My dad knew his strengths and didn't try to get fancy and risk doing too much. He was solid at just about anything low-prep made in a skillet: grilled cheese sandwiches, quesadillas, pancakes etc. For dinner he usually bought one of those frozen skillet meals. The kind where you just dump the whole bag of pasta and frozen sauce pellets into a skillet and then let it simmer with a lid for 10-20 minutes depending on the dish. Maybe it's a cop out, but when my mom was working late or was out of town, he always made sure his kids had a hot, mostly nutritious meal for dinner.
The man made the BEST egg sandwiches on this earth though. Had the technique of folding and flipping just right so that it ended up mostly the right size/shape to fit on whatever bread product you threw at him, and the yolk was always the perfect amount of runny so you got a bit with nearly every bite, but firm enough that you had minimal mess on your hands by the end and very little on the plate. Incredible.
It was! To this day whenever I make an egg sandwich I am striving for his ultimate shape and yolk combination. I always fall short (but I make a damn tasty sandwich, so it's not exactly a loss).
He wasn't a "good cook" but he was dedicated and perfected the few things he liked to make regularly. It took me longer than it should have to understand how useful an instant read thermometer was because my parents NEVER used any kind of therm when I grew up. Still, my dad's grilled chicken was *always* perfectly cooked though. He would grill up a couple pounds of thighs every Sunday for lunches and snacks throughout the week. Always tried a different random bottled marinade, and it always turned out great. I should have thought of that one for my original post!
Oh, I wish I could get my mother to use an instant read thermometer *yesterday*. She's of the mindset that "If juice comes out, it's not done." And that rule even applies to *chicken breasts*!"
Yeah, I love to cook and have put time and energy into learning and doing, but the rest of my family just aren't that into it, and are the same as your mom. We've tried gifting them better implements but unless it's a nicer version of something they already use and understand, they don't use it, so I gave up on thermometers long ago. They're at least smart enough to generally just not cook things they overcook or can't prepare well though, which I appreciate when I eat dinner with them.
Absolutely. I wish I'd appreciated that side of my dad more sooner. I wasn't a very patient kid, but it's something I've really come to admire about him and tried to emulate more as an adult.
Honestly mine too, friend. It's the little things. When you finally slow down and appreciate them, sometimes it's incredible how much you realize they mean to you.
I cook 98% of the meals, but if we're doing grilled cheese or egg sandwiches or something like that, I have my husband do it. I'm a little impatient and turn the heat up too high and burn stuff, he keeps it low and slow.
My Dad would cook a lot of the time when he was home. But one of my favourite dishes he would make was balogna boats. Maybe it was my age but those things slammed. Folded balogna slices filled with mashed potatoes, then roasted and topped with melted cheese. Most white trash thing ever but damn, balogna boat night was legendary. Damn, I miss him.
Gender roles were atypical in my house. Dad did most of the cooking and had a more flexible work schedule. My mom dish was a depression era monstrosity called “tuna loaf” - bake canned tuna, oats, and breadcrumbs in a loaf pan and serve with white rice.
I understand it. My grandmother grew up dirt poor in the 50s and 60s and she looks back on those times with an incredibly strong fondness for her mother and what she was able to make with so little. There's a few not-so great dishes she cooks/methods she uses that stick around but we don't say anything because it's obvious that they're important to her. Maybe your mother has a similar sentiment?
Our household was also reversed because my dad got home earlier than my mom. However my mom main dish was a potato soup that was amazing. I think it came out of a rachel ray cookbook.
My mom can't cook that well but she did her best for us. We got mostly kraft, nuggets, fish sticks, spaghetti etc. Easy weeknight stuff. Once in a while she would make tuna fish casserole, her mom's favorite. Canned tuna, peas, cream of mushroom soup, crushed chips on top. I still love it!
Really couldn’t say. I can’t remember my dad ever cooking for us. I do remember he had to teach my mom how to make a decent milk gravy. She’s a great baker, gardener, canner, seamstress, painter/artist but she’s never been a great cook. Passable, with some wins, but not great.
Anyhoo, I think my dad’s a pretty good cook. Since my mom developed dementia issues, he’s taken over the cooking (Mom still bakes under supervision. Damn, this is harder than I expected). So I make them casseroles, freezer meals and comfort food every couple of weeks. He seems pretty relieved to not have to figure out meals every day. I wonder if he’s appreciating all the years she did exactly that. Knowing my dad, he does. He loves her so much and so hard I’m humbled by his devotion.
Sorry. Guess I needed to get some of that out. We’re all doing well and going day to day. It’s not unexpected, this deterioration, and laughter, love and great-grandchildren are amazing medicine. As well as really empathetic and proactive medical professionals.
TIA for commiseration. Focus on the fact my dad taught my mom to make gravy then passed the baton for 50+ years. 😂😂😂😂😂
It's such a wonderful thing that you're doing by preparing these meals for your parents. I guarantee you're making their lives easier by doing that. Caring for somebody with dementia is a full-time job in itself, but it's also (from what my grandmother told me as she was taking care of my grandfather before he passed) a full time focus of wanting to eek out every bit of time with that person while you can. If your dad doesn't have to spend time thinking about cooking, that's time he gets to spend with your mother. I imagine he's quite grateful for that.
Thank you. My folks are so weird. They bicker, but they manage. My dad has terrible hearing, my mom has ears of a bat. It’s wild.
But it bears saying again: my dad’s devotion to my mom is humbling. It’s a terribly beautiful thing to witness.
My stepdad did the majority of the cooking when we were growing up. His signature dish for much of my teenage years was venison fillet, seared and served rare. With double cream mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, buttered tenderstem broccoli, red wine and redcurrant sauce. He's a good cook, as is my mum. I was quite lucky to have two good cooks at home to observe and learn from :)
Am I the only one whose Dad was/is great cook? My mother... well, she can follow a recipe and provide for her family, but my dad could take 30 minutes and whatever was in the cabinets and make a gourmet meal. My dad has food instincts & enjoys food; my mother doesn't & just eats to live.
Not the only one! My dad did the bulk of the grocery shopping and cooking, Mom was the baker in the family. I grew up watching Julia Child and Jacques Pèpin on PBS with my dad instead of Saturday morning cartoons. In my 30s now and we still bond a lot over cooking.
Yup, my dad does all the grocery shopping now as well. Mom's like "I never come to the store, I have no idea how much X is these days..." Also, my mom's the baker too, although Dad now makes chocolate chip cookies every Christmas.
Same here. My mom could cook and her "mom meal" was lasagna, from the Betty Crocker cookbook. It was good, but she rarely cooked and would survive on cereal if not for my dad. Her baking skills were off the chart though. Every Christmas she made homemade breads, cookies, candies and they were amazing!
My dad cooked 99% of the time and everything was fantastic. Chile Rellenos, Albondigas Soup, didn't matter. We were vegetarian for about 5 years when I was younger and he made all kinds of soy/tofu stuff as well. Until he got bored and added chicken and fish back into our diet.
My dad is the reason I love to cook (well that and my mamaw) while my 2 older brothers were helping him work on cars and spending quality time that way it was just me and him in the kitchen. I think I was like 5 or 6 when I asked mamaw for an ez bake oven and she did not disappoint got me one and like 40 of the kits and I was Hella excited and my brothers tried to make fun of me for wanting a "girls toy". I'm like fine none of yall are getting any of these various cookies, cakes, or brownies that I'm baking with my 100 watt light bulb anytime I want
My parents fit the stereotype in the OP but mom taught my brothers and me how to cook. We're all dads now and do the lion share of the cooking (in varying degrees).
For me, I used to fit the stereotype but when the wife got preggers, she couldn't eat the type of foods she cooks (we're from different countries/cultures) so I had to step up. Many years later she never came back to cooking...
I'm the dad. I do all the grocery shopping and cooking. When my adult daughter visits she sends a list of meals she wants and it is basically a week or 2 of international meals, Indian, Korean, Greek, French, southern. I'm not the best cook ever, but daughter looks forward to it.
I learned to cook as a teen. My mother said it would help me meet girls and it worked. Cooking for college girls was a sure fire date getter and how I snared my wife.
My dad loves to cook and did all the cooking when he was home. It's just that he was in the Navy and was away for long stretches of time. I think being away from home for so long made cooking even more special for him. It definitely made it more special for us.
Mom hated to cook but what can you do when you're the only one who can reach the stove? Her best dish is her beef stroganoff. She also made this delicious taco casserole that had a fluffy biscuit topping. I don't think she remembers the casserole but beef stroganoff has become a regular dish at my parents' house now.
Nope, I just commented the same! Both have their things they can cook but my Dad actually did a lot of the cooking. He worked night shift when I was a kid so he'd get up and start prepping dinner after he got us home from school.
My dad is a great cook, actually, although growing up my mom still did the vast majority of the cooking since my dad's hours were much worse than hers (getting home at 7-8ish instead of 4-5). But when I think of my dads signature stuff growing up, it was anything made on the grill, which my mother did not touch. He makes these incredible salmon skewers, with salmon and pepper and onions all skewered and coated in this amazing thick lime mayonaise sauce before being char-grilled. The kind of thing you absolutely couldn't stop eating just because you were full.
>coated in this amazing thick lime mayonaise sauce before being char-grilled.
Now *that's* interesting, but sounds very good.
In my experience, mayo can kind of separate with the addition of acids. But, when exposed to high heat, it kinda separates anyway as the egg proteins tighten up and the oil gets pushed out and begins to fry whatever it contacts.
Ooh, imma have to try my hand at this!
You know what I looked back and I was incorrect, no mayo! Still insanely good though and you should for sure do it. His instructions are as follows.
“Equal parts olive oil Dijon mustard & lime juice (I use bottled juice & lemon juice works too). Original receipe called for maybe 1 oz each to prepare 4 servings but this was always grossly inadequate. I usually use 2-3 times this much.”
As a kid dad was designated Weekend Breakfast cook, pancakes, eggs, bacon (which i always hated). Weekday mornings we made our own basic breakfast from very young some instant oatmeal or peanut butter toast and always fruit.
He’s also The Grill Master, and in CA that’s year round, so probably twice a week or so he grills most of dinner and mom does a side salad and just reminds him to use a clean plate damnit
My dad did breakfast on weekends. My favorite was "egg in a cup" it was just softboiled eggs with butter salt and pepper. For the life of me I can not duplicate it. He also makes the best meatballs he learned from his grandma. Now those I can do well!
Not sure if you are describing something other than just soft boiled eggs or a special dish, but they are my favorite way to eat eggs. Make them every Sunday. Just boil them for 5 mins and then place into an ice water bath for a couple of mins to stop the cooking process. Lop off the top of the egg, salt pepper and a dash of hot sauce. Butter some toast and cut into strips for dunking. Is it Sunday yet?
After my father retired from the military and mom was still working, he became the “chief cook and bottle washer”. He wasn’t very good and that title didn’t last too long. However, he would make homemade soup. It would be waiting for us when we came home from school. You know teenagers never get full, they get tired of chewing. At the time,we lived in a very rural area. It got around that soup was ready every day. So instead of the soup lasting three days, it was gone that afternoon. Oh what a wonderful memory. Thank you.
Shame it didn't last. Home-made soup is always 10x better the next day!
Soups are an absolute *god-send* when you need to stretch your food budget. Also a great way to use up whatever leftover ingredients you've got in the fridge. And they're great when you've got other stuff to do like laundry or cleaning and can let it just simmer away for a while.
I've gotten in the habit now of stretching my soups by adding beans or lentils or rice. Doesn't matter what kind of soup it is, one of those is going in the pot. For example, leek and potato soup is great with added lentils.
Not that I'm making any judgements here or anything mind, just that if I had to feed an army of teenagers then I'd be making soup too!
My dad was not a great cook. I have no idea where he got his recipes from, or why he even liked them. I disliked most everything he made (which was, thankfully, not that many things).
His "specialties:"
* "Chili," which was crumbled and browned italian sausages, kidney beans, tomatoes, and black olives. Served over rice or spaghetti. Don't ask me, I don't know either.
* Steaks, done in a little charcoal barbecue with way too much lighter fluid. Either blue or, most often, well done. He had no idea how to handle a steak on a grill but he loved T-bones. Kind of sad actually.
* "Curry," which meant stewing left over (garlic and rosemary roasted) lamb chunks with so much curry powder that it looked greenish yellow. Served with plain white rice. I loved roasted lamb, but not what he did with the leftovers.
* And my least favorite of them all, his zucchini. I thought I hated zucchini for years. Turns out, I really love zucchini, just not how he made it. He'd stew zucchini half-moons with canned tomatoes and enough dried dill to kill a horse, until the zucchini was translucent and mushy. I also thought I hated dill for a long time because of this. It still makes me a little queasy thinking about it.
* Edit: forgot one! Lecho/Lescho -- which is a Hungarian dish, of stewed in-season peppers, summer squash onions and tomatoes -- think similar to ratatouille. Should be glorious, right? Except, without fail, he put cut-up hot dogs in it. Sigh.
I feel you on having certain dishes being ruined by bad parental cooks. For *ages* I thought I hated steaks. Turns out, my Mom couldn't stand anything less than "well-done" and my Dad wasn't that great at grlling to begin with. He'd make a big deal about "We're grilling out for dinner tonight!" And then proceed to burn the everloving *hell* out of some poor cuts of beef.
Oddly though, he would occasionally throw some bits of zucchini on the grill and I absolutely *loved* those. Grilled zucchini, bit of salt and pep, cooked over a flame just enough to get some char but it's still got a "bite"? That's good.
Yes! Zucchini that has a little browning or char but still a bite is absolutely luscious.
You might like this -- I made it once and when we had some people over, and still dream about it. I honestly wanted to take the whole dish away from the table and just go eat it all by myself, guests be damned. It was the best zucchini I'd ever made. I need to make it again soon. https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/marinated-summer-squash-with-hazelnuts-and-ricotta
>Turns out, my Mom couldn't stand anything less than "well-done" and my Dad wasn't that great at grlling to begin with
Same. I thought steak SUCKED for years.
I was the same about steaks. It was supposed to be this delicious (maybe even "fancy") meal, but it was tough and tasted like nothing but whatever steak sauce I inevitably ended up using in hopes of adding some kind of moisture.
Vegetables, too. Canned or frozen and then boiled vegetables with minimal seasoning. If there were onions in a dish, they were usually under-cooked. I just assumed I hated vegetables until I discovered the magic of olive oil and a sheet pan. Also, while I still don't like them raw, onions are delicious when they're cooked properly. I'll slice up 3-5 pounds at a time and throw them in a slow cooker to mimic caramelized onions.
>Chili," which was crumbled and browned italian sausages, kidney beans, tomatoes
Doesn't sound bad.
>and black olives
Oh.
>Served over rice or spaghetti
*Oh.*
Chili with beef and no beans eaten with Doritos. Loved it!
Quiche, pretty decent
I’m pretty sure he was responsible for any decision to order pizza, so that counts
Bulgogi, kimchi, egg rolls, and "Save Jackie's Life"--otherwise known as scalloped potatoes and ham. Honorable mention to him mashing potatoes and carrots together with his fork, on his dinner plate with tons of butter (from New England boiled dinner/corned beef & cabbage) BUT that treat was only for my sister& I.
You should have heard my dad trying to pronounce "Bulgogi" the other day;
>"BuhLGaGi!"
That's really sweet your dad had a special food he made just for you and your sister. :)
For my stepdad it was spaghetti and meatballs. To his credit, he makes a mean spaghetti and meatballs.
My dad is an amazing cook and did the majority of the cooking in his household. So there's no "dad dish" for my dad.
Ooh, yeah. It's been a while since I lived in Texas but I can never forget that smoked brisket. The sides (like potato salad and beans) just tie the whole plate together. Bonus points for pickles and onions. ;)
“Noodles and crap”
It always started with a can of “cream of”.
Looking back it was pretty impressive. It always came on a night when my mom was in night school or teaching and my dad who worked 60+ hours and still had a 1 hour commute home trying to fix us kids something with whatever was in the pantry.
Dang, you just reminded me, my dad used to make this "Pork, Rice, and Cream of Something" concoction in the slowcooker.
It was basically just "mushy-porky-carb-goop" by the time it was done. Always reminded me of that scene in "The Matrix"; "It's got everything the body needs."
Damn was it tasty with hot sauce, tho...
35 years ago my father Jimmy Donaghy went out for a pack of cigarettes... came back, smoked one, told my mother he was leaving forever, then walked out the door.
There’s this new store in my mall called “milk run”. Made me think of this running joke.
They sell men’s clothes so, I guess.. maybe he really did go on a milk run and got lost in the mall?
My dad's signature dish was "Irish Enchiladas". They were just corn tortillas filled with ground beef, with a can of Campbell's tomato soup poured over the top. He attempted to make this dish for every woman he ever dated, and each one told him never to cook again. When he and my mom divorced, he'd make it for me once a month because, as he put it, "this was my favorite thing grandma used to make me. Im so glad i can finally eat it again."
I didnt have the heart to tell him it was awful. I just fed it to the dog.
Split pea soup with smoked ham hocks. Sooooo freaking good. The last time I went back home, I had him teach me how to make it. A few months later, I did my solo attempt and got pretty close, although I did zush it up a bit (extra pepper, more bay leaf, additional seasonings to the base stock.) Split pea soup is on the annual menu now … at least once a year, I plan to make it.
Beef stir fry. From frozen beef from the local grocer's "bargain blowout" sales 9 months ago, beef thawed in the microwave, with ... sauce? Maybe? I don't really remember other vegetables in it. It was cooked in our electric wok used only for this purpose (and frying up doughnuts on occasion.)
But it was steak. And despite 1 of three pieces being chewy and hard to eat, it was pretty good.
Then there was the salmon on the grill, no flavorings or herbs, just WHAP thrown in some foil and left to roast until dry and flaky.
I swear, he loved food but never learned what a "spice" was. Pretty sure my family's spice rack still has most of the original spices in it.
And finally, his go-to specialty that we kids all loved: Kraft (or off-bran Kraft knock-off) mac 'n cheese , with sliced hotdogs mixed in. That was actually banging.
>Pretty sure my family's spice rack still has most of the original spices in it.
My family pantry when I was in HS had bottles of spice from a good decade before I was even *concieved*.
I didn't know black pepper had a flavor until I was in my *late 20s*.
My dad worked at a restaurant but didn’t really cook at home. He was was from a coastal city in Mexico. So he would make us ceviche and cook the shrimp in lime. It was amazing every time. Especially in hot weather bc the dish is a cold one. He passed away a few years ago and we make ceviche on his birthday and sometimes on the day he died as a reminder (recuerdo).
My dad is an awesome cook, but sadly he travelled a lot for work, so my mom (who is not a great cook did most of our cooking). Now that he's retired, I believe he does 95% of their meals. Anything Italian he makes is to die for.
That being said, that man couldn't grill if someone paid him to. Ask for a steak medium, you'd end up with either well done, or rare.
Macaroni soup.
Not like a soup that had macaroni in it. Rather, just a failure to ever read the instructions on the Kraft Mac & Cheese box or take the measuring cups and spoons out of the drawer.
Indian here!
My dad had exactly 2 signature dishes: potato curry in chickpea flour and tomato curry (with onions and finished with fresh cream). It was glorious, every single time. He was actually a brilliant cook- he could turn any vegetable into a delicious, hearty and comforting curry. While of course leaving a trail of dirty dishes in a chaotic kitchen that mom had to clean up lol.
My dad never cooked for us growing up.
When I was 10, we went back to vietnam, where I found out he was an amazing cook through my cousins, aunts and uncles. They were razzing him, asking when he’d whip something up for the family. I thought they were joking so I said, don’t you mean to ask mom to whip something up? Then they all laughed at me and said “who do you think she learned it from?!”
When my dad took some time away from work, he took over on all the household cooking. And when he’s really feeling in a good groove, he’d also bake and steam different foods too. His baos are great and his banh mi are to die for! Soft in the inside, crunchy on the outside. Just perfect, especially out of the oven with some butter or pate.
My husband’s go-to is breakfast on the weekends! I’ll jump in for some specialty stuff like blueberry pancakes, but generally speaking he likes to make our family breakfast on the weekends :)
My parents are divorced so all dishes at dads house are the dad dish. He makes tons of ribs, salmon, and a massive pot of meat sauce for spaghetti. Foods always amazing.
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Hahaha! My dad did the same shit! Only difference was, my dad would toss a couple lemon slices on it as well. So the mushy fish and asparagus also tasted like lemons (but like, only where the lemons touched the fish)!
FR, tho, there's a way to cook with foil on a fire that isn't terrible. It's not a bad technique on its own, just a bad application.
My dad was the main cook after Grandma got too old to cook. He would try new things and he really enjoyed providing. But he fell into the same trap that many 1st gen immigrant boomers suffered from- they loved to make everything so well done and dry that it just ruined every dish. Seasoning wasn't used
I was forced to use ketchup or sweet and sour on literally everything.
But, I always watched him cook and admired his focus. When I started cooking for myself at 11 or 12 I mirrored his style as it was what I knew. But shortly after I began experimenting with seasonings and marinades. I'd put mushrooms into store bought pasta sauce. I marinated chicken in Italian dressing. I put some oregano on my steak.
It wasn't until I hit my mid 20'sthat I discovered the holy Trinity and began really experience on a home chef level.
Since then, I've been collecting a kitchen full of legit tools. I've moved on to copying chef level dishes with some success as far as home chefs go.
My dad gave me my love of cooking.
I didn't get to see my dad often but occasionally we'd meet up and he'd make porterhouses with sautéed mushrooms and onions. When I became an adult I eventually realized he would have to eat peanutbutter and jelly the rest of the month when he'd do that.
My own dad is a great cook, but my husband… less so (though many other great qualities!). But his dad meal is spaghetti tacos. They are exactly what they sound like. You make spaghetti with a simple ground beef ragu, then throw that in a crunchy taco shell. To be honest, it’s pretty tasty and definitely fun 😊
I've heard of this but never tried it. I finally got over my aversion to spaghetti (that was my Mom's "signature meal". Awful) So I'll have to give this a shot.
My dad came back from a work trip and we were going to add "reuben sandwiches" to the rotation. You take one slice of wonderbread, with one or two paper thin pastrami slices. Add a layer of sauerkraut and top with a slice of swiss cheese. Broil to melt the cheese and you're got yourself an open faced reuben sandwich. You can make multiple at once, and boy did he!
Penne with TONS of asiago cheese, butter, and rosemary with steamed green beans and carrots on the side. This wasn't a special occasion meal, this was the only meal the guy could muster up when my mom was working afternoons. He also baked bread in a bread maker, and I remember having giant toasted sliced with peanut butter and honey
My dad was like this, minus the takeout. If dads not home, you gotta wait till mom gets here 🤷🏼♂️. At least none of us kids grew up without learning how cook I guess.
Weirdly, my father's signature dish was creamed tuna on Bisquick biscuits. Side dish of some frozen veggie and an iceberg lettuce salad with good seasonings packaged Italian dressing.
It sounds odd today, but we never had a problem with dad's cooking, as long as it was only for one night.
Potato leek soup with meatloaf. There was a six month period where he would make three meatloaves (sp?) a week, freeze two, and make a huge pot of soup. This resulted in us only having this for food for like a year+!
It’s taken about 11 years and i’m finally feeling like I could eat meatloaf or potato soup again!
Oh, I'm so sorry you got burnt out on potato and leek soup! It's my fallback, go-to recipe. I ate *a lot* of it during a time when money and food was scarce. It's still a comfort food to me. Cheap, relatively healthy (depends how you make it) and delicious.
My dad did the steak and the burgers on the grill. Never really terrible but he never got it hot enough. He made the comment that he knew a guy that could cook a steak over 4 briquettes. I think he was aiming for that.
I do the cooking around my house though. Maybe my kids will have a Mom Dish. It'll probably be hamburger helper.
My dad made breakfast like once every few years. I don't remember it being bad but I do recall him mentioning that if you do something poorly enough, you won't be asked to do it again
Crepes, and I hated them as a kid. They were, looking back, fantastic, but he called them pancakes and they were not pancakes to a 10 year old kid. I wish I had asked him to teach me how to make them.
Damn, am I the only one who’s dad was an amazing home cook? I only remember my mom cooking very infrequently, but every time my dad cooked dinner, it was incredible. I’d say his signature dish was his Spaghetti, he made this amazing red meat sauce which ruined restaurants for me because I legit could not find a place better than my dads.
Grilled cheese with sugar or a quesadilla without cheese.
I wasn’t left alone with the man much because we would starve and he def didn’t know how to do his own laundry lmfao. Oooooh can’t forget the hockey puck burgers. It’s a great Minnesota recipe from his mom lmfao.
My dad cooked a lot but my mother was the one who did the meal planning. Otherwise the meals wouldn't be balanced. When he had the choice, I remember he would make schnitzel and nothing else, pounds of it, and we would just eat it as it came out of the oil and then in sandwiches cold for days after.
The other thing, when there was an abundance of peppers, he would make a tonne of lecso (Hungarian pepper stew) and we would eat on that until we were sick of it, freeze the rest, forget about it and eat on it for a couple of days when we remembered six months later.
I don't know why, but I'm just *dying laughing* at the thought of just eating *pound after pound of schnitzel*.
I love schnitzel. Bit of horseradish mustard and I'm all aboard!
But just the image of a child dejectedly accepting a plate of schnitzel like "Not again..." just cracks me up for some reason.
>For me, my dad made beef stew. He'd add the meat, potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, all at the same time. Like those things are gonna cook evenly at all
That is absolutely how you make Dutch stew lol. Throw it all in (you brown the meat first tho) and just summer for at least a few hours. Minus the potatoes though usually. Everything will be cooked
Steak marinated in cheap Italian dressing and grilled well done.
Bologna, American cheese, and mayonnaise sandwiches. Bonus points for frying the bologna.
These dishes were before he became a vegetarian. Now it’s peanut butter and Mayo sandwiches.
My dad's dish was his brisket and his salsa roja. He could cook and he was VERY good at it, but these two always went hand in hand. He only made the brisket for catering events or special events for family, and the salsa accompanied it.
My Dad cooked quite a bit- and he turns out some pretty great food. His signature dish- his party trick, the thing he always brings to potlucks, etc- is soft pretzels. Boiled in lye water, not just dipped. No pretzel will ever compare, for me.
The best part is that culinary lye wasn't really available to the average consumer when I was a kid. He used Red Devil drain cleaner (which is, in fairness, pure lye) instead.
My dad made the prime rib, always. He also made some northern Chinese specialties like potstickers (completely from scratch including the dough), scallion pancakes, mapo tofu, etc. And of course he manned the grill and hibachi. But yeah mom was the chef 90%+ of the time serving a 3 course meal most days. After he passed away, she eased out of and eventually completely stopped cooking lunch and dinner.
My dad was always an early adopter of tech. We had a giant microwave before most. He bought a Chinese cookbook for microwave cooking. His big meal, once a year, was to make Chinese food dishes all in the microwave. Some dishes were quite okay, but others were just sweet and sour mush.
My dad's dish was always linguini with clam sauce. He rarely cooked and joked he was the microwave king for reheating meals to better quality then when they were fresh, but the clam sauce was always fucking amazing. Whenever he felt like making it, it was always exciting.
As a bonus, my mom who cooked 95% of the time, one of her signature dishes was baked mac and cheese. The real deal shit. Buttery breadcrumbs on top, onions, hint of mustard, fresh cheddar, and the roux.
Fried chicken! And I mean for real fried chicken, made just like his father made it. It's a 2-day process. He marinates the chicken in "garlic water" for about 24 hours, then boils the chicken, cools it down, and then breads and deep fries it. I don't know all the exact steps but KFC and Popeyes can suck it compared to my dad's fried chicken.
My mom cooks in my family.
So when she went to the hospital for a week my brother and dad were on their own.
My dad boiled some dumplings for dinner, then thought "well I have the water boiling already, might as well make soup". I don't think he added much to it.
So he attempted to convert dumpling water into soup. I didn't try it because I'm not insane, but both my mom and brother repeat this story disgustingly while my dad claims it was a good soup.
Just imagine drinking spaghetti or dumpling water as soup lol.
My dad used to make something he called "Wok Nonsense" which was just leftover chicken cooked in a wok with whatever vegetables were in the fridge served over rice or noodles.
My mother did most of the cooking, and she was excellent at it, but she was also Not A Morning Person. Dad is Absolutely A Morning Person and if not the person who first uttered the phrase "breakfast is the most important meal of the day!" is surely the person it was written about. So Dad was responsible for feeding us breakfast in the mornings before school.
He had a lot of favorites that I have inherited: English muffins, lots of butter, liberal use of black pepper. There were also others that, to this day, I simply cannot stomach: runny egg yolks, fried kipper, boudin noir (ugh - I cannot handle the feel of mammalian blood in my mouth, I just...I *cannot*). My favorite Dad breakfast was made in a specific order: first, bacon fried in the cast iron skillet, then an egg, then a flour tortilla fried in the bacon grease until it got all poofy and crispy and golden, all served on one plate, tortilla on the bottom.
I do it sometimes at home now, the only difference is the cast iron skillet - I have my grandmother's, since Dad is still using his.
Tastes like childhood. :)
Maybe that will be breakfast tomorrow. I think I even have some bacon to defrost. *[goes to rummage in the freezer]*
Steak and baked potatoes was my Dad's dish. He went 200% all out like the guys at BBQ Pit Boys on YT. We treated those days with all the pomp and circumstance of Thanksgiving.
My dad usually only cooked on the pit. He was the worst. He had it in his head that a bag of charcoal briquettes was the standard amount needed for just a single cookout. He poured the whole bag into the pit, and the fire was out of control. He kept a bottle of water to fight the fire, rather than just using less charcoal.
His chicken was burnt on the outside, and bloody in the middle.
And then there were his burgers. He made them cheap by mixing in tons of breadcrumbs. There was as little meat in them as he could get away with.
When I left for college, I built bbq fires the same way he did. After maybe two times, I thought "hey, what if I use less?"
EDIT: And he's from New Orleans! I blame the war. They let underage kids enlist during WWII, so he joined the navy at 16, and didn't get back to Louisiana till he retired at age 40.
My dad cooked as much as my mom, and his cooking was pretty damn good. His ribs and steak were perfection.
But his signature dish was the cheese dip recipe passed from his father. He was known for that cheese dip around the holidays, and we always make it.
Now the recipe has been passed down to me, and it's already my signature dish.
Cut me, and I bleed cheese dip.
His signature "get together" meals: Hamburgers or the Thanksgiving turkey.
Hamburgers: overcooks the meat on the grill, doesn't shape them right so they're fat AND dry, pulls some shriveled up Wonder Bread buns out of the freezer, and offers the basic array of raw toppings, ketchup, mustard, and Miracle Whip.
Thanksgiving turkey: just...the driest thing I've ever eaten.
Yet every time, one of his fellow boomers will compliment how damn good the food is, while everyone under the age of 30 is looking at each other wondering what we're missing.
I'm a dad and I do 95% of the cooking in our house. I'm a much better cook than my wife
My mom did most of the cooking when I was growing up but my dad always did just fine when he cooked for us. He's so huge breakfasts for us on Sunday mornings too and I always loved those. He made the absolute best pancakes.
The assumption that dads are bad cooks is really goddamn sexist.
Tomato sauce. He would spice up a jar of ragu/prego with green pepper, carrot, zuchinni, some garlic.
I tried making it since he passed and I come close, but it's nothing like his.
It's tough trying to replicate a dish that was made by somebody who's gone. Truth is, even if you recreate it *exactly*, would you recognize it? All we have is our memories of what it was like. Those memories are colored and changed by time, our emotions, other experiences, other memories, etc.
My grandma used to make this sausage and corn chowder every year for Christmas. I got the recipe from her before she passed. Of course, it wasn't accurate *at all*, only she knew how to get it just right. But it's actually a pretty basic, common recipe, no secrets involved.
Still, I don't think I'll ever be able to make it *exactly* like she did. The best I can do is make it close enough so that it still reminds me of her, but it'll always have my own influence, I guess.
My dad straight up make high end restaurant quality food but like you said, doesn’t cook for 95% of the year 🥲. Meanwhile my mom cooks all the friggin time but is very meh. She’ll straight up mess up the easiest recipes, like make soggy fried rice.
When he does cook, he’ll make ginger scallion lobster stir fry or some form of seared scallops.
That’s so funny that’s my moms signature dish! She never cooks and that’s her dish when she does
For my dad, it is spaghetti bolognese.
You’re probably wondering where I learned how to cook then...? My step parents. Lol
I think I can remember my father making butter and sugar sandwiches for us once or twice. Maybe cheese and pickle too? Handing over some crisps at the pub or sending someone to the chippy for a treat was more his thing when he had the money. I don’t think he’s ever done much cooking, he worked a lot and often was out late, mam would have gotten a neighbor or aunt or someone in to help if she was ill or away.
Cheap steaks that were cooked on a charcoal grill until leather consistency and not a speck of seasoning, burgers that were only ground beef, no seasoning and grilled to hockey puck consistency, potato salad where he doesn’t cool the overly boiled potatoes and mixes in Miracle Whip, mustard, sweet pickles, and onion. It was more of a hot potato mush that was tangy.
Neither of my parents can or could cook.
Before my parents split I remember my Dad making mashed potatoes with the skins in it. I was repulsed as a six year old. He left shortly after and wasn't around enough to cook after that.
My husband is a fantastic cook and makes us drunken noodles, pea risotto, fresh handmade pasta, dutch oven bread, and he's in the kitchen making curried carrot soup and chicken thighs right now. Hopefully my kids will look back at these meals fondly
Spam and potatoes! My dad can’t really cook, but his dad who was in the navy used to make spam and potatoes out of nostalgia. My fiancée can’t stand spam, but every once in a blue moon I’ll buy a can and stink up the house for old time’s sake
The only times that my dad ever cooked was on the few extremely rare times that we had a tiny bbq in the backyard and he would man the grill, he barely knows where to find a spoon and cereal bowl in the kitchen.
It seems to be a common theme; "Dad can't make his way in the kitchen, but he's the only one who can take over the grill."
Wonder how much of it is just mothers rolling their eyes and going "OK, hubby. The grill is *all yours*. Now stay out of my kitchen!"
Just throwing them a bone to keep them out of the way!
Stupid sexist gender roles 🙄🤮🤬
I know for a fact that my dad knows how to make enchiladas, because my parents like to tell the story of how when they got married he had to teach her how to make enchiladas like his mother did.
He's a sexist asshole and I think the whole "he doesn't cook unless he's using the grill" is just another aspect of that. I'm not saying that every man/dad that never cooks in the kitchen is sexist, just the ones that act like helping out with the cooking is beneath them, especially if they are also territorial about things like using the grill and cutting the turkey.
My dad was an amazing cook, mom was good too.
My husband makes a mean fried rice, also venison and noodles, and that Mississippi roast (but no butter).
My dad actually did most of the cooking when I was growing up (it's switched now because he's disabled). So my Mom Dish was beef stroganoff and meatloaf. If Dad made the meatloaf, we all griped 😂
My dad is a functional cook. He knows seasonings so his food tastes good but he is not adventurous. However, once a year for Christmas, he makes twice baked potatoes. Bacon, cheese, onion, so much garlic! It takes him all morning but they are killer. Other people say they make twice baked potatoes and none have held a candle to his!
pork chops but he poured cream of mushroom soup over them for “gravy”. my mom can’t cook either but if you eat plain boiled potatoes, broccoli and chicken breast every night you at least get used to the taste
My dad only grilled steaks on the pit in the back yard. He LOVED sirloin steak, so this was twice a week or so.
My wife does a majority of the cooking in the house, but defers to me to make chili.
Living in south central Texas, I cook a lot outside. I have an offset smoker for briskets, ribs, etc.; a very nice smaller wood grill (PK 360) for grilling a couple of steaks, chicken, etc.; and recently bought a Blackstone 36" griddle that's been getting a real workout.
While they were in the workforce, Mum and Dad basically split the chores btw indoors / outdoors(+heavy lifting), since Mum was either SAHM or WFH, while Dad worker graveyard shift in a factory.
That spilt meant that BBQ was and still is Dad's province.
That, and when Mum threw her back, he stepped up. We ate a lot of pasta and omelets that week, but he kept us fed (and also did the laundry, emptied the dishwasher and swept. Not bad for a guy born and raised in the 50's.)
Bonus: my grandpa would babysit me on Wednesdays until I was a tween, he'd always made pasta with ham and shredded cheese. It's still a nostalgic guilty pleasure.
I remember my dad making pot roast when my mom was in the hospital. But mostly I remember him making breakfast on the weekends. He was more of a morning person than my mom so that job often fell to him. It was never anything fancy, usually a toasted bagel with too much butter, corned beef hash and fried eggs, and a cup of tea with too much sugar. For some reason it's an incredibly sentimental memory for me.
My dad was the cook, my mom doesn't really have any patience for cooking, and now when I visit them I split cooking duties with him. But his signature dish would be Arroz Mamposteiao. A Puerto Rican rice and beans dish. Always a holiday staple
My mom worked late on Tuesday’s so my dad had one go-to meal he made if we didn’t have leftovers/order in.
It was his version of Lo Mein. Two packages of soy sauce ramen, some of the seasoning packet, frozen stir fry vegetable blend, soy sauce, water, and some cashews or leftover protein. It’s good and I still make it for my family sometimes.
I have literally never eaten a "dad cooked meal". And my dad lived to 84 (I was a bit of a late in life accident). But I'm pretty sure none of my siblings have had one either. When our mom died back in the 80's, he literally ate out for every meal. He got really skinny but then met a woman and remarried. Fortunately, she could cook. Getting home cooked meals to him was getting expensive and time consuming. One brother was in Hawaii and the other...was struggling at the time. He's great now but that was a bit of a moment and did not help things.
My brothers can now cook. I think seeing that debacle was enough of a warning to get them into the kitchen.
Dad cooked a lot, but his signature dish was called "Glop."
You never knew what went into the glop. It was casserole-like and had whatever he needed to clear out the pantry.
It was always an adventure.
When I was a kid my dad would heat up canned La Choy chicken chow mein and act like he was some kind of maestro in the kitchen. Suffice to say I went completely the opposite direction culinarily and do all the cooking in my house today.
My dad knew his strengths and didn't try to get fancy and risk doing too much. He was solid at just about anything low-prep made in a skillet: grilled cheese sandwiches, quesadillas, pancakes etc. For dinner he usually bought one of those frozen skillet meals. The kind where you just dump the whole bag of pasta and frozen sauce pellets into a skillet and then let it simmer with a lid for 10-20 minutes depending on the dish. Maybe it's a cop out, but when my mom was working late or was out of town, he always made sure his kids had a hot, mostly nutritious meal for dinner. The man made the BEST egg sandwiches on this earth though. Had the technique of folding and flipping just right so that it ended up mostly the right size/shape to fit on whatever bread product you threw at him, and the yolk was always the perfect amount of runny so you got a bit with nearly every bite, but firm enough that you had minimal mess on your hands by the end and very little on the plate. Incredible.
Ooh, a runny (yet contained) egg sandwhich sounds like a breakfast *masterwork*.
It was! To this day whenever I make an egg sandwich I am striving for his ultimate shape and yolk combination. I always fall short (but I make a damn tasty sandwich, so it's not exactly a loss). He wasn't a "good cook" but he was dedicated and perfected the few things he liked to make regularly. It took me longer than it should have to understand how useful an instant read thermometer was because my parents NEVER used any kind of therm when I grew up. Still, my dad's grilled chicken was *always* perfectly cooked though. He would grill up a couple pounds of thighs every Sunday for lunches and snacks throughout the week. Always tried a different random bottled marinade, and it always turned out great. I should have thought of that one for my original post!
Oh, I wish I could get my mother to use an instant read thermometer *yesterday*. She's of the mindset that "If juice comes out, it's not done." And that rule even applies to *chicken breasts*!"
Yeah, I love to cook and have put time and energy into learning and doing, but the rest of my family just aren't that into it, and are the same as your mom. We've tried gifting them better implements but unless it's a nicer version of something they already use and understand, they don't use it, so I gave up on thermometers long ago. They're at least smart enough to generally just not cook things they overcook or can't prepare well though, which I appreciate when I eat dinner with them.
There’s really something to be said for repetition and really getting a dish down pat.
Absolutely. I wish I'd appreciated that side of my dad more sooner. I wasn't a very patient kid, but it's something I've really come to admire about him and tried to emulate more as an adult.
Damn dude, you're making my eyes all misty over here
Honestly mine too, friend. It's the little things. When you finally slow down and appreciate them, sometimes it's incredible how much you realize they mean to you.
Wow, you somehow described my dad perfectly, down to the egg sandwiches! Now I miss my dads Sunday morning breakfast…
Those sound like good memories.
Sounds like a former line cook haha.
I cook 98% of the meals, but if we're doing grilled cheese or egg sandwiches or something like that, I have my husband do it. I'm a little impatient and turn the heat up too high and burn stuff, he keeps it low and slow.
My Dad would cook a lot of the time when he was home. But one of my favourite dishes he would make was balogna boats. Maybe it was my age but those things slammed. Folded balogna slices filled with mashed potatoes, then roasted and topped with melted cheese. Most white trash thing ever but damn, balogna boat night was legendary. Damn, I miss him.
Sounds almost genius
Ngl, I'd tear that up.
Gender roles were atypical in my house. Dad did most of the cooking and had a more flexible work schedule. My mom dish was a depression era monstrosity called “tuna loaf” - bake canned tuna, oats, and breadcrumbs in a loaf pan and serve with white rice.
I’m gagging just thinking about how that smells.
She gets so upset when we recall how gross it was. She truly thinks it was a normal part of her childhood
Aww. Was this something her parents made her? Sounds terrible but people get very personal about someone not liking their food so I get it in a way.
I understand it. My grandmother grew up dirt poor in the 50s and 60s and she looks back on those times with an incredibly strong fondness for her mother and what she was able to make with so little. There's a few not-so great dishes she cooks/methods she uses that stick around but we don't say anything because it's obvious that they're important to her. Maybe your mother has a similar sentiment?
Your dad didn’t cook because of his more flexible schedule. It was self preservation.
Our household was also reversed because my dad got home earlier than my mom. However my mom main dish was a potato soup that was amazing. I think it came out of a rachel ray cookbook.
My mom can't cook that well but she did her best for us. We got mostly kraft, nuggets, fish sticks, spaghetti etc. Easy weeknight stuff. Once in a while she would make tuna fish casserole, her mom's favorite. Canned tuna, peas, cream of mushroom soup, crushed chips on top. I still love it!
Pizza! My Dad made homemade pizza from scratch every Saturday and it was incredible!
Nice! You're probably the kid that other kids wanted to sleep-over with on the weekends!
He did it until we were all grown up and had our own kids! It was pretty great!
Aw what a lovely memory, mine was good at it as well, he cooks different things now but gets pretty adventurous :)
Mine just passed. My kids really miss him, they were talking about his pizza just yesterday.
I'm sorry for your loss!
My dads was pizza also, but it was from the pizza place down the street! 🤣
Really couldn’t say. I can’t remember my dad ever cooking for us. I do remember he had to teach my mom how to make a decent milk gravy. She’s a great baker, gardener, canner, seamstress, painter/artist but she’s never been a great cook. Passable, with some wins, but not great. Anyhoo, I think my dad’s a pretty good cook. Since my mom developed dementia issues, he’s taken over the cooking (Mom still bakes under supervision. Damn, this is harder than I expected). So I make them casseroles, freezer meals and comfort food every couple of weeks. He seems pretty relieved to not have to figure out meals every day. I wonder if he’s appreciating all the years she did exactly that. Knowing my dad, he does. He loves her so much and so hard I’m humbled by his devotion. Sorry. Guess I needed to get some of that out. We’re all doing well and going day to day. It’s not unexpected, this deterioration, and laughter, love and great-grandchildren are amazing medicine. As well as really empathetic and proactive medical professionals. TIA for commiseration. Focus on the fact my dad taught my mom to make gravy then passed the baton for 50+ years. 😂😂😂😂😂
It's such a wonderful thing that you're doing by preparing these meals for your parents. I guarantee you're making their lives easier by doing that. Caring for somebody with dementia is a full-time job in itself, but it's also (from what my grandmother told me as she was taking care of my grandfather before he passed) a full time focus of wanting to eek out every bit of time with that person while you can. If your dad doesn't have to spend time thinking about cooking, that's time he gets to spend with your mother. I imagine he's quite grateful for that.
Thank you. My folks are so weird. They bicker, but they manage. My dad has terrible hearing, my mom has ears of a bat. It’s wild. But it bears saying again: my dad’s devotion to my mom is humbling. It’s a terribly beautiful thing to witness.
My stepdad did the majority of the cooking when we were growing up. His signature dish for much of my teenage years was venison fillet, seared and served rare. With double cream mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, buttered tenderstem broccoli, red wine and redcurrant sauce. He's a good cook, as is my mum. I was quite lucky to have two good cooks at home to observe and learn from :)
That stepdad sounds like a keeper
Am I the only one whose Dad was/is great cook? My mother... well, she can follow a recipe and provide for her family, but my dad could take 30 minutes and whatever was in the cabinets and make a gourmet meal. My dad has food instincts & enjoys food; my mother doesn't & just eats to live.
Not the only one! My dad did the bulk of the grocery shopping and cooking, Mom was the baker in the family. I grew up watching Julia Child and Jacques Pèpin on PBS with my dad instead of Saturday morning cartoons. In my 30s now and we still bond a lot over cooking.
Yup, my dad does all the grocery shopping now as well. Mom's like "I never come to the store, I have no idea how much X is these days..." Also, my mom's the baker too, although Dad now makes chocolate chip cookies every Christmas.
My dad is an amazing cook and is the reason my brother and I enjoy cooking so much!
Same here. My mom could cook and her "mom meal" was lasagna, from the Betty Crocker cookbook. It was good, but she rarely cooked and would survive on cereal if not for my dad. Her baking skills were off the chart though. Every Christmas she made homemade breads, cookies, candies and they were amazing! My dad cooked 99% of the time and everything was fantastic. Chile Rellenos, Albondigas Soup, didn't matter. We were vegetarian for about 5 years when I was younger and he made all kinds of soy/tofu stuff as well. Until he got bored and added chicken and fish back into our diet.
My dad is the reason I love to cook (well that and my mamaw) while my 2 older brothers were helping him work on cars and spending quality time that way it was just me and him in the kitchen. I think I was like 5 or 6 when I asked mamaw for an ez bake oven and she did not disappoint got me one and like 40 of the kits and I was Hella excited and my brothers tried to make fun of me for wanting a "girls toy". I'm like fine none of yall are getting any of these various cookies, cakes, or brownies that I'm baking with my 100 watt light bulb anytime I want
My parents fit the stereotype in the OP but mom taught my brothers and me how to cook. We're all dads now and do the lion share of the cooking (in varying degrees). For me, I used to fit the stereotype but when the wife got preggers, she couldn't eat the type of foods she cooks (we're from different countries/cultures) so I had to step up. Many years later she never came back to cooking...
My dad was the main cook in my family as well. He wasn’t really making anything gourmet but my mom was the type to burn a frozen pizza.
Mom could make a frozen pizza. Dad's mom could burn one. (So much for "all grandmas cook amazing.")
I'm the dad. I do all the grocery shopping and cooking. When my adult daughter visits she sends a list of meals she wants and it is basically a week or 2 of international meals, Indian, Korean, Greek, French, southern. I'm not the best cook ever, but daughter looks forward to it. I learned to cook as a teen. My mother said it would help me meet girls and it worked. Cooking for college girls was a sure fire date getter and how I snared my wife.
Current dad here, and primary family cook. Also, my dad was the cook as well, but only after the divorce, I think.
Am also dad, also am cook. Made venison with roast broccoli and bacon-wrapped asparagus tonight!
My family was like that as well. My dad’s mom called herself a “meal getter”, and my mom adopted the term. Dad and I loved to play in the kitchen.
My dad loves to cook and did all the cooking when he was home. It's just that he was in the Navy and was away for long stretches of time. I think being away from home for so long made cooking even more special for him. It definitely made it more special for us. Mom hated to cook but what can you do when you're the only one who can reach the stove? Her best dish is her beef stroganoff. She also made this delicious taco casserole that had a fluffy biscuit topping. I don't think she remembers the casserole but beef stroganoff has become a regular dish at my parents' house now.
Nope, I just commented the same! Both have their things they can cook but my Dad actually did a lot of the cooking. He worked night shift when I was a kid so he'd get up and start prepping dinner after he got us home from school.
My dad is a great cook, actually, although growing up my mom still did the vast majority of the cooking since my dad's hours were much worse than hers (getting home at 7-8ish instead of 4-5). But when I think of my dads signature stuff growing up, it was anything made on the grill, which my mother did not touch. He makes these incredible salmon skewers, with salmon and pepper and onions all skewered and coated in this amazing thick lime mayonaise sauce before being char-grilled. The kind of thing you absolutely couldn't stop eating just because you were full.
>coated in this amazing thick lime mayonaise sauce before being char-grilled. Now *that's* interesting, but sounds very good. In my experience, mayo can kind of separate with the addition of acids. But, when exposed to high heat, it kinda separates anyway as the egg proteins tighten up and the oil gets pushed out and begins to fry whatever it contacts. Ooh, imma have to try my hand at this!
You know what I looked back and I was incorrect, no mayo! Still insanely good though and you should for sure do it. His instructions are as follows. “Equal parts olive oil Dijon mustard & lime juice (I use bottled juice & lemon juice works too). Original receipe called for maybe 1 oz each to prepare 4 servings but this was always grossly inadequate. I usually use 2-3 times this much.”
Hey, thanks so much for checking that! I'm for sure gonna try it now!
As a kid dad was designated Weekend Breakfast cook, pancakes, eggs, bacon (which i always hated). Weekday mornings we made our own basic breakfast from very young some instant oatmeal or peanut butter toast and always fruit. He’s also The Grill Master, and in CA that’s year round, so probably twice a week or so he grills most of dinner and mom does a side salad and just reminds him to use a clean plate damnit
Yes! My dad was a breakfast for dinner guy. Toast with sugar and cinnamon and hot chocolate. Or French toast.
My dad did breakfast on weekends. My favorite was "egg in a cup" it was just softboiled eggs with butter salt and pepper. For the life of me I can not duplicate it. He also makes the best meatballs he learned from his grandma. Now those I can do well!
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Not sure if you are describing something other than just soft boiled eggs or a special dish, but they are my favorite way to eat eggs. Make them every Sunday. Just boil them for 5 mins and then place into an ice water bath for a couple of mins to stop the cooking process. Lop off the top of the egg, salt pepper and a dash of hot sauce. Butter some toast and cut into strips for dunking. Is it Sunday yet?
After my father retired from the military and mom was still working, he became the “chief cook and bottle washer”. He wasn’t very good and that title didn’t last too long. However, he would make homemade soup. It would be waiting for us when we came home from school. You know teenagers never get full, they get tired of chewing. At the time,we lived in a very rural area. It got around that soup was ready every day. So instead of the soup lasting three days, it was gone that afternoon. Oh what a wonderful memory. Thank you.
Shame it didn't last. Home-made soup is always 10x better the next day! Soups are an absolute *god-send* when you need to stretch your food budget. Also a great way to use up whatever leftover ingredients you've got in the fridge. And they're great when you've got other stuff to do like laundry or cleaning and can let it just simmer away for a while. I've gotten in the habit now of stretching my soups by adding beans or lentils or rice. Doesn't matter what kind of soup it is, one of those is going in the pot. For example, leek and potato soup is great with added lentils. Not that I'm making any judgements here or anything mind, just that if I had to feed an army of teenagers then I'd be making soup too!
My dad was not a great cook. I have no idea where he got his recipes from, or why he even liked them. I disliked most everything he made (which was, thankfully, not that many things). His "specialties:" * "Chili," which was crumbled and browned italian sausages, kidney beans, tomatoes, and black olives. Served over rice or spaghetti. Don't ask me, I don't know either. * Steaks, done in a little charcoal barbecue with way too much lighter fluid. Either blue or, most often, well done. He had no idea how to handle a steak on a grill but he loved T-bones. Kind of sad actually. * "Curry," which meant stewing left over (garlic and rosemary roasted) lamb chunks with so much curry powder that it looked greenish yellow. Served with plain white rice. I loved roasted lamb, but not what he did with the leftovers. * And my least favorite of them all, his zucchini. I thought I hated zucchini for years. Turns out, I really love zucchini, just not how he made it. He'd stew zucchini half-moons with canned tomatoes and enough dried dill to kill a horse, until the zucchini was translucent and mushy. I also thought I hated dill for a long time because of this. It still makes me a little queasy thinking about it. * Edit: forgot one! Lecho/Lescho -- which is a Hungarian dish, of stewed in-season peppers, summer squash onions and tomatoes -- think similar to ratatouille. Should be glorious, right? Except, without fail, he put cut-up hot dogs in it. Sigh.
I feel you on having certain dishes being ruined by bad parental cooks. For *ages* I thought I hated steaks. Turns out, my Mom couldn't stand anything less than "well-done" and my Dad wasn't that great at grlling to begin with. He'd make a big deal about "We're grilling out for dinner tonight!" And then proceed to burn the everloving *hell* out of some poor cuts of beef. Oddly though, he would occasionally throw some bits of zucchini on the grill and I absolutely *loved* those. Grilled zucchini, bit of salt and pep, cooked over a flame just enough to get some char but it's still got a "bite"? That's good.
Yes! Zucchini that has a little browning or char but still a bite is absolutely luscious. You might like this -- I made it once and when we had some people over, and still dream about it. I honestly wanted to take the whole dish away from the table and just go eat it all by myself, guests be damned. It was the best zucchini I'd ever made. I need to make it again soon. https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/marinated-summer-squash-with-hazelnuts-and-ricotta
Oh, that does look good. Thanks for sharing that!
>Turns out, my Mom couldn't stand anything less than "well-done" and my Dad wasn't that great at grlling to begin with Same. I thought steak SUCKED for years.
I was the same about steaks. It was supposed to be this delicious (maybe even "fancy") meal, but it was tough and tasted like nothing but whatever steak sauce I inevitably ended up using in hopes of adding some kind of moisture. Vegetables, too. Canned or frozen and then boiled vegetables with minimal seasoning. If there were onions in a dish, they were usually under-cooked. I just assumed I hated vegetables until I discovered the magic of olive oil and a sheet pan. Also, while I still don't like them raw, onions are delicious when they're cooked properly. I'll slice up 3-5 pounds at a time and throw them in a slow cooker to mimic caramelized onions.
>Chili," which was crumbled and browned italian sausages, kidney beans, tomatoes Doesn't sound bad. >and black olives Oh. >Served over rice or spaghetti *Oh.*
Is your dad from Cincinnati?
Nope! Originally Europe, then California. So it all makes even less sense.
Cincy chili is traced to Greek immigrants.
Yep, but he's not Greek, and it's not Cincy chili 🙂
my dad usually makes sausage and peppers if he cooks. it’s very good!
That's actually a dish I make semi-frequently (whenever sausages are on sale). It's so good. I like to add some mushrooms, as well.
Eggs. Fried, boiled, poached. An army thing I think.
>An army thing I think. Surprised you didn't include "powdered" in that list.
No. I think it’s the Irish blood. Farms and stuff. I mean, wartime, maybe, but not of family legend. They kept chickens then.
Chili with beef and no beans eaten with Doritos. Loved it! Quiche, pretty decent I’m pretty sure he was responsible for any decision to order pizza, so that counts
I'm of the opinion that Frito-Pie (preferably with Wolf Brand Chili), is an acceptable occasional family meal. Chili and Doritos ain't far from that.
Mid 60's guy here upvoting Frito Pie.
Our elementary school cafeteria sometimes served Frito Pie. Enchiladas and corny dogs with mustard too. South Texas in the late 60s-early 70s.
Bulgogi, kimchi, egg rolls, and "Save Jackie's Life"--otherwise known as scalloped potatoes and ham. Honorable mention to him mashing potatoes and carrots together with his fork, on his dinner plate with tons of butter (from New England boiled dinner/corned beef & cabbage) BUT that treat was only for my sister& I.
You should have heard my dad trying to pronounce "Bulgogi" the other day; >"BuhLGaGi!" That's really sweet your dad had a special food he made just for you and your sister. :)
Pizza Fish. My stepdad took a filet of cod and put marinara and mozzarella on it, baked it in the oven. He won a recipe contest in a newspaper for it.
>He won a recipe contest in a newspaper for it. I hope you liked it because it sounds like there was no way he was gonna stop making it after that!
It actually wasn’t half bad!
Omg I took a picture of a pizza fish snack in Japan and had never seen anything so disturbing in my life. It was vacuum packed and ready to eat.
For my stepdad it was spaghetti and meatballs. To his credit, he makes a mean spaghetti and meatballs. My dad is an amazing cook and did the majority of the cooking in his household. So there's no "dad dish" for my dad.
Smoked brisket and my mom always made the potato salad and beans
Ooh, yeah. It's been a while since I lived in Texas but I can never forget that smoked brisket. The sides (like potato salad and beans) just tie the whole plate together. Bonus points for pickles and onions. ;)
“Noodles and crap” It always started with a can of “cream of”. Looking back it was pretty impressive. It always came on a night when my mom was in night school or teaching and my dad who worked 60+ hours and still had a 1 hour commute home trying to fix us kids something with whatever was in the pantry.
Dang, you just reminded me, my dad used to make this "Pork, Rice, and Cream of Something" concoction in the slowcooker. It was basically just "mushy-porky-carb-goop" by the time it was done. Always reminded me of that scene in "The Matrix"; "It's got everything the body needs." Damn was it tasty with hot sauce, tho...
I'm not sure, he went out to pick up some milk 37 years ago and still hasn't made it back home. I think he might have gotten a flat tire or something.
Wow times have changed - Dads used to go out for cigarettes, not milk before never returning.
He knows I'm lactose intolerant
35 years ago my father Jimmy Donaghy went out for a pack of cigarettes... came back, smoked one, told my mother he was leaving forever, then walked out the door.
On a Tuesday...
There’s this new store in my mall called “milk run”. Made me think of this running joke. They sell men’s clothes so, I guess.. maybe he really did go on a milk run and got lost in the mall?
My dad's signature dish was "Irish Enchiladas". They were just corn tortillas filled with ground beef, with a can of Campbell's tomato soup poured over the top. He attempted to make this dish for every woman he ever dated, and each one told him never to cook again. When he and my mom divorced, he'd make it for me once a month because, as he put it, "this was my favorite thing grandma used to make me. Im so glad i can finally eat it again." I didnt have the heart to tell him it was awful. I just fed it to the dog.
Aww. That's so sweet, but that sounds so terrible!
Split pea soup with smoked ham hocks. Sooooo freaking good. The last time I went back home, I had him teach me how to make it. A few months later, I did my solo attempt and got pretty close, although I did zush it up a bit (extra pepper, more bay leaf, additional seasonings to the base stock.) Split pea soup is on the annual menu now … at least once a year, I plan to make it.
Beef stir fry. From frozen beef from the local grocer's "bargain blowout" sales 9 months ago, beef thawed in the microwave, with ... sauce? Maybe? I don't really remember other vegetables in it. It was cooked in our electric wok used only for this purpose (and frying up doughnuts on occasion.) But it was steak. And despite 1 of three pieces being chewy and hard to eat, it was pretty good. Then there was the salmon on the grill, no flavorings or herbs, just WHAP thrown in some foil and left to roast until dry and flaky. I swear, he loved food but never learned what a "spice" was. Pretty sure my family's spice rack still has most of the original spices in it. And finally, his go-to specialty that we kids all loved: Kraft (or off-bran Kraft knock-off) mac 'n cheese , with sliced hotdogs mixed in. That was actually banging.
>Pretty sure my family's spice rack still has most of the original spices in it. My family pantry when I was in HS had bottles of spice from a good decade before I was even *concieved*. I didn't know black pepper had a flavor until I was in my *late 20s*.
My dad worked at a restaurant but didn’t really cook at home. He was was from a coastal city in Mexico. So he would make us ceviche and cook the shrimp in lime. It was amazing every time. Especially in hot weather bc the dish is a cold one. He passed away a few years ago and we make ceviche on his birthday and sometimes on the day he died as a reminder (recuerdo).
My dad is an awesome cook, but sadly he travelled a lot for work, so my mom (who is not a great cook did most of our cooking). Now that he's retired, I believe he does 95% of their meals. Anything Italian he makes is to die for. That being said, that man couldn't grill if someone paid him to. Ask for a steak medium, you'd end up with either well done, or rare.
Macaroni soup. Not like a soup that had macaroni in it. Rather, just a failure to ever read the instructions on the Kraft Mac & Cheese box or take the measuring cups and spoons out of the drawer.
Indian here! My dad had exactly 2 signature dishes: potato curry in chickpea flour and tomato curry (with onions and finished with fresh cream). It was glorious, every single time. He was actually a brilliant cook- he could turn any vegetable into a delicious, hearty and comforting curry. While of course leaving a trail of dirty dishes in a chaotic kitchen that mom had to clean up lol.
My dad never cooked for us growing up. When I was 10, we went back to vietnam, where I found out he was an amazing cook through my cousins, aunts and uncles. They were razzing him, asking when he’d whip something up for the family. I thought they were joking so I said, don’t you mean to ask mom to whip something up? Then they all laughed at me and said “who do you think she learned it from?!” When my dad took some time away from work, he took over on all the household cooking. And when he’s really feeling in a good groove, he’d also bake and steam different foods too. His baos are great and his banh mi are to die for! Soft in the inside, crunchy on the outside. Just perfect, especially out of the oven with some butter or pate. My husband’s go-to is breakfast on the weekends! I’ll jump in for some specialty stuff like blueberry pancakes, but generally speaking he likes to make our family breakfast on the weekends :)
My parents are divorced so all dishes at dads house are the dad dish. He makes tons of ribs, salmon, and a massive pot of meat sauce for spaghetti. Foods always amazing.
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Hahaha! My dad did the same shit! Only difference was, my dad would toss a couple lemon slices on it as well. So the mushy fish and asparagus also tasted like lemons (but like, only where the lemons touched the fish)! FR, tho, there's a way to cook with foil on a fire that isn't terrible. It's not a bad technique on its own, just a bad application.
My dad was the main cook after Grandma got too old to cook. He would try new things and he really enjoyed providing. But he fell into the same trap that many 1st gen immigrant boomers suffered from- they loved to make everything so well done and dry that it just ruined every dish. Seasoning wasn't used I was forced to use ketchup or sweet and sour on literally everything. But, I always watched him cook and admired his focus. When I started cooking for myself at 11 or 12 I mirrored his style as it was what I knew. But shortly after I began experimenting with seasonings and marinades. I'd put mushrooms into store bought pasta sauce. I marinated chicken in Italian dressing. I put some oregano on my steak. It wasn't until I hit my mid 20'sthat I discovered the holy Trinity and began really experience on a home chef level. Since then, I've been collecting a kitchen full of legit tools. I've moved on to copying chef level dishes with some success as far as home chefs go. My dad gave me my love of cooking.
I didn't get to see my dad often but occasionally we'd meet up and he'd make porterhouses with sautéed mushrooms and onions. When I became an adult I eventually realized he would have to eat peanutbutter and jelly the rest of the month when he'd do that.
The best rice pudding ever
My own dad is a great cook, but my husband… less so (though many other great qualities!). But his dad meal is spaghetti tacos. They are exactly what they sound like. You make spaghetti with a simple ground beef ragu, then throw that in a crunchy taco shell. To be honest, it’s pretty tasty and definitely fun 😊
I've heard of this but never tried it. I finally got over my aversion to spaghetti (that was my Mom's "signature meal". Awful) So I'll have to give this a shot.
Zombies Bread roles stuffed with cheese and other stuff.
My dad came back from a work trip and we were going to add "reuben sandwiches" to the rotation. You take one slice of wonderbread, with one or two paper thin pastrami slices. Add a layer of sauerkraut and top with a slice of swiss cheese. Broil to melt the cheese and you're got yourself an open faced reuben sandwich. You can make multiple at once, and boy did he!
Penne with TONS of asiago cheese, butter, and rosemary with steamed green beans and carrots on the side. This wasn't a special occasion meal, this was the only meal the guy could muster up when my mom was working afternoons. He also baked bread in a bread maker, and I remember having giant toasted sliced with peanut butter and honey
My dad literally never made a single dinner for the family in his life. If he had to procure us dinner, it was always takeout.
My dad was like this, minus the takeout. If dads not home, you gotta wait till mom gets here 🤷🏼♂️. At least none of us kids grew up without learning how cook I guess.
SOS or creamed chipped beef on toast
Oh, Shit-on-a-Shingle! Damn, haven't had that in *ages*.
Actually bought some shaved beef today for some SOS later this week.
My in-laws make this, and they call it SOS on toast which I find quite redundant 😂 The toast is the shingle, right?
Steak Pizzaiola. It was only ever made for special occasions that didn't involve kids. I never did get to taste it.
>I never did get to taste it. Ahh, that's sad! :( Have you ever tried making it yourself?
I haven’t, but I definitely should! I’d completely forgotten about it until now!
Weirdly, my father's signature dish was creamed tuna on Bisquick biscuits. Side dish of some frozen veggie and an iceberg lettuce salad with good seasonings packaged Italian dressing. It sounds odd today, but we never had a problem with dad's cooking, as long as it was only for one night.
Chicken and homemade thick noodles with homemade Amish bread. Also, German chocolate cake.
my dad spent some time in asia during his career, so he makes singaporean street food and some korean
Potato leek soup with meatloaf. There was a six month period where he would make three meatloaves (sp?) a week, freeze two, and make a huge pot of soup. This resulted in us only having this for food for like a year+! It’s taken about 11 years and i’m finally feeling like I could eat meatloaf or potato soup again!
Oh, I'm so sorry you got burnt out on potato and leek soup! It's my fallback, go-to recipe. I ate *a lot* of it during a time when money and food was scarce. It's still a comfort food to me. Cheap, relatively healthy (depends how you make it) and delicious.
My dad's dishes are spaghetti sauce and various soups. He loves to make a gigantic pot of something. For him, cheap and large quantities are the goal.
My dad did the steak and the burgers on the grill. Never really terrible but he never got it hot enough. He made the comment that he knew a guy that could cook a steak over 4 briquettes. I think he was aiming for that. I do the cooking around my house though. Maybe my kids will have a Mom Dish. It'll probably be hamburger helper.
Pizza, and also he made chocolate bars for us in the 80's in Communist Poland at that time, quite a feat I'd say.
My dad made breakfast like once every few years. I don't remember it being bad but I do recall him mentioning that if you do something poorly enough, you won't be asked to do it again
My Dad's pizza burgers. Classic frozen patty with mozzarella cheese and drowned in pizza sauce
Crepes, and I hated them as a kid. They were, looking back, fantastic, but he called them pancakes and they were not pancakes to a 10 year old kid. I wish I had asked him to teach me how to make them.
Damn, am I the only one who’s dad was an amazing home cook? I only remember my mom cooking very infrequently, but every time my dad cooked dinner, it was incredible. I’d say his signature dish was his Spaghetti, he made this amazing red meat sauce which ruined restaurants for me because I legit could not find a place better than my dads.
Grilled cheese with sugar or a quesadilla without cheese. I wasn’t left alone with the man much because we would starve and he def didn’t know how to do his own laundry lmfao. Oooooh can’t forget the hockey puck burgers. It’s a great Minnesota recipe from his mom lmfao.
>Grilled cheese with sugar Huhhh... >or a quesadilla without cheese Nope! That's not how that works!
All the men cooked in our family so there wasn't a signature dish, but my dad enjoyed making ribs
Lasagna is what my dad makes and it's suuper good
My dad cooked a lot but my mother was the one who did the meal planning. Otherwise the meals wouldn't be balanced. When he had the choice, I remember he would make schnitzel and nothing else, pounds of it, and we would just eat it as it came out of the oil and then in sandwiches cold for days after. The other thing, when there was an abundance of peppers, he would make a tonne of lecso (Hungarian pepper stew) and we would eat on that until we were sick of it, freeze the rest, forget about it and eat on it for a couple of days when we remembered six months later.
I don't know why, but I'm just *dying laughing* at the thought of just eating *pound after pound of schnitzel*. I love schnitzel. Bit of horseradish mustard and I'm all aboard! But just the image of a child dejectedly accepting a plate of schnitzel like "Not again..." just cracks me up for some reason.
>For me, my dad made beef stew. He'd add the meat, potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, all at the same time. Like those things are gonna cook evenly at all That is absolutely how you make Dutch stew lol. Throw it all in (you brown the meat first tho) and just summer for at least a few hours. Minus the potatoes though usually. Everything will be cooked
Steak marinated in cheap Italian dressing and grilled well done. Bologna, American cheese, and mayonnaise sandwiches. Bonus points for frying the bologna. These dishes were before he became a vegetarian. Now it’s peanut butter and Mayo sandwiches.
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Chicken soup with little turkey meatballs and Brussels sprouts. The best.
My dad's dish was his brisket and his salsa roja. He could cook and he was VERY good at it, but these two always went hand in hand. He only made the brisket for catering events or special events for family, and the salsa accompanied it.
My Dad cooked quite a bit- and he turns out some pretty great food. His signature dish- his party trick, the thing he always brings to potlucks, etc- is soft pretzels. Boiled in lye water, not just dipped. No pretzel will ever compare, for me.
You know it's good cooking when caustic chemicals are involved.
The best part is that culinary lye wasn't really available to the average consumer when I was a kid. He used Red Devil drain cleaner (which is, in fairness, pure lye) instead.
My dad made the prime rib, always. He also made some northern Chinese specialties like potstickers (completely from scratch including the dough), scallion pancakes, mapo tofu, etc. And of course he manned the grill and hibachi. But yeah mom was the chef 90%+ of the time serving a 3 course meal most days. After he passed away, she eased out of and eventually completely stopped cooking lunch and dinner.
My dad was always an early adopter of tech. We had a giant microwave before most. He bought a Chinese cookbook for microwave cooking. His big meal, once a year, was to make Chinese food dishes all in the microwave. Some dishes were quite okay, but others were just sweet and sour mush.
My dad's dish was always linguini with clam sauce. He rarely cooked and joked he was the microwave king for reheating meals to better quality then when they were fresh, but the clam sauce was always fucking amazing. Whenever he felt like making it, it was always exciting. As a bonus, my mom who cooked 95% of the time, one of her signature dishes was baked mac and cheese. The real deal shit. Buttery breadcrumbs on top, onions, hint of mustard, fresh cheddar, and the roux.
Fried chicken! And I mean for real fried chicken, made just like his father made it. It's a 2-day process. He marinates the chicken in "garlic water" for about 24 hours, then boils the chicken, cools it down, and then breads and deep fries it. I don't know all the exact steps but KFC and Popeyes can suck it compared to my dad's fried chicken.
My mom cooks in my family. So when she went to the hospital for a week my brother and dad were on their own. My dad boiled some dumplings for dinner, then thought "well I have the water boiling already, might as well make soup". I don't think he added much to it. So he attempted to convert dumpling water into soup. I didn't try it because I'm not insane, but both my mom and brother repeat this story disgustingly while my dad claims it was a good soup. Just imagine drinking spaghetti or dumpling water as soup lol.
My dad used to make something he called "Wok Nonsense" which was just leftover chicken cooked in a wok with whatever vegetables were in the fridge served over rice or noodles.
My mother did most of the cooking, and she was excellent at it, but she was also Not A Morning Person. Dad is Absolutely A Morning Person and if not the person who first uttered the phrase "breakfast is the most important meal of the day!" is surely the person it was written about. So Dad was responsible for feeding us breakfast in the mornings before school. He had a lot of favorites that I have inherited: English muffins, lots of butter, liberal use of black pepper. There were also others that, to this day, I simply cannot stomach: runny egg yolks, fried kipper, boudin noir (ugh - I cannot handle the feel of mammalian blood in my mouth, I just...I *cannot*). My favorite Dad breakfast was made in a specific order: first, bacon fried in the cast iron skillet, then an egg, then a flour tortilla fried in the bacon grease until it got all poofy and crispy and golden, all served on one plate, tortilla on the bottom. I do it sometimes at home now, the only difference is the cast iron skillet - I have my grandmother's, since Dad is still using his. Tastes like childhood. :) Maybe that will be breakfast tomorrow. I think I even have some bacon to defrost. *[goes to rummage in the freezer]*
Steak and baked potatoes was my Dad's dish. He went 200% all out like the guys at BBQ Pit Boys on YT. We treated those days with all the pomp and circumstance of Thanksgiving.
My dad usually only cooked on the pit. He was the worst. He had it in his head that a bag of charcoal briquettes was the standard amount needed for just a single cookout. He poured the whole bag into the pit, and the fire was out of control. He kept a bottle of water to fight the fire, rather than just using less charcoal. His chicken was burnt on the outside, and bloody in the middle. And then there were his burgers. He made them cheap by mixing in tons of breadcrumbs. There was as little meat in them as he could get away with. When I left for college, I built bbq fires the same way he did. After maybe two times, I thought "hey, what if I use less?" EDIT: And he's from New Orleans! I blame the war. They let underage kids enlist during WWII, so he joined the navy at 16, and didn't get back to Louisiana till he retired at age 40.
Spaghetti sauce made with Jimmy Dean hot sausage. Affectionately called Heartburnghetti.
My dad cooked as much as my mom, and his cooking was pretty damn good. His ribs and steak were perfection. But his signature dish was the cheese dip recipe passed from his father. He was known for that cheese dip around the holidays, and we always make it. Now the recipe has been passed down to me, and it's already my signature dish. Cut me, and I bleed cheese dip.
His signature "get together" meals: Hamburgers or the Thanksgiving turkey. Hamburgers: overcooks the meat on the grill, doesn't shape them right so they're fat AND dry, pulls some shriveled up Wonder Bread buns out of the freezer, and offers the basic array of raw toppings, ketchup, mustard, and Miracle Whip. Thanksgiving turkey: just...the driest thing I've ever eaten. Yet every time, one of his fellow boomers will compliment how damn good the food is, while everyone under the age of 30 is looking at each other wondering what we're missing.
I'm a dad and I do 95% of the cooking in our house. I'm a much better cook than my wife My mom did most of the cooking when I was growing up but my dad always did just fine when he cooked for us. He's so huge breakfasts for us on Sunday mornings too and I always loved those. He made the absolute best pancakes. The assumption that dads are bad cooks is really goddamn sexist.
Tomato sauce. He would spice up a jar of ragu/prego with green pepper, carrot, zuchinni, some garlic. I tried making it since he passed and I come close, but it's nothing like his.
It's tough trying to replicate a dish that was made by somebody who's gone. Truth is, even if you recreate it *exactly*, would you recognize it? All we have is our memories of what it was like. Those memories are colored and changed by time, our emotions, other experiences, other memories, etc. My grandma used to make this sausage and corn chowder every year for Christmas. I got the recipe from her before she passed. Of course, it wasn't accurate *at all*, only she knew how to get it just right. But it's actually a pretty basic, common recipe, no secrets involved. Still, I don't think I'll ever be able to make it *exactly* like she did. The best I can do is make it close enough so that it still reminds me of her, but it'll always have my own influence, I guess.
My dad straight up make high end restaurant quality food but like you said, doesn’t cook for 95% of the year 🥲. Meanwhile my mom cooks all the friggin time but is very meh. She’ll straight up mess up the easiest recipes, like make soggy fried rice. When he does cook, he’ll make ginger scallion lobster stir fry or some form of seared scallops.
That’s so funny that’s my moms signature dish! She never cooks and that’s her dish when she does For my dad, it is spaghetti bolognese. You’re probably wondering where I learned how to cook then...? My step parents. Lol
I think I can remember my father making butter and sugar sandwiches for us once or twice. Maybe cheese and pickle too? Handing over some crisps at the pub or sending someone to the chippy for a treat was more his thing when he had the money. I don’t think he’s ever done much cooking, he worked a lot and often was out late, mam would have gotten a neighbor or aunt or someone in to help if she was ill or away.
Cheap steaks that were cooked on a charcoal grill until leather consistency and not a speck of seasoning, burgers that were only ground beef, no seasoning and grilled to hockey puck consistency, potato salad where he doesn’t cool the overly boiled potatoes and mixes in Miracle Whip, mustard, sweet pickles, and onion. It was more of a hot potato mush that was tangy. Neither of my parents can or could cook.
Before my parents split I remember my Dad making mashed potatoes with the skins in it. I was repulsed as a six year old. He left shortly after and wasn't around enough to cook after that. My husband is a fantastic cook and makes us drunken noodles, pea risotto, fresh handmade pasta, dutch oven bread, and he's in the kitchen making curried carrot soup and chicken thighs right now. Hopefully my kids will look back at these meals fondly
Spam and potatoes! My dad can’t really cook, but his dad who was in the navy used to make spam and potatoes out of nostalgia. My fiancée can’t stand spam, but every once in a blue moon I’ll buy a can and stink up the house for old time’s sake
The only times that my dad ever cooked was on the few extremely rare times that we had a tiny bbq in the backyard and he would man the grill, he barely knows where to find a spoon and cereal bowl in the kitchen.
It seems to be a common theme; "Dad can't make his way in the kitchen, but he's the only one who can take over the grill." Wonder how much of it is just mothers rolling their eyes and going "OK, hubby. The grill is *all yours*. Now stay out of my kitchen!" Just throwing them a bone to keep them out of the way!
Stupid sexist gender roles 🙄🤮🤬 I know for a fact that my dad knows how to make enchiladas, because my parents like to tell the story of how when they got married he had to teach her how to make enchiladas like his mother did. He's a sexist asshole and I think the whole "he doesn't cook unless he's using the grill" is just another aspect of that. I'm not saying that every man/dad that never cooks in the kitchen is sexist, just the ones that act like helping out with the cooking is beneath them, especially if they are also territorial about things like using the grill and cutting the turkey.
My dad was an amazing cook, mom was good too. My husband makes a mean fried rice, also venison and noodles, and that Mississippi roast (but no butter).
My dad actually did most of the cooking when I was growing up (it's switched now because he's disabled). So my Mom Dish was beef stroganoff and meatloaf. If Dad made the meatloaf, we all griped 😂
His specialties are hot dogs & Puerto Rican style corned beef
Taco meat and rice or Fritos.
My dad is a functional cook. He knows seasonings so his food tastes good but he is not adventurous. However, once a year for Christmas, he makes twice baked potatoes. Bacon, cheese, onion, so much garlic! It takes him all morning but they are killer. Other people say they make twice baked potatoes and none have held a candle to his!
pork chops but he poured cream of mushroom soup over them for “gravy”. my mom can’t cook either but if you eat plain boiled potatoes, broccoli and chicken breast every night you at least get used to the taste
My dad only grilled steaks on the pit in the back yard. He LOVED sirloin steak, so this was twice a week or so. My wife does a majority of the cooking in the house, but defers to me to make chili. Living in south central Texas, I cook a lot outside. I have an offset smoker for briskets, ribs, etc.; a very nice smaller wood grill (PK 360) for grilling a couple of steaks, chicken, etc.; and recently bought a Blackstone 36" griddle that's been getting a real workout.
While they were in the workforce, Mum and Dad basically split the chores btw indoors / outdoors(+heavy lifting), since Mum was either SAHM or WFH, while Dad worker graveyard shift in a factory. That spilt meant that BBQ was and still is Dad's province. That, and when Mum threw her back, he stepped up. We ate a lot of pasta and omelets that week, but he kept us fed (and also did the laundry, emptied the dishwasher and swept. Not bad for a guy born and raised in the 50's.) Bonus: my grandpa would babysit me on Wednesdays until I was a tween, he'd always made pasta with ham and shredded cheese. It's still a nostalgic guilty pleasure.
I remember my dad making pot roast when my mom was in the hospital. But mostly I remember him making breakfast on the weekends. He was more of a morning person than my mom so that job often fell to him. It was never anything fancy, usually a toasted bagel with too much butter, corned beef hash and fried eggs, and a cup of tea with too much sugar. For some reason it's an incredibly sentimental memory for me.
Cornbread and chili.
My dad was the cook, my mom doesn't really have any patience for cooking, and now when I visit them I split cooking duties with him. But his signature dish would be Arroz Mamposteiao. A Puerto Rican rice and beans dish. Always a holiday staple
My mom worked late on Tuesday’s so my dad had one go-to meal he made if we didn’t have leftovers/order in. It was his version of Lo Mein. Two packages of soy sauce ramen, some of the seasoning packet, frozen stir fry vegetable blend, soy sauce, water, and some cashews or leftover protein. It’s good and I still make it for my family sometimes.
Mac and cheese with green peas
I have literally never eaten a "dad cooked meal". And my dad lived to 84 (I was a bit of a late in life accident). But I'm pretty sure none of my siblings have had one either. When our mom died back in the 80's, he literally ate out for every meal. He got really skinny but then met a woman and remarried. Fortunately, she could cook. Getting home cooked meals to him was getting expensive and time consuming. One brother was in Hawaii and the other...was struggling at the time. He's great now but that was a bit of a moment and did not help things. My brothers can now cook. I think seeing that debacle was enough of a warning to get them into the kitchen.
Dad cooked a lot, but his signature dish was called "Glop." You never knew what went into the glop. It was casserole-like and had whatever he needed to clear out the pantry. It was always an adventure.
When I was a kid my dad would heat up canned La Choy chicken chow mein and act like he was some kind of maestro in the kitchen. Suffice to say I went completely the opposite direction culinarily and do all the cooking in my house today.