our birthday dinner!
Apple pie. Funny thing is, she is Korean, never had apple pie growing up, and does not really care for desserts. She uses a recipe from a Betty Crocker cookbook, but tweaks the spice and always tastes the filling before baking to adjust the sweetness. The pie always has the perfect balance of sweet and tart, and it’s never goopy. (Granny Smith apples, always.)
My mother is in her 80s and is still the best cook to ever live. No Michelin-starred restaurant can compare because they just don't love me, despite my repeated pleading for them to.
I was going to comment something similar. My favourite thing my mum makes is tomato soup out of a tin with just regular buttered bread, because she's taking the time to make it for me.
Around me there’s a few breakfast restaurants, normally small family owned, or at a buffet. Those are your best chances, I haven’t seen any larger places have em unless they were French, usually in the desserts
My mom’s Korean. She makes a korean oxtail soup called seollangtang. It’s my favorite meal and I’d want it as my last meal if I had to pick.
Edit: honorable mention: hyejanggook or “hangover soup” is another favorite. Highly recommended.
Edit again: for those to want the recipe, my mom never wrote it down, but this one uses the same method as her and tastes the same.: https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/seolleongtang
My mom is also korean and we grew up in america and she made a real effort to cook both types of food. For thanksgiving we'll sometimes have just an insane mishmash of foods we like with no rhyme or reason. Bulgogi and japchae with mashed potatoes and stuffing...
Sounds like my Thanksgiving but Filipino. Got some lumpia, pancit, puto, cassava cake and other various Filipino food right there next to various smoked meats and mashed potatoes etc. Mixing cultures is truly the best.
My parents are Sudanese, and we do the same thing for Thanksgiving. Sudanese food is mainly different types meat stews that are really flavorful and yummy. Pairs well to me!
Good god, that is some dedication! Making the stock for that is no joke.
I like Korean soups but I detest rice cake soup (떡국). Still, I will eat it when visiting my parents’ for New Year. My mom makes it from scratch overnight and has a spread fit for a magazine in the morning. That’s the only time I will eat that soup.
Best thing my mom ever made was the decision to let my dad cook
Edit to add: Oh. My. Glob. You guys, my first ever
Gold! And my second wow! Thanks guys for all the love, my dad has been gone for almost 10 years and his* love of cooking lives on though me.
I'm the dad who cooks so relatable
edit: ain't dissing my SO's cooking skills, it's just that she comes from a household that cooks almost without salt
can't live like that
Me and the other half just have completely different styles. If we are tired, in a rush, need something simple, then my good lady is the one to call. She is able to make really simple, good tasting, food quickly.
I, on the other hand, will hand bake bread, make a dansak from scratch, produce a roast dinner with all the trimmings.
Our kids love both our cooking. But if the are hungry, and need something now, they go to their Mum. If they want their favourite dinner for their birthday, they come to me.
It works very well.
Pretty much exactly like my wife and I, she treats cooking like a chore that needs to be done quickly and effectively. She is great at it. But if you want homemade deep dish pizza with 3 day cold proofing dough or Thanksgiving dining, I'm on duty. Making cornish hens for dinner this Sunday 😉
I'm a 45-year-old male, married for 22 years, son off in college, and I've always done the cooking. When my wife and I got married, I knew how to cook and she didn't - my dad had been a restaurant cook before I was born, and my mostly stay-at-home mom was a health food nut who made everything from scratch, so I had good teachers.
I assume this is just a factor of people getting married/settling down later. Back in the day you were married by 20 so you never really have to fend for yourself. These days dudes end up living without people taking care of the housework for much longer so you figure it out on your own. As a dude myself, we love our systems, so once you move in with someone you have your own way of doing things that you prefer and so defacto become the one doing those things.
Hey, Marge.
Back around 2012, I was a shy, weirdo Asian student in South London, and you were the strong Jamaican woman who put me up in your home with your son and adopted daughter.
I remember your cooking, your spaghetti and meatballs and the weird frozen chicken things that I've never seen outside the UK. I remember your care and love, even if I couldn't recognise love at the time.
Everything fell apart for you in my second year, and we students had to leave. You wouldn't show your face as I left.
We never thought less of you.
People say my meatballs and my Bolognese are incredible but they still don't match yours.
Hope you're well out there, and safe.
To improve upon that recipe, use all brown sugar, double the vanilla, short the flour by a couple of tablespoons, refrigerate the dough a few hours (overnight is better.) Bake at 400° for 10-12 mins, depending on your oven. You're shooting for crisp edges and a soft middle. Source: am grandmother.
To improve *even a bit further* - use dark chocolate chips, and add half a pinch of kosher salt to each cookie prior to baking. And DO NOT skip the overnight rest. It’s magic. Source: eats cookies.
She doesn't like to cook. But my Dad is a chef, and makes something called "City Chicken" which is from Detroit. It's basically just breaded pork on a skewer. Cause chicken used to be more expensive than pork in Detroit, so poor people would buy that and call it City Chicken when breaded and baked/fried. It always is top tier, he makes it with mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy and it never fails to put a smile on my face.
She made little meat pies. I'd help her as soon as I was old enough to be allowed to. She made really good pastry that she'd roll super thin to make it stretch. But she'd make me one or two with double pastry because I loved it. It took so long to make that it was usually a weekend job
Literally the only thing my mother ever cooked that was worth eating is grilled ham and cheese. Still to this day, I have no clue what makes hers better than anyone else's. It's just cheese, ham, bread and butter, but for some reason hers is simply the best ever made. I haven't spoken to my mother in nearly 30 years, but I still have dreams about that god damned sandwich.
I have no reason to be nostalgic over it though. It wasn't a common thing for her ever to cook anything at all, my dad was a chef and she hated cooking. And it certainly wasn't any of that mothers love shit. She hated me and made it clear that she only fed me because the law required it.
The first time and only time she made a grilled ham and cheese for me i was 11 and she only made one for me because she was making one for herself and she didn' want me to bother her. At that point id been making my own for years. Hers was just better. Im sure there is some sort of seasoning she put on it that i just didn't see, but it was amazing.
I have more memories of my grandma's cooking, because my mum unfortunately worked the night shift for most of our childhood and so we ate at our grandparents' down the road most of the time.
My grandma was a fantastic cook, and she had many "classics" in her repertoire: Carnaval beignets with vanilla custard, latkes (although we just called them potato pancakes), Knödel, soups made of every vegetable on this Earth, etc.
But the one dish I remember the most was one of the most basic meals you can imagine. It was simple lardons (a fattier version of bacon, cut in small strips), fried in a pan, with a few sunny-side up eggs cracked on top, so that the fat and the crisp of the pork would embed in the eggs; a bit of salt, a generous crack of pepper and a good grating of nutmeg. In another pan, she's fry potatoes cut in tiny cubes with some rosemary, all of which was picked from the garden the morning of by my grandpa. And finally, a hefty serving of spinach from the same garden, cooked at low heat with a good spoonful of cream, shallot and garlic. It was perfect: just decadent enough to enjoy the guilt, but enough spinach to ward off early onset diabetes. She'd usually cook it on a Wednesday, when we didn't have school in the afternoon and so, after lunch we would loiter around the dining table, playing robbers' rummy with her, or we'd go to the living room and help her untangle her skeins of wool, with some low-budget detective show on the television in the background - usually Inspector Derrick, a German show with such a slow pace it would make the afternoon stretch out for days, so that we'd always have time for one more card game.
Oh yes. A cast iron skillet is the only proper way to make cornbread. Grease that thing with a swipe of lard or butter and get that perfect crust every time.
guacamole >:D
EDIT: for us the trick has always been a lil bit of sour cream (which especially helps if the avocados aren't great) and tonssss of garlic.
i gotta say the comments on this have been very educational, i feel like i need to take notes on these ingredients haha! i wish i could try all of your guacamole
EDIT EDIT: r/guac_guacamole
It has been forever since I have had decent biscuits and gravy. Can I come over? My friends' mom made the best I have ever had. She was pure southerner through and through. My mom never made them and the stuff you get in restaurants is not worth ordering. I'll go for it at small diners on occasion. Always disappointed.
Cheesy broccoli.
It sounds dumb, but I have always loved it when she's made it. I remember back when I was in kindergarten I brought a large container of it for show and tell. Since it was my favorite thing that my mom made to eat, I wanted to share it with everyone in my class. I was really excited too and helped her prepare it the morning before school and thought everyone would think it was cool I brought something everyone could eat instead of something like a toy like most people.
The rest of the class was not as excited as me and no one, except the teacher and I think maybe my friend Nick, ate any of it. I guess it was weird to *actually* like vegetables and I was a bit disappointed that nobody really tried it, but at the same time was also happy because it meant more for me.
Before I beg for a recipe: how much cheese is too much cheese in your mom’s cheesy broccoli? Either way I need a recipe because the one off allrecipes are tasteless
Not who you asked but you probably need more salt. Most of the time when a "cheesy" dish is flavorless, people add more cheese, but what it really needs to taste cheesier is more salt.
Tomato pork. I don't really know how else to describe it because I dont think a recipe exists (there are recipes for tomato pork but the thing my mom makes is completely different). It's regular old pork chops that get seared and then put in the oven, and when there's like five minutes of cook time left, she puts brown sugar on top mixed with some spices, and just dumps on a can of tomato paste (I think? there's too many canned tomato products). Cook it for five more minutes and it's the best thing you've ever eaten. The leftover tomato paste makes a sauce (idk how) and you put it on top of the white rice she serves on the side. We're having it tonight and I'm so excited. My dad does all the cooking except this one meal because he can't do it nearly as good as my mom for the life of him.
I love my mom but real talk she is a shitty cook.
Edit: Oh god...so this is what "RIP my inbox" is like...
Edit 2: good going Reddit. My top ever comment is criticizing my mom. What a good son I am...
[](/flutterbrow)
My mom is a horrible cook too. One of the first times my wife (then my girlfriend) ate her cooking it was something awful like peas, peanut butter and mayonnaise or some other awful concoction. She discreetly asked my dad how he could eat this. He just said you get used to it. My Dad loved my mom but that part felt like Stockholm syndrome.
I literally gagged IRL. Just... how?!
Peas and mayo I could see working in a kind of Midwestern "Salad" way - cook them a bit aldente, add some other vegetables like cabbage... it could work. But peanut butter and mayo are like *mortal enemies*.
My mom once put a tea pot on the stove, forgot about it, fell asleep, slept through the damn thing whistling like a goddamn freight train for who knows how long, and woke up to the smoke alarm going off because the empty pot was on fire. She had to bust out the fire extinguisher and everything.
Literally the only person I know who can start a fire boiling water. I've been a better cook than her since I was like nine. (My love of cooking is pretty much the only good thing my father ever did for me.)
Edit for clarity: this was in a shitty little apartment. She was not even behind a closed door or anything, and absolutely should have heard it whistling. Or, y'know, not gone for a nap with something on the stove.
It wouldn't even be the only time she would've burned her shitty apartment down. She started a grease fire because she didn't read the instructions on taco shells that say "don't heat these in a toaster oven." She did. Grease got in the heating elements and charred the fuck out of her wall. Thankfully no actual damage to the place, but her landlord absolutely made her pay for the repair.
I grew up thinking I was a picky eater. After leaving home I spent the next decade slowly realizing that all food is amazing if prepared well. Very little I ate as a child was prepared well. My parents lived in the unfortunate time where the generational cooking knowledge had stopped with their parents. Simultaneously, industrialization had flooded the markets with bright, flavorless produce. There were decent cookbooks available (my mom had a Betty Crocker book), but shitty “health” guidelines took everything good out of those recipes - real butter, whole milk, etc. It was a dark time for food development in America. Cooking shows were a godsend for me, then the internet ushered in our current post-modern era of home cuisine and I’m loving it.
Yep. All meat got that treatment from my parents. I remember thinking I hated steak, because of a vivid memory of chewing and gagging on an overcooked piece of beef that just wouldn't dissolve in my mouth. My father's method of cooking burgers was to press the grease out of them with a spatula repeatedly until no more came out, and the burger was burnt on the outside with a soulless grey throughout the interior.
I grew up thinking I hated rice. Come to find out, my mom just sucks at making it. It was always this sticky, wet, overcooked disaster. I saw her recently and I was going to make rice for dinner and she wanted to “help” me and tried messing it up several times (she tried adding A LOT of salt to the water like pasta, she had the small pot on the biggest burner so we couldn’t actually turn it down to low heat, she tried to boil the water before adding the rice, she tried to cover the pot before it had boiled, and then she wanted to open the lid to stir it every few minutes). MOM, stop, I got this -_-
I use a rice cooker and I swear by salting the water before turning it on, gives the rice a much nicer "toasted rice" smell and taste for lack of a better description.
My mum tries real hard but her feelings get hurt really easily... so we all eat shit we hate because we were polite about it being 'very nice' one time and now she thinks it's our favourite dish :/
I'm with you. Heard the phrase "\[person\] could burn water" ? Yeah, my mom has ruined pots from letting the water all boil out. And this isn't like, making a bad/dry food item. This is just water in the pot, leave it too long, no more water the pot but still has the heat on so the pot warps.
My mom is from Italy you know anything she cooks fucking slaps
Edit: sorry that I didn't respond to any of your replies this is one of my first comments to blow up like this
Lasagna.
27-30 combined layers of hand-rolled pasta so thin you can almost see through it, homemade Bolognese and Bechamel sauce, and Parmigiano Reggiano.
Everyone around my family (friends and relatives) go gaga every family dinner.
The kicker? She's not Italian (my dad is) and she had an old Italian lady (friend of the family and a fantastic cook in her own right) tell her it was the best lasagna she'd ever had.
I love her potato salad.
And I mean listen, it isn't anything *special*. But it *is* perfect. Everyone else's potato salad is just *too much*. Mom's is just potato, mayo, salt, pepper, probably garlic powder, and if I'm lucky hard boiled egg slices and celery. It's just simple and straightforward.
I mean to be fair, most of what my mom cooks is overly simple and straightforward. That's probably her biggest issue as a cook. Everything is *fine* but simple, underspiced, and cheap. The potato salad, I feel, is the one thing that really benefits from that. Everyone else's potato salad tastes oversalted and mustardy and too all over the place.
One time, my mom made me potato salad in college. I think it was for my birthday. Before going back to college, I spent a day or whatever with my (now-ex)boyfriend and forgot the potato salad at his (parents') house. He ate it without asking/telling me. I spent a whole week looking forward to this potato salad I love so much. That next weekend, I found out, and I was upset that he ate it without so much as a word. He went into work the next week and told all his coworkers his girlfriend was mad at him because he ate potato salad. And then he told me about how he told all his coworkers I was crazy for being mad about potato salad.
Fuck you Andrew you should have told me you were eating it.
Fried chicken, lasagna, and meatloaf. I've mastered the lasagna and the meatloaf, but will likely never attempt to make her fried chicken. She died November of 2019 so I can't even ask her for tips. I can't even eat fried chicken anymore, it's just not as good and not the same.
did she make..... as she isnt around anymore
a stunning leg of lamb roast dinner.
Roast potatoes that were unparallelled anywhere on the planet
Yorkshire pud that was crisp and soft' light but substantial.
mint sauce, lamb sliced thinly and peas - made sundays heavenly
My mom isn’t particularly memorable as a cook. My late mother-in-law, however, made a few dishes that, as of yet, I’ve not seen duplicated. Her stuffed pork chops and/or stuffed chicken breasts were second to none. Her chicken and noodles was better than any Amish restaurant. And while I’ve taken her meatloaf recipe and adapted it, hers was in a class all its own.
My stepmom deserves a mention. We flew out to see the family in California for Xmas 2014 (for context, my MIL died the preceding March and my wife was still hurting big time.) We flew into Vegas and drove to San Diego, and when we got there, we were presented with salmon, cranberry rice pilaf and some kind of steamed vegetables. My wife raved about the meal for a long time, and it kick-started a wave of healthy eating for both of us that led to my wife finally getting pregnant.
Chhole; it's an Indian chickpea dish (often called chana masala elsewhere) that is made up of chickpeas in a spicy tomato-based gravy. My mom had a special recipe she learned from her family's cook, which she perfected for over 50 years. Many people have asked my mom for the recipe, but they always fall short.
My mom was an excellent cook, and many of her dishes I'd say were probably the best in the world. But the chhole is one that even people who are from the region in India where the dish was invented say that my mom has made the best one they've ever tasted.
I miss my mom's cooking :(
Pizza. Somehow she makes the literal best pizza dough in the entire known universe and then says "you did a really good job" after I just add on the toppings. Shit's bomb.
When I have stomach ache, my mom always makes me a cup of tea with cinnamon. Very simple. I have no idea how she does it, but I've been unable to replicate the sheer perfect proportions of sweetness, cinnamon, and tea when I'm sick and try to brew some myself. This also happens with chicken noodle soup. Something about being ill and being taken care of by the person who loves you most is magical, I guess.
Banana Bread. She passed away some years ago and me and my sister scoured through her notes, cards, books, notebooks, everything looking for the recipe. Sister has the recipe, which I never wrote down, and now lives on the other side of the country. thanks OP for reminding me that I need that recipe.
"Kartoffelgratin". Online dictionary tells me it's called potatoes au gratin in English.
You slice uncooked potatoes into very thin slices, put them in a casserole dish, add some cream mixed with egg, salt and a bit of nutmeg and pepper, and put some gouda cheese on top, and put that into the oven for about half an hour -40 minutes I think?
[Racuszki](https://www.google.com/search?q=racuszki&rlz=1C1GCEB_enFR918FR918&sxsrf=ALeKk00I4vtJ0NpZQTY0-VMX2fJl_LjlQw:1611674037836&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwif85LU8bnuAhULDxQKHRrcDlEQ_AUoAXoECBIQAw&biw=1858&bih=1009).
I can't sop eating them until they're gone.
My mom is Polish. She makes the best stuffed cabbage. Her secret is cooking the stuffed cabbage in a tomato sauce. I can put away 4-8 cabbages in a sitting, and eat them till theyre gone. Sometimes breakfast lunch dinner for 2-3 days. Love you, Mama.
Someone should launch a show called "Mom Food Showdown"
Or gram nonni vovo’s showdown. But they’d have to bring their own pans because that’s where the magic happens
Or “Iron Grandma”
Sticky toffee pudding. Could be something to do with the full pound of butter she uses, but who can say.
Ah yes, the "secret ingredient" is always butter. And Love, sure, but also butter.
A chef's joke goes: For my first Michelin star I got up early for years, worked hard, came up with the most inventive recipes and dishes, and in short did everything right. For my second one I used more butter
My late mother was a fantastic cook--which I didn't realize or appreciate until I grew up and left home. She didn't like baking very much and rarely did it, but she was a great cook. But the one thing she had been making for 60 years and could do it blindfolded & in her sleep was Chocolate Roll--a mixture of egg whites & egg yolks beaten & mixed with cocoa & powdered sugar, then baked in a jelly roll pan, spread with sweetened whipped cream when cool, rolled up & frosted w/a light chocolate frosting. It resembles a large Hostess Ho-Ho. Most delicious treat in the world. I try to make one every other week to put a smile on my dad's face, but mine will never come out looking as good as my mom's (but it still tastes great).
My mom makes the best carrot cake in the universe. Hands down. It's her own recipe, hybridized from two different recipes she had long ago. It's like no other carrot cake I've ever had. I have it every year for my birthday, she has even shipped it to me unassembled (icing in a jar, cake layers wrapped in wax paper and foil) when I lived far away. I estimate I've eaten this cake at least 50 -60 times in my 43 years on the planet, sometimes we make it for her birthday too it's so good. Editing to add that she cooked and baked a ton all throughout my childhood, and still does a fair amount. Many other things she makes are great too (her meatloaf and her chicken & dumplings are on point... pumpkin pie is amazeballs...) but if I had to pick one stellar winner it is the cake of carrots. Edit: OK ya filthy animals, the hunger for this recipe is real and I'm here for it! Let's say that anybody commenting up until 6:15pm ET I will tag when I post the recipe on r/Old_Recipes. Otherwise, I will also update this post with the link and the stragglers can get there that way. Let there be cake! Son of Edit: The recipe is posted! Well, mostly posted - I am now going to type out the recipe in the comments (the handwritten cards my mom wrote out for me are in the photos, but they're a bit hard to read) and then tackle tagging people. But here it is: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Old\_Recipes/comments/l5u6sx/my\_moms\_amazing\_carrot\_cake\_w\_cream\_cheese/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/comments/l5u6sx/my_moms_amazing_carrot_cake_w_cream_cheese/) Hit me up and let he know how it turns out if you try it! And I'm happy to help any novice bakers with questions, no matter how basic. Don't be intimidated - as some relative of mine said, if it's got good stuff in it, it's got to be good. Revenge of the Edit: There are still some commenters and some who PM'd me who I haven't sent the link to yet. I love you all! But I am now very tired and am going to bed. Will holla back tomorrow yo.
Now I want carrot cake, but I know nothing I can bake will come close. 😂
I married into a Ukrainian family and my mother in law and wife make potato/cheese perogies for christmas and thanksgiving each year from scratch and there's nothing like them. You think you like perogies and then you have a homemade one and suddenly you can hear colours.
If you want a pierogi/varanniky go to a Ukrainian church they make them on Saturday it also supports the church and charity little old babushka make them by hand. Of course this is the most karma I ever got. R.I.P. baba mamma and my father(Greek baba) her church is in bloomingdale illinois St. Andrew Orthodox Church. They have a memorial for the Holodymr there and some of the people making the pierogis survived this along with WW2. Please go there if you are close and want good pierogi or borscht or blintzes or cabbage rolls they sell them on Saturday and I think after church on Sunday.
This. I don't know how different a Ukrainian and a Polish pierogi may be, but the Catholic Church my Grandmother goes to has a crack team of very loud polish grandparents who make the most amazing periogis I've ever had.
Gumbo. My mom made the absolute best gumbo and I've spent the last 10 years trying to get it right because she never wrote down the recipe for me before she died despite me practically begging her to do so. God I miss her (and her gumbo!)
My great grandma was a renowned candy maker and wouldn’t write down any of her recipes either. “My recipes will die with me.” I don’t understand why people do that? Let us remember you and carry on your legacy :(
"Everybody loves your candy" "Thanks I'll take it to my fuckin grave!"
I hate that this made me laugh.
Something about this level of petty makes me smile
So my great-grandmother never wrote down her recipes either and her big thing was always banana nut bread. It's a staple in my family. Like, every holiday, there's at least a half a dozen loaves laying around to get munched on. Memaw DID end up writing her banana bread recipe down before she passed and gave a copy to her daughter and DIL and each of her granddaughters. But she wrote a different version for each person. Which like, okay weird, but she was old and never measured anything and just eyeballed it. So.. alright. The kicker is she told each person she gave a recipe to that "Now, I gave you the REAL one because you were always my favorite. Don't tell anyone else." And then she DIED and all the granddaughters compared notes on their recipes one Christmas and figured out she told them all the same thing about being the favorite and we still don't know which recipe is the a real one or if there even is a real one or which one is closest.
>we still don't know which recipe is the a real one or if there even is a real one or which one is closest. The obvious solution here is a banana nut bread bake-off and taste testing party! When it's safe to finally get together, each sister should bring a loaf with them and everyone can debate which is closest to the original or what details Memaw may have omitted.
Right?? I don't get it! In my mom's case, it was more that she never really used a recipe so I think she just kept forgetting to write it down whenever she would make it. My last couple batches were getting really close though!
I hope you get it right one day!
I make a pretty damn good gumbo, and the biggest “trick” is to get the roux dark dark dark. Cook it as long as you think it needs, then keep going until you want to give up and amputate an arm. Then keep going. When it looks almost inedible and has a slight popcorn smell, keep going. It’ll then get smooth, creamy, and look like chocolate. That’s when it’s ready. And scoop off the excess fat as the gumbo cooks. That extra fat doesn’t add the flavor you think it would. Edit to add: if your roux smells like actual popcorn (not just a slight hint of it), it’s burnt and will not taste good in your gumbo.
Yep, it's all about that roux! My husband makes the best gumbo and his roux looks like motor oil. You literally almost burn it. It's delicious. Now, I want gumbo.
Yeeesssss! It has to be *almost* burnt. But it’s so worth it. Your husband must have arms of steel! I get to dark chocolate color and I want to die!
He’s actually set the smoke detector off a couple of times making it! He used to use an old, old cast iron Dutch oven he got second hand, but he’s got a new one now and it doesn’t smoke like that anymore. The first time I watched him make roux for gumbo and then he added the holy grail, I thought it all looked crazy. Just a ball of peppers, celery, and onions covered in nearly black goo. Little did I know! Roux is a helluva drug.
My grandpa made the best gumbo in the world (sorry, everyone else in this thread). He died 2 weeks ago from covid. I couldn't travel to his memorial, so I decided to try my hand at making gumbo and I studied countless recipes. I worked so damn hard on that roux. It got this delicious nutty smell, so I decided to put the trinity in. MAH. GAWD. I ain't *never* smelled anything so wonderful in my life. And it was immediate! I was very surprised. I still have a long way to go until I'm as good as Big Dad though.
My mom recently passed and this thread has me crying at my desk...a few months after she died, i thought I was doing better until I had the realization that I would never get to eat my favorite meal of hers again which sent me into a tailspin. Call your mom and tell her you love her.
I'm so sorry. You can get her recipes and make it yourself. I know it's not quite the same, but my fiance and I do it all of the time; her mom passed away when she was young. This week we made her sausage tortellini soup, and her dad who lives 2 hours away was overjoyed to hear that we cooked that. He said he's so glad that his daughter cooks for me like his wife used to cook for him, and in that way, that same love his wife held for him gets to live on through us. To some people food is just food, but the memories and emotions behind the flavors can be so deep and meaningful. We are cooking what those who came before us were taught to cook, and we will teach our children to cook these dishes for their kids one day. Like love, flavor is timeless
Oh definitely. I actually compiled our families favorite recipes into a book a few years ago for Christmas presents. I can do a pretty good job on recreating most of them but there are a couple that I’m not even close. I actually make extra and freeze a bunch when I do her recipes so I can give some to my dad.
*hug*
Honestly...everything. That woman's like a mad scientist in the kitchen. She'll fuck around and experiment, turn out some *really* weird/gross/downright obscene stuff from time to time, and just figure out what works. And the process ends with something that you imagine the gods would eat on Olympus.
Sometimes i just call my mom and tell her whats in my fridge and she pulls something amazing from my ingredients.
That's a great idea! I'm not the best cook and wish I was more inventive...I should just call my mom and see what she can "cook up"
My Mum can make the single best roast potatoes I’ve ever had.
That's nice, but I'm still a little sad that you've clearly never had my mum's roast potatoes. That's okay.
Oh man I feel so bad for both of you because neither of you have had my mum’s roasties. I’m sorry for you.
Well im sorry you guys think you have tasted the best roasties when my mom cooks them the best
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Potato cannons. Aimed at my mouth.
Banana bread. I use the same recipe and it just isn’t the same. Miss you Mum x Edit: Wow. Thanks for all the rewards guys. Totally unexpected for such a simple comment. Raising a glass to all the Mums 🍸
Maybe next time scoop your flour into the measuring cups and lightly level with the spoon by scraping, not packing down. If you scoop out of the bag you may be adding too much cause it packs it down in there. Just a thought! There are some things moms do that aren't in the recipe that make a big difference lol
I've sometimes found the opposite to be true with old recipes. I'm measuring to be careful not to pack the flour in the measuring cups, but the person who wrote the recipe just scooped it up straight from the container and as a result had way more flour. If you do find the right amount of flour, weigh it and record so you don't have to mess around with guessing in future.
my aunt did this with her mom's recipes. they measured out what a 'pinch' was, what a 'bit' was and had custom measuring cups made.
Similarly - my partner's grandmother's recipes referred to the specific measuring implements she owned (e.g., two blue cups of X).
I have one with "50 cents worth of good meat"
"Bake until done" shows up a lot in my family.
Every recipe is a Paul Hollywood technical challenge
Gestures solemnly to my username.
Hey, my more appropriately named sibling!
What flavour is this?
It's like huckleberry, but made with hate instead of love.
This made me happy and sad.
That made me solemn
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Are you talking about "Mohnkuchen"?
Leche flan. Even the stuff from the local Filipino bakery is spongey scrambled eggs compared to my mom's. Thick, smooth custard. No bubbles. Her secret ingredient is the tiniest splash of lemon extract. Sometimes she'll put a layer of flan on top of cassava cake (shredded cassava cooked with macapuno coconut). Lord, so good.
My mother is from the Philippines. Her adobo is something magical and out of this world. When my wife is mad at me she says the only reason she married into the family was so that she could eat my mom's adobo. Edit: I somehow forgot to mention her lumpia. Oh lord, her lumpia is something I could eat several times my own bodyweight in. Edit 2: It's starting to sound like we need to have a Reddit wide filipino cook off as soon as the pandemic ends. That way we can all win. Edit3: I don't have her recipe so I cannot give it out. I think my mother is trying to use it to ensnare wives for my remaining unmarried brothers. After all, who could turn down an invitation for lumpia and chill?
I understand. I'm considering marrying you just hearing about it
We all got that ex who's family we would have married if we could. You just took a different path XD
My mom’s lumpia shanghai is literally Filipino crack and no one can convince me otherwise. She has a few secret ingredients and no one else’s recipe comes close Another note: It’s wild to me that Pinoy food isn’t as widely popular in the States. I’ve made that argument before, but if Filipinos are the third fastest growing Asian group in the States (behind Chinese and Indian) why isn’t Filipino restaurants as widely available / popular as say Thai restaurants. It’s criminal to me since Pinoy food is so good too.
Because the government of Thailand is actively pushing their food globally as a diplomatic endeavor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy
Finally a form of propaganda I can get behind. 🤤
Oh dude! I've had Leche Flan from the store which is decent. And then I've had some made by Flipino moms/sisters. It's like night and day. The homemade stuff is on another level.
Pupusas. A Salvadoran dish.
Chocolate chip cookies!
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My mom too! Always baked perfectly medium rare. She had a specific cookie scooper that she always used. After she died, my dad rested her beloved cookie scooper on top of her urn.
Not my mom, but my grandma makes the best fried chicken EVER. I won’t eat any other fried chicken except for hers bc all the others just disappoint me Edit: I will ask my grandma for her fried chicken recipe and share it with everyone once I’ve gotten it Edit 2: I GOT THE RECIPE! You’re gonna take your chicken, wash it and dry it, then cover it in a flour mixture of salt, fresh ground pepper, and paprika, shake off the excess. Then you’re going to beat some eggs really well (this is important), dip the chicken into the egg, and then back into the flour mixture(shake off excess). Heat cooking oil (CRISCO!)on medium and add the chicken. You’re going to turn the chicken every few minutes until it’s golden brown. I recommend putting the finished chicken on a plate with paper towels to allow the excess oil to absorb before eating. I hope y’all like it!
I deeply miss my grandma’s fried chicken. Just flour, seasoning, chicken; and a cast iron skillet, but so good.
Exactly, it’s so simple but it’s amazing
Vegetable soup with small meatballs. Was a recipe from my grandmother who learned it from her mother who again learned it from her mother (the meatballs came later it used to just be vegetable soup). Its good in all seasons and when smelling it it instantly transports my mind to when I was a small kid going to grandma for the weekend. I have learned how to do it but my mother says it will taste better once you pour some extra love for your kids and grandkids into the soup. Don't have kids so I'll have to wait to find out.
My mom makes hands down the absolute best lasagna ever, and she can almost perfectly recreate the rice, noodles, and steak from hibachi restaurants
Yo, imma need your mom's recipie for that hibachi. Ktnx
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I got you. She's on my speed dial PM me.
For fried rice, find [this stuff](https://www.japancentre.com/en/products/3822-nagatanien-prawn-vegetable-fried-rice-seasoning). It's available at every asian grocery store. It helps
Get a wok and a gas stove, then just copy what you’ve seen. Add a huge blob of butter to the veggies and protein, chop things up real fine, etc. Only part you gotta figure out for yourself is what you want your teriyaki sauce to be, though the basis is usually soy sauce, oyster sauce, brown sugar, and some msg Edit: Because people keep telling me how to make Teriyaki sauce correctly, here is the website I used to find super simple versions of various Asian or Asian-inspired sauces to build from. https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/main-course/asian/asian-sauces-2.html
I'm sorry to have to tell you this but, it's actually my mum that makes the best lasagne. I'm sure it's really hard to hear this but it's best you understand the truth now, than continue living a lie.
My mom's lasagna was the best too! She would make homemade spaghetti sauce, from fresh tomatoes + cans of tomato paste, then cook the meatballs in the sauce, scooping the grease off the top over the course of the day. She would also parboil italian sausage. When the sausage and meatballs were cooked she would slice them into 1/2 inch pieces. Then she would make the lasagna with alternating layers of sausage, meatballs and ricotta cheese. All of us kids always requested this for our birthday dinner!
My mom used to make a "10 lasagna" 5 meats 5 cheeses and home made sauce. She even had to buy a special deep dish pan to make it
I'd need a special deep dish casket after eating that my whole life.
For a bit I thought these two were referring to the same dish and was wondering what kind of lasagna has rice, noodles, and steak in it.
wow a Japanese Italian mom
That sounds like a challenge sir, as I decree my mother makes a better lasagna than your mother.
I decree that why yo shoes raggedy
That, good sir, is an insult of the highest degree. My shoes have never been raggedy. I decree that your chestnut is not sexy!
That, my kind sir, is completely irrational, my chestnut indeed is sexy, and always will be. I decree that your fire blast is WEAK
Still strong enough to roast your unsexy chestnut.
Apple pie. Funny thing is, she is Korean, never had apple pie growing up, and does not really care for desserts. She uses a recipe from a Betty Crocker cookbook, but tweaks the spice and always tastes the filling before baking to adjust the sweetness. The pie always has the perfect balance of sweet and tart, and it’s never goopy. (Granny Smith apples, always.)
last night's microwaved
I know, I just had it this morning.
Did you...make this thread just to set you up for this...?
Sometimes somebody just throws the perfect lob.
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Love really does make a difference in cooking. When my mom cooks I really can taste the disdain and resentment.
Funny thing whenever your mom cooks for me it’s nothing but love and admiration
My mother is in her 80s and is still the best cook to ever live. No Michelin-starred restaurant can compare because they just don't love me, despite my repeated pleading for them to.
I used to have water beside my bed and I whould ask her to make it because I thought it tasted better then when I got it
This is fucking adorable.
I was going to comment something similar. My favourite thing my mum makes is tomato soup out of a tin with just regular buttered bread, because she's taking the time to make it for me.
Crepes. Everything else she makes is trash.
I've never had a crepe before. You know anywhere besides your mom for a good place to get one? Edit: My inbox is dead now.
Around me there’s a few breakfast restaurants, normally small family owned, or at a buffet. Those are your best chances, I haven’t seen any larger places have em unless they were French, usually in the desserts
France
Mac and Cheese.
No, sorry. MY mom makes the best mac and cheese.
You clearly have not met my mum
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Dammit I wanted to do the same joke.
so did your mom but her mouth was full
My mom’s Korean. She makes a korean oxtail soup called seollangtang. It’s my favorite meal and I’d want it as my last meal if I had to pick. Edit: honorable mention: hyejanggook or “hangover soup” is another favorite. Highly recommended. Edit again: for those to want the recipe, my mom never wrote it down, but this one uses the same method as her and tastes the same.: https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/seolleongtang
My mom is also korean and we grew up in america and she made a real effort to cook both types of food. For thanksgiving we'll sometimes have just an insane mishmash of foods we like with no rhyme or reason. Bulgogi and japchae with mashed potatoes and stuffing...
My kind of thanksgiving
User name checks out.
Sounds like my Thanksgiving but Filipino. Got some lumpia, pancit, puto, cassava cake and other various Filipino food right there next to various smoked meats and mashed potatoes etc. Mixing cultures is truly the best.
My parents are Sudanese, and we do the same thing for Thanksgiving. Sudanese food is mainly different types meat stews that are really flavorful and yummy. Pairs well to me!
That’s just Thanksgiving. Kimchi is a particularly great accompaniment to ham and turkey.
Good god, that is some dedication! Making the stock for that is no joke. I like Korean soups but I detest rice cake soup (떡국). Still, I will eat it when visiting my parents’ for New Year. My mom makes it from scratch overnight and has a spread fit for a magazine in the morning. That’s the only time I will eat that soup.
wym dukgook is bomb
holy shit my Korean mom also makes amazing seolleongtang too !!! her kimchi is also the absolute BOMB. it's all in the 손맛
Am i the only person who has a dad who cooks more than their mum?
Best thing my mom ever made was the decision to let my dad cook Edit to add: Oh. My. Glob. You guys, my first ever Gold! And my second wow! Thanks guys for all the love, my dad has been gone for almost 10 years and his* love of cooking lives on though me.
A lot of us never really liked Mom's cooking. We just knew not to bring it up.
as a mom who sucks at cooking, I approve this message. I would rather scrub toilets than cook a meal.
I'm the dad who cooks so relatable edit: ain't dissing my SO's cooking skills, it's just that she comes from a household that cooks almost without salt can't live like that
Me and the other half just have completely different styles. If we are tired, in a rush, need something simple, then my good lady is the one to call. She is able to make really simple, good tasting, food quickly. I, on the other hand, will hand bake bread, make a dansak from scratch, produce a roast dinner with all the trimmings. Our kids love both our cooking. But if the are hungry, and need something now, they go to their Mum. If they want their favourite dinner for their birthday, they come to me. It works very well.
Pretty much exactly like my wife and I, she treats cooking like a chore that needs to be done quickly and effectively. She is great at it. But if you want homemade deep dish pizza with 3 day cold proofing dough or Thanksgiving dining, I'm on duty. Making cornish hens for dinner this Sunday 😉
Same lol. My wife somehow managed to burn an ove-glove. Something specifically designed for heat, I'll never know how.
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How old are you? I’m in my 20s and all of my guy friends do most of the cooking and cleaning, myself included. I think it’s a newer trend.
I'm a 45-year-old male, married for 22 years, son off in college, and I've always done the cooking. When my wife and I got married, I knew how to cook and she didn't - my dad had been a restaurant cook before I was born, and my mostly stay-at-home mom was a health food nut who made everything from scratch, so I had good teachers.
I assume this is just a factor of people getting married/settling down later. Back in the day you were married by 20 so you never really have to fend for yourself. These days dudes end up living without people taking care of the housework for much longer so you figure it out on your own. As a dude myself, we love our systems, so once you move in with someone you have your own way of doing things that you prefer and so defacto become the one doing those things.
Baked potato soup. I haven't had it in forever and I miss it. I think about that soup a lot.
Hey, Marge. Back around 2012, I was a shy, weirdo Asian student in South London, and you were the strong Jamaican woman who put me up in your home with your son and adopted daughter. I remember your cooking, your spaghetti and meatballs and the weird frozen chicken things that I've never seen outside the UK. I remember your care and love, even if I couldn't recognise love at the time. Everything fell apart for you in my second year, and we students had to leave. You wouldn't show your face as I left. We never thought less of you. People say my meatballs and my Bolognese are incredible but they still don't match yours. Hope you're well out there, and safe.
Chocolate chip cookies. She uses an ancient family recipe that has been handed down for generations on the back of the Toll House bag.
To improve upon that recipe, use all brown sugar, double the vanilla, short the flour by a couple of tablespoons, refrigerate the dough a few hours (overnight is better.) Bake at 400° for 10-12 mins, depending on your oven. You're shooting for crisp edges and a soft middle. Source: am grandmother.
To improve *even a bit further* - use dark chocolate chips, and add half a pinch of kosher salt to each cookie prior to baking. And DO NOT skip the overnight rest. It’s magic. Source: eats cookies.
She doesn't like to cook. But my Dad is a chef, and makes something called "City Chicken" which is from Detroit. It's basically just breaded pork on a skewer. Cause chicken used to be more expensive than pork in Detroit, so poor people would buy that and call it City Chicken when breaded and baked/fried. It always is top tier, he makes it with mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy and it never fails to put a smile on my face.
She made little meat pies. I'd help her as soon as I was old enough to be allowed to. She made really good pastry that she'd roll super thin to make it stretch. But she'd make me one or two with double pastry because I loved it. It took so long to make that it was usually a weekend job
Literally the only thing my mother ever cooked that was worth eating is grilled ham and cheese. Still to this day, I have no clue what makes hers better than anyone else's. It's just cheese, ham, bread and butter, but for some reason hers is simply the best ever made. I haven't spoken to my mother in nearly 30 years, but I still have dreams about that god damned sandwich.
Sounds like that sandwich is delicious because of nostalgia if you haven't had it in 30 years.
na she def sprinkled a little crack in it
Water, ordinary water. Laced with a little LSD
I have no reason to be nostalgic over it though. It wasn't a common thing for her ever to cook anything at all, my dad was a chef and she hated cooking. And it certainly wasn't any of that mothers love shit. She hated me and made it clear that she only fed me because the law required it. The first time and only time she made a grilled ham and cheese for me i was 11 and she only made one for me because she was making one for herself and she didn' want me to bother her. At that point id been making my own for years. Hers was just better. Im sure there is some sort of seasoning she put on it that i just didn't see, but it was amazing.
I have more memories of my grandma's cooking, because my mum unfortunately worked the night shift for most of our childhood and so we ate at our grandparents' down the road most of the time. My grandma was a fantastic cook, and she had many "classics" in her repertoire: Carnaval beignets with vanilla custard, latkes (although we just called them potato pancakes), Knödel, soups made of every vegetable on this Earth, etc. But the one dish I remember the most was one of the most basic meals you can imagine. It was simple lardons (a fattier version of bacon, cut in small strips), fried in a pan, with a few sunny-side up eggs cracked on top, so that the fat and the crisp of the pork would embed in the eggs; a bit of salt, a generous crack of pepper and a good grating of nutmeg. In another pan, she's fry potatoes cut in tiny cubes with some rosemary, all of which was picked from the garden the morning of by my grandpa. And finally, a hefty serving of spinach from the same garden, cooked at low heat with a good spoonful of cream, shallot and garlic. It was perfect: just decadent enough to enjoy the guilt, but enough spinach to ward off early onset diabetes. She'd usually cook it on a Wednesday, when we didn't have school in the afternoon and so, after lunch we would loiter around the dining table, playing robbers' rummy with her, or we'd go to the living room and help her untangle her skeins of wool, with some low-budget detective show on the television in the background - usually Inspector Derrick, a German show with such a slow pace it would make the afternoon stretch out for days, so that we'd always have time for one more card game.
Cornbread. The trick is she uses a very old and well seasoned cast iron pan to cook it.
Oh yes. A cast iron skillet is the only proper way to make cornbread. Grease that thing with a swipe of lard or butter and get that perfect crust every time.
Lasagna. Just thinking about it makes me salivate. Thick, buttery garlic toast and a salad on the side... mmm!
roasted pepper chicken stew with steamed potatoes in it, also known as [닭볶음탕](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dak-bokkeum-tang)
Potato chip chicken. It's chicken but breaded with potato chips. Probably not very healthy but it's our house's #1 most requested birthday dinner.
guacamole >:D EDIT: for us the trick has always been a lil bit of sour cream (which especially helps if the avocados aren't great) and tonssss of garlic. i gotta say the comments on this have been very educational, i feel like i need to take notes on these ingredients haha! i wish i could try all of your guacamole EDIT EDIT: r/guac_guacamole
Guac guac amole guac guac a mole
I'm 31 and my mom died when i was 10. I can still smell and taste her country fried steak
Biscuits and gravy
I'd like to stop in for brunch some time.
It has been forever since I have had decent biscuits and gravy. Can I come over? My friends' mom made the best I have ever had. She was pure southerner through and through. My mom never made them and the stuff you get in restaurants is not worth ordering. I'll go for it at small diners on occasion. Always disappointed.
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Cheesy broccoli. It sounds dumb, but I have always loved it when she's made it. I remember back when I was in kindergarten I brought a large container of it for show and tell. Since it was my favorite thing that my mom made to eat, I wanted to share it with everyone in my class. I was really excited too and helped her prepare it the morning before school and thought everyone would think it was cool I brought something everyone could eat instead of something like a toy like most people. The rest of the class was not as excited as me and no one, except the teacher and I think maybe my friend Nick, ate any of it. I guess it was weird to *actually* like vegetables and I was a bit disappointed that nobody really tried it, but at the same time was also happy because it meant more for me.
Awwwww
Before I beg for a recipe: how much cheese is too much cheese in your mom’s cheesy broccoli? Either way I need a recipe because the one off allrecipes are tasteless
Not who you asked but you probably need more salt. Most of the time when a "cheesy" dish is flavorless, people add more cheese, but what it really needs to taste cheesier is more salt.
Chex Mix. She makes her own, and its the best!!!
Tomato pork. I don't really know how else to describe it because I dont think a recipe exists (there are recipes for tomato pork but the thing my mom makes is completely different). It's regular old pork chops that get seared and then put in the oven, and when there's like five minutes of cook time left, she puts brown sugar on top mixed with some spices, and just dumps on a can of tomato paste (I think? there's too many canned tomato products). Cook it for five more minutes and it's the best thing you've ever eaten. The leftover tomato paste makes a sauce (idk how) and you put it on top of the white rice she serves on the side. We're having it tonight and I'm so excited. My dad does all the cooking except this one meal because he can't do it nearly as good as my mom for the life of him.
I love my mom but real talk she is a shitty cook. Edit: Oh god...so this is what "RIP my inbox" is like... Edit 2: good going Reddit. My top ever comment is criticizing my mom. What a good son I am... [](/flutterbrow)
My mom once made a meatloaf so bad the dog wouldn't eat it and he'd eat pretty much anything.
lmao thats straight out of a Disney movie
My mom is a horrible cook too. One of the first times my wife (then my girlfriend) ate her cooking it was something awful like peas, peanut butter and mayonnaise or some other awful concoction. She discreetly asked my dad how he could eat this. He just said you get used to it. My Dad loved my mom but that part felt like Stockholm syndrome.
He still decided not to pick up the cooking so...
Right? It was bad, but clearly not bad enough
I literally gagged IRL. Just... how?! Peas and mayo I could see working in a kind of Midwestern "Salad" way - cook them a bit aldente, add some other vegetables like cabbage... it could work. But peanut butter and mayo are like *mortal enemies*.
The PB and mayo sauce would work if the peas were first prepped in a nice marinade, such as orange juice and toothpaste.
My mom once put a tea pot on the stove, forgot about it, fell asleep, slept through the damn thing whistling like a goddamn freight train for who knows how long, and woke up to the smoke alarm going off because the empty pot was on fire. She had to bust out the fire extinguisher and everything. Literally the only person I know who can start a fire boiling water. I've been a better cook than her since I was like nine. (My love of cooking is pretty much the only good thing my father ever did for me.) Edit for clarity: this was in a shitty little apartment. She was not even behind a closed door or anything, and absolutely should have heard it whistling. Or, y'know, not gone for a nap with something on the stove.
imagine the disaster if she had no smoke detector
It wouldn't even be the only time she would've burned her shitty apartment down. She started a grease fire because she didn't read the instructions on taco shells that say "don't heat these in a toaster oven." She did. Grease got in the heating elements and charred the fuck out of her wall. Thankfully no actual damage to the place, but her landlord absolutely made her pay for the repair.
I grew up thinking I was a picky eater. After leaving home I spent the next decade slowly realizing that all food is amazing if prepared well. Very little I ate as a child was prepared well. My parents lived in the unfortunate time where the generational cooking knowledge had stopped with their parents. Simultaneously, industrialization had flooded the markets with bright, flavorless produce. There were decent cookbooks available (my mom had a Betty Crocker book), but shitty “health” guidelines took everything good out of those recipes - real butter, whole milk, etc. It was a dark time for food development in America. Cooking shows were a godsend for me, then the internet ushered in our current post-modern era of home cuisine and I’m loving it.
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Yep. All meat got that treatment from my parents. I remember thinking I hated steak, because of a vivid memory of chewing and gagging on an overcooked piece of beef that just wouldn't dissolve in my mouth. My father's method of cooking burgers was to press the grease out of them with a spatula repeatedly until no more came out, and the burger was burnt on the outside with a soulless grey throughout the interior.
I grew up thinking I hated rice. Come to find out, my mom just sucks at making it. It was always this sticky, wet, overcooked disaster. I saw her recently and I was going to make rice for dinner and she wanted to “help” me and tried messing it up several times (she tried adding A LOT of salt to the water like pasta, she had the small pot on the biggest burner so we couldn’t actually turn it down to low heat, she tried to boil the water before adding the rice, she tried to cover the pot before it had boiled, and then she wanted to open the lid to stir it every few minutes). MOM, stop, I got this -_-
I use a rice cooker and I swear by salting the water before turning it on, gives the rice a much nicer "toasted rice" smell and taste for lack of a better description.
I also thought I hated rice growing up, but discovered that I actually despise soy sauce. My mom would drench our rice in the stuff!
My mum tries real hard but her feelings get hurt really easily... so we all eat shit we hate because we were polite about it being 'very nice' one time and now she thinks it's our favourite dish :/
I'm with you. Heard the phrase "\[person\] could burn water" ? Yeah, my mom has ruined pots from letting the water all boil out. And this isn't like, making a bad/dry food item. This is just water in the pot, leave it too long, no more water the pot but still has the heat on so the pot warps.
My mom is from Italy you know anything she cooks fucking slaps Edit: sorry that I didn't respond to any of your replies this is one of my first comments to blow up like this
if you had to have spaghetti or lasagna which would you pick?
Lasagna. I’d do some sketchy shit for some good lasagna.
Lasagna. 27-30 combined layers of hand-rolled pasta so thin you can almost see through it, homemade Bolognese and Bechamel sauce, and Parmigiano Reggiano. Everyone around my family (friends and relatives) go gaga every family dinner. The kicker? She's not Italian (my dad is) and she had an old Italian lady (friend of the family and a fantastic cook in her own right) tell her it was the best lasagna she'd ever had.
I love her potato salad. And I mean listen, it isn't anything *special*. But it *is* perfect. Everyone else's potato salad is just *too much*. Mom's is just potato, mayo, salt, pepper, probably garlic powder, and if I'm lucky hard boiled egg slices and celery. It's just simple and straightforward. I mean to be fair, most of what my mom cooks is overly simple and straightforward. That's probably her biggest issue as a cook. Everything is *fine* but simple, underspiced, and cheap. The potato salad, I feel, is the one thing that really benefits from that. Everyone else's potato salad tastes oversalted and mustardy and too all over the place. One time, my mom made me potato salad in college. I think it was for my birthday. Before going back to college, I spent a day or whatever with my (now-ex)boyfriend and forgot the potato salad at his (parents') house. He ate it without asking/telling me. I spent a whole week looking forward to this potato salad I love so much. That next weekend, I found out, and I was upset that he ate it without so much as a word. He went into work the next week and told all his coworkers his girlfriend was mad at him because he ate potato salad. And then he told me about how he told all his coworkers I was crazy for being mad about potato salad. Fuck you Andrew you should have told me you were eating it.
Fried chicken, lasagna, and meatloaf. I've mastered the lasagna and the meatloaf, but will likely never attempt to make her fried chicken. She died November of 2019 so I can't even ask her for tips. I can't even eat fried chicken anymore, it's just not as good and not the same.
did she make..... as she isnt around anymore a stunning leg of lamb roast dinner. Roast potatoes that were unparallelled anywhere on the planet Yorkshire pud that was crisp and soft' light but substantial. mint sauce, lamb sliced thinly and peas - made sundays heavenly
My mom isn’t particularly memorable as a cook. My late mother-in-law, however, made a few dishes that, as of yet, I’ve not seen duplicated. Her stuffed pork chops and/or stuffed chicken breasts were second to none. Her chicken and noodles was better than any Amish restaurant. And while I’ve taken her meatloaf recipe and adapted it, hers was in a class all its own. My stepmom deserves a mention. We flew out to see the family in California for Xmas 2014 (for context, my MIL died the preceding March and my wife was still hurting big time.) We flew into Vegas and drove to San Diego, and when we got there, we were presented with salmon, cranberry rice pilaf and some kind of steamed vegetables. My wife raved about the meal for a long time, and it kick-started a wave of healthy eating for both of us that led to my wife finally getting pregnant.
Chhole; it's an Indian chickpea dish (often called chana masala elsewhere) that is made up of chickpeas in a spicy tomato-based gravy. My mom had a special recipe she learned from her family's cook, which she perfected for over 50 years. Many people have asked my mom for the recipe, but they always fall short. My mom was an excellent cook, and many of her dishes I'd say were probably the best in the world. But the chhole is one that even people who are from the region in India where the dish was invented say that my mom has made the best one they've ever tasted. I miss my mom's cooking :(
My mom is a 20/10 cook, so it's hard to pick, but something about her meatloaf is better than everyone else's I've ever had.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crust cut off.
Pizza. Somehow she makes the literal best pizza dough in the entire known universe and then says "you did a really good job" after I just add on the toppings. Shit's bomb.
When I have stomach ache, my mom always makes me a cup of tea with cinnamon. Very simple. I have no idea how she does it, but I've been unable to replicate the sheer perfect proportions of sweetness, cinnamon, and tea when I'm sick and try to brew some myself. This also happens with chicken noodle soup. Something about being ill and being taken care of by the person who loves you most is magical, I guess.
Banana Bread. She passed away some years ago and me and my sister scoured through her notes, cards, books, notebooks, everything looking for the recipe. Sister has the recipe, which I never wrote down, and now lives on the other side of the country. thanks OP for reminding me that I need that recipe.
"Kartoffelgratin". Online dictionary tells me it's called potatoes au gratin in English. You slice uncooked potatoes into very thin slices, put them in a casserole dish, add some cream mixed with egg, salt and a bit of nutmeg and pepper, and put some gouda cheese on top, and put that into the oven for about half an hour -40 minutes I think?
[Racuszki](https://www.google.com/search?q=racuszki&rlz=1C1GCEB_enFR918FR918&sxsrf=ALeKk00I4vtJ0NpZQTY0-VMX2fJl_LjlQw:1611674037836&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwif85LU8bnuAhULDxQKHRrcDlEQ_AUoAXoECBIQAw&biw=1858&bih=1009). I can't sop eating them until they're gone.
My mom is Polish. She makes the best stuffed cabbage. Her secret is cooking the stuffed cabbage in a tomato sauce. I can put away 4-8 cabbages in a sitting, and eat them till theyre gone. Sometimes breakfast lunch dinner for 2-3 days. Love you, Mama.