There’s nothing like a hot, fresh home-cooked meal. As long as the person who prepared it doesn’t have their own bizarre style of cooking, that is… Every chef will tell you that creativity in the kitchen can be a great thing. But without mastering the basics, taking risks in the kitchen can also lead to some interesting outcomes.
Reddit users have recently been sharing the most questionable culinary habits their family members have, so we’ve gathered some eyebrow-raising responses below. Enjoy reading through these habits that would make Gordon Ramsay shudder, and be sure to upvote the ones that you find particularly shocking!
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My sister moved from the city to a small Texas town. Someone in their circle had a new baby girl and named her Brie. My sister jokingly said, "If you have another one, you can name it Gouda." Everyone looked at her with blank stares because they had no idea what Gouda was. It was perhaps a joke in bad taste, but she and i have laughed over that many times through the years, so in the end it was a worthwhile joke.
My mother has entire cookbooks dedicated to cooking in the microwave. She thinks there are two ways to cook vegetables:
1. Place frozen vegetables into Corningware. Add water and margarine. Microwave until they are mush.
2. Dump canned vegetables and liquid from can into pot. Add margarine. Hear until slightly warm.
I realized I could like vegetables the first time I tasted fresh green beans that had been lightly sauteed with olive oil, garlic, and salt.
Try baked broccoli with garlic and Parmesan cheese 😋 edit: and olive oil and baked
My mom wouldn't eat hummus until I started calling it "bean dip".
My step dads mom took a stick of butter, used it like a crayon to butter the raw turkey, then put the rest of the stick on the table for rolls. That was over 20 years ago and I still refuse to eat anything she makes.
Luckily, I live several states away. I plan all trips to visit my mother NOT on holidays so I can avoid her... And all the holiday travelers.
I remember one Easter half my family went to the hospital because of leftovers. Thanks Mom!
My in-laws visited for a month and I had to learn the hard way that, despite having travelled the world over, they are not adventurous eaters nor particularly well acquainted with good cooking. We wanted to grill one evening and my mother-in-law insisted that the pork loin medallions needed to be BOILED for AN HOUR before cooking on the grill. I watched her turn the meat into small gray pucks, slather them in bottled sauce, then grill for 5 minutes a side. When they cut them, the interior was fluffy and dry, resembling sawdust more than meat. Very glad we also cooked sausage or I would have been sad AND hungry.
I have a dairy allergy. I visited home for the holidays. My dad tried to argue with me that THERE IS NO DAIRY IN RANCH DRESSING.
“What about the buttermilk, Dad?”
“It’s *not* milk-it’s *buttermilk*! Ha!”
“And what is the base ingredient for that curdled milk Dad?”
“It’s not the same thing. You’re just being picky!”
It is sad when strangers ignore or even mock your food allergies, but when it comes from people who supposedly care about you, that's just awful.
Mine really isn't that bad but my sister acts like I'm CrAZy when I leave the skin on my salmon to cook...I know it's less common in the US but I still can't help to feel very annoyed. Crispy skin is the best part!
Even if you don't eat the skin, the salmon tastes better if cooked with the skin on it.
It is always stressful eating at my in laws. MIL cooks one potato per person. They're the size of golf balls.
Thanksgiving. She takes away the sour cream immediately so it doesn't spoil. It's been out for 5 minutes. She'll hover and take your plate the second you clear it. Don't even think about 2nds. Remember, 1 potato per person.
Husband, FIL, and I come in for lunch after hours of making firewood. Felling trees, hauling them out. Block, split, and pile. MIL has made one half of a premade garlic loaf for all 4 of us. That one made me cry.
2 weeks ago. Husband and I realize we haven't had French Toast in a couple years. You can't screw up French Toast, so we went to my in laws for breakfast. Her "recipe" is 1 egg and 3 cups of milk, which she mixed up before even putting the bacon on. She served her husband a lump of wet bread. I said my bacon was enough. My husband sort of salvaged the mixture by adding more eggs. Puts mixture in fridge. But FIL wants another piece. MIL scolds him to put the mix back in the fridge not 2 seconds after his bread hit the pan so it doesn't go bad. Yet, it's already been out 20 minutes because she mixed it up before even putting the bacon on.
Non food related, we stopped out this weekend. She said sorry for not combing her hair - she's washing sheets today, which means she washes her hair today, and her comb, so she can't comb her hair until after.
God forbid you take anything out of the oven before the timer goes off. Even if that means burnt Grands biscuits. Which are gross even when not burnt.
Watching her wash dishes is painful. Wash a plate, rinse it, dry it with a towel, then lay it on the table. For *every* *fricken* *dish*. Not wash all the plates, then rinse every plate, then dry every plate. And she complains her feet get sore from all the walking.
Christmas a few years ago. I made a beautiful beef roast and also a duck. I freaked out when she tried to dump a can of cream of mushroom on my duck *for gravy". She still brings it up "my mother was a good cook and I've been cooking for 45 years"
Easter is this weekend. She asked us to coordinate going out because she doesn't want to cook this year. Now, I would love to host, and do all the cooking because a) I love to host and b) I wouldn't leave hungry. But we're in the middle of some projects so we can't. And I refuse to cook at her house because I like things like mixing bowls, proper utensils, more than 2 inches of counter space because she's got s**t piled everywhere, and accurate ovens. Anyways. I spent a couple hours coming up with a few options to present to my husband's brother and sister. Then I find out MIL has asked all 3 of her kids to do the coordinating. So we all had different ideas instead of one person running the show, so to speak. All of us are irritated.
Gah.
My mom once had a meltdown in her kitchen when she saw me cooking an egg in a pan on the stove. She likes to cook her eggs in the microwave until they're rubbery and tinged with gray, and she insists that this is the only way to do it.
Your mother is right. The ancient Phoenicians introduced the microwave to the Baltic kitchen, and eggs haven't been the same since.
I moved to the Santa Fe, New Mexico area after college and fell in love with the food. I took my parents to a decent New Mexican restaurant when they visited...and my father got a hamburger in a tortilla. You know that feeling when you've discovered something you think is life-changing, you want to share it, and no one cares? That was me on that day.
All non-American dishes (anything besides burgers, sandwiches, meat and potatoes, etc) are "ethnic food" no matter the cuisine. They also typically assume any "ethnic food" will be spicy.
Fresh vegetables are too crunchy, so canned is preferable.
One exception to this is popcorn, which is a totally normal dinner side and something that my dad proudly claims is his "favorite vegetable."
"Salad" can mean almost anything. Example: apple banana salad = apples, bananas, mayonnaise
Pureed anything (especially soups) = baby food, and they usually won't touch it.
(My family consists of a bunch of white Midwestern people, can you tell? Lol)
My mother's and grandmother's reaction when I mention kimchi was saying "isn't that buried in the ground for months" and general mild disgust. They both eat sauerkraut, so fermented cabbage shouldn't be something overly exotic.
"That smells great! What is it?"
Butter and garlic
Makes me laugh remembering every time I would start to heat butter or ghee with some onion my whole family would suddenly appear.
Oh I have so many i don't know where to start. I was born and raised in eastern Europe in the 90's so my parents weren't really exposed to different cuisines or spices and this has cause some drama and confusion whenever my parents visit and I make them try something new.
My mom threw out my camembert cheese and then scolded me for a good 10 minutes about keeping "stinky, moldy, bad food " in the fridge.
My dad refuses to eat any vegetables that still have any crunch or sushi (even though he tried sushi and liked it... Eating raw fish is wrong??)
Black pepper is too spicy.
According to my dad avocados taste like "creamy dirt"
On the plus side they were mind blown by poached eggs and adequately cooked meat.
Hold on, avocados have taste? To me, they taste like creamy nothing... It might be because they are imported and not of best quality, but they need a lot of spices to taste like something
My mother in law makes substitutions that make even good recipes inedible. Adding wheat flour and almond extract to sugar cookies. Making my roasted chicken with lemon herb compound in butter, she used skinless chicken breasts, margarine, dry herbs and the plastic lemon 🍋 lemon juice. Then says “mine didn’t taste like yours” yea, no s**t Janet.
My mom does this too. I also think in her mind if something has the same colour as what she’s supposed to use, it’s fair game.
I was cooking once and had some powdered turmeric on the counter. My young son asked me why I was putting 'cheese' in the dish. That was the moment I realized I'd served him Kraft mac 'n' cheese one too many times...
Ordered takeout last night with my in-laws. There was a salmon ciabatta sandwich with a dill mayo on it and my father-in-law asked me what dill mayo was and wondered if it was some kind of pickle flavored mayo. I said no, it’s just mayo seasoned presumably with some fresh dill weed. This man is 70 years old and had no idea dill weed is a herb/spice! I pulled some dry dill weed out of my spice cabinet to show him because he had never heard of it before.
On one visit, my Mom threw out 2 six-packs of Hefeweizen because the bottles were cloudy and had sediment.
Your mother took it upon herself to throw out things in your refrigerator without discussing it with you???
Went to visit my uncle a few years back and made some slow cooker beans (with pork) which everyone loved and asked me to make again. Later, on the drive to the store with my aunt, I mentioned wanting to get some smoked pork hocks and she immediately started telling me all the reasons why pork isn’t good for your health (I honestly didn’t know she didn’t eat pork sauce the rest of my family does).
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she’d just scarfed down two bowls of porky beans the night before. Now, I make sure to tell her repeatedly when something I cooked contains pork.
This is the aunts fault. She should have asked what was in it if she didn't know.
My dad refused to eat raw veggies and dip until I renamed it “crudités”.
I made Christmas dinner once and my sister deemed the ham trash because "You didn't take the bone out. Gordon Ramsay would've" I got deemed unfit for next Christmas dinner so she took care of it. She cooked a tube of deli ham instead. I used hand shredded cheese for a casserole and she complain it was too cheesy cause it was melted too much. She's the only family I got left so it's kinda hard to not cook for her. She's so randomly picky.
My mom’s side of the family is full of passionate, talented professional and home cooks.
My dad’s side of the family puts under-seasoned ground meat, cheddar, and KETCHUP on a tortilla and calls it a taco
There's a German lady with a cooking channel on YouTube. Most of the stuff she makes looks pretty good, but occasionally I'll see her add sliced avocado to a dish . . . and then put ketchup on it. I cringe every time.
My dad loves cocktail shrimp served in those little plastic circle dishes from the grocery store and breaks them out wherever company is over. Thinking it's fancy, he calls it "Shrimp Circle".
This is an everyday occurrence. Me: Sautéing garlic and onions as I prepare to make an Italian dish. My dad: 'What the HELL is going ON here?!
Honestly, he would prefer I starve than 'stink the whole place up' with garlic and onions,
My friend considered himself a true connoisseur of whisky/whiskey/Scotch. I found out he keeps it in the fridge and drinks it cold. He was quite horrified when I suggested he try it at room temperature (or warmer, or with a splash of water added). Imagine my face when he eventually tried it and said ‘wow, the flavour is really coming through actually!’
He also made us dinner once by putting a frozen-solid chicken breast in a pot of plain boiling water. (I said nothing by the way as I was his guest, but yeah he considers himself a very decent home cook)
My Dad insists he can cook. All he knows how to do is chop things small and boil them. The Maillard reaction has never taken place in his kitchen.
No matter what cooking method he uses, it invariably comes out tasting like it was done in a slow cooker.
"the Maillard reaction has never taken place in his kitchen". LOL!
My parents went to New Orleans and ate at a Wendy's.
Ugh, this drives me nuts! Why travel at all if not to immerse yourself in the culture and cuisine of the area?
My dad will comment on and interfere with anything another person is doing in the kitchen. I have to kick him out. My aunt deals with it by giving him jobs like setting the table.
While I'm sure that can be annoying when you're cooking, I think it's nice that he stays "involved" instead of snoring in front of the television.
My dad hates the texture, and taste, of most vegetables. He passed this down to my brother and I, so my mom made awesome salsa- that was totally pureed. I was very confused by chunky salsa when I was old enough to notice it at other people's homes.
I was talking with someone recently who is a fully grown adult who never ate a mushroom. Will not eat an onion or pepper that hasn't been pureed, will not eat 95% of all the fabulous herbs and spices in the world. Makes me very unhappy to think about living such a bland life.
I brought a bottle of red wine to my cousin’s house. She immediately put it in the fridge.
I've read in different places: red wine in the fridge 15 minutes before serving, white wine the opposite
One of my aunts has a dish she calls Barbecue Ham. I will share the recipe with you:
1. Put several packs of pressed ham cold cuts, one sliced onion, and a bottle of KC Masterpiece in a crockpot and cook on high for 4 hours.
2. Serve on wonderbread.
My mom and I always find excuses to miss the family reunion potlucks.
Growing up, we always knew my mom's turkey burgers were done when the smoke alarm went off.
My mother, to this day, still raves about how fabulous the food at my grandparents' retirement community brunches was. Everything was overcooked and under-seasoned, just how she cooks at home.
Overcooked and underseasoned. Yum yum. You're making my mouth water.
My folks took a cruise overseas many years ago. They were seated with 8 other people at the dinner table. After one meal, a cheese platter was served. One of the diners, apparently from Arkansas or somewhere similar, asked my Dad what all that 'stuff was'. He said it was different kinds of cheese and identified each one for the guy. His response? " Dang, there Really IS other cheese than Velveeta"?
This has to be an urban myth. A true story from a friend of a friend, right?
My MIL puts a packet of Lipton’s dry onion soup mix in everything she makes. Every dish! Rice, mashed potatoes, taco meat. It’s the only thing consistent about her cooking.
I only use dry onion soup to make dip, if I'm i a hurry. But if I have time, I much prefer fresh chives, parsley, garlic and shallots.
Once watched my wife's grandma dice an onion by slicing rounds, like you might do for burgers, then peeling the slices, then go through and dice it. All with a steak knife.
My friend throws things in to bake a cake & thinks it’s like cooking where you go with your heart & do as you feel like & add a bit of this & a bit of that.
One day she said she doesn’t understand why her stuff doesn’t come out well. She was completely shocked & didn’t seem to believe me when I said baking needs a recipe following on the whole & some rules obeying for it to succeed as it’s a science & can’t be treated like cooking.
My aunt buys takeaway fried chicken & fries it again at home before serving it to her family because she says the outside is too dry & not oily enough.
A relative deep fries things & then puts it in the air fryer to make it less oily.
I learned that baking is chemistry - need the right formula (recipe) to get it right. Cooking is a rough plan that can be switched up.
My MIL and FIL have a standardised set of three (3) dishes that they make. Dry, overcooked roast with overcooked potatoes and carrots. Oven-roasted chicken thighs, rice and powder-bernaise. Grilled sausages with lettuce. That's it.
My stepfather is an absolute toddler about food. A literal 60-year-old man who still throws tantrums when my mom doesn't make him what he wants for dinner...
One of his normal practices is to eat slices of white American cheese straight from the packages. Sometimes he just takes slices out of the package and stuffs them in his mouth. He spent all of last summer insisting that every pack of cheese my mom got was 'bad,' but they were all totally fine. Our conclusion? We think that for the first time in his life, he actually smelled the cheese before inhaling it.
"One of his normal practices is to eat slices of white American cheese straight from the packages. Sometimes he just takes slices out of the package and stuffs them in his mouth." Doesn't everybody? The individually wrapped slices also make good bookmarks.
My dad’s mom boiled steak in a cast iron skillet. She caught an empty cast iron on fire and scorched the kitchen ceiling.
My FIL bought a precooked Honeybaked ham one year.
To reheat it, he put it in the oven at 350 for at least an hour.
The Sahara desert of ham. Gods it was dry.
My ex-MIL told me adding salt to water made it take longer to boil, and that putting a metal spoon in hot water made the water hotter, not cooler. Not a big believer in science, that one.
My partner met my grandparents for the first time who are Mauritian Chinese. They’d cooked a pigs trotters stew (amongst other things). My mrs took a bite, not realising they had bones in…not sure if it was impolite to spit the bones out, she swallowed them.
On the other hand, I’ve been offered “food” once at her family’s place. It was what they called a “pizza bagel” - a cold bagel, with tomato purée and a slice of plastic cheese on it…
My mother-in-law proudly makes this one very specific chunky salsa...that has raw diced carrots in it. I have no idea where she got that recipe from, but it's bland, watery, and WAY too crunchy.
I had salsa once that people bragged on. The only thing I could taste was chili powder. Not good. I don't mind heat, but salsa should not taste strongly from chili powder.
I brought my mom and niece to a nice restaurant in Boston, interpreted the menu for them (it was in Spanish, I could make out most of it). We played it safe but also ordered a few new things for them to try (adventure in food and culture is important for kids). My mom SCREAMED “ew gross” like a child in the middle of the crowded dining room when I said there are anchovies on the Cesar salad as they were delivering them to the table. She thought that meant caviar.
My mother-in-law cuts every single vegetable up with a paring knife. It's horrible watching her struggle to cut large items (like potatoes and onions), but she just sits there and insists that 'A small knife makes it go faster.' Then again, she also boils chicken in water in the microwave and eats it, so...
A paring knife is safer. Good for 1001 uses, such as getting the glue out of a tube when it's gone solid at the nozzle.
My brother and his wife had this huge house with an amazing kitchen. Nice layout, all the fancy stuff. They never used it. Well, they used the horizontal surface of the island and counters, but not one meal was cooked in that kitchen. Their kids were raised on take out food.
Quote from TV show. "Oh, is that your kitchen", "I don't know, I've never used it".
Ohh that's bad. My mom said cooking the turkey on Thanksgiving day was too much work along with hosting. So she cooked the bird weeks in advance, carved it and froze it. Mmmmkay
My mum will buy and eat any substitution food she can because she believes it’s healthier, even if it’s specifically made for people with food intolerances (like gluten free bread) or religious reasons (like lamb bacon she got from a halal butcher). Mung bean pasta, cashew nut pesto, cannellini bean hummus, it goes on and on and I find it very confusing
My mom once made butternut squash soup, it was very bland so when I asked her what was in it, she said it was just butternut squash roasted and blended - not even any salt. When I asked her if she considered adding anything like seasoning or garlic, she said she prefers it to just be butternut squash
But…did you put Christmas tree needles in your olive oil?
When my dad makes cheese sauce, he adds milk, then a few tablespoons of flour and butter. Then, he adds a chunk of cheese, not grated just a full chunk of cheese in. Once melted, if it hasn't thickened enough he will add a tablespoon or two of cornflour (cornstarch) to seal the deal. Tastes bland, has the texture of a chunky paste.
“I think there’s weevils in your pumpkin”, from father commenting on a carrot and caraway seed purée.
My family calls everything small and in large quantities rice. Quinoa? Rice. Couscous? Rice.
I guess it’s only two things, but it’s still weird.
I used to date a girl who called all birds, "chickens." Pigeon? Chicken. Dove? Hey, little chicken!
My uncle had a bunch of dried herbs that were at least 7 years past their best by date and he absolutely refused to throw them away. Just add sawdust to your food at that point.
Honestly, I'm amazed that my grandfather never got food poisoning. He'd frequently leave soup out on the stove for days on end — just heating it back up when he was hungry and letting it cool down for hours, or even days, before heating it up again. In the winter, he'd store food outside instead of in the refrigerator since it was 'free' to cool it down...except he'd continue to do this until it was in the 50s.
Leaving a pot of soup out and reheating isn't actually a health hazard per se, as long as it's covered and properly reheated every time. This was actually common for centuries, known as pottage, where new ingredients could be added each day but only rarely would the pot be emptied and started from scratch.
Thankfully, nobody mentioned my mother's speciality. Some people throw out leftovers, my mother wasn't one of those people. All leftovers ended up in meatballs, which tasted disgusting. It wasn't until my second wife, 20 years later, cooked meatballs that I realised that they could taste delicious if done properly. Ditto with omelettes.
There's nothing wrong with using leftovers as such, but I guess it all depends on what you do with them. One of my most favourite meals as a kid was bubble and squeak.
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The audacity of just throwing away something from someone else's fridge without asking! Just no.
My grandma used to have her sister's come down with their families every summer and her younger sister would do the same thing. She'd throw stuff out, replace it with stuff no one liked, throw full sticks of butter into a pot my grandma was cooking when no one was looking. Couldn't see a problem with it at all. Not until her son got married and her daughter in law did the same thing to her (specifically to teach her a lesson) she still adds butter to everything but at least now its on her own plate. And she brings a cooler when she comes down for all her "better than yours" food. Lol
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My grandma would cook a great big baked ham at Easter and then leave it sitting out on the counter for the next two days just slicing off it for sandwiches, and the cat would go have a nibble on it here and there. She’d make beautiful thick sandwiches for our 5 hour drive home day or two later and we’d toss ‘‘em out halfway home and get something at a truck stop diner. Really tho, she lived to 91 and I can’t remember her ever being real sick with anything.
Her immune system was like The Hulk's from sharing her food with the cat
Load More Replies... Thankfully, nobody mentioned my mother's speciality. Some people throw out leftovers, my mother wasn't one of those people. All leftovers ended up in meatballs, which tasted disgusting. It wasn't until my second wife, 20 years later, cooked meatballs that I realised that they could taste delicious if done properly. Ditto with omelettes.
There's nothing wrong with using leftovers as such, but I guess it all depends on what you do with them. One of my most favourite meals as a kid was bubble and squeak.
Load More Replies... The audacity of just throwing away something from someone else's fridge without asking! Just no.
My grandma used to have her sister's come down with their families every summer and her younger sister would do the same thing. She'd throw stuff out, replace it with stuff no one liked, throw full sticks of butter into a pot my grandma was cooking when no one was looking. Couldn't see a problem with it at all. Not until her son got married and her daughter in law did the same thing to her (specifically to teach her a lesson) she still adds butter to everything but at least now its on her own plate. And she brings a cooler when she comes down for all her "better than yours" food. Lol
Load More Replies... My grandma would cook a great big baked ham at Easter and then leave it sitting out on the counter for the next two days just slicing off it for sandwiches, and the cat would go have a nibble on it here and there. She’d make beautiful thick sandwiches for our 5 hour drive home day or two later and we’d toss ‘‘em out halfway home and get something at a truck stop diner. Really tho, she lived to 91 and I can’t remember her ever being real sick with anything.
Her immune system was like The Hulk's from sharing her food with the cat
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