What percentage of "traditional home cooking" is actually terrible?

90% of my mother’s was terrible.

10% of my wife’s is terrible.

I traded up.

My own cooking is maybe 50/50

My grandmother deep fried everything in lard. My mom thought all meat should be burnt so you wouldn’t get sick. I eat a lot of frozen meals.

Honestly, other people’s cooking is usually disappointing. I prefer to cook myself. Half of what I cook is better than a restaurant IMO, the rest I’ll pay a professional for. One in-law I have is Arabic and she knows how to cook. It’s next level and they’re mostly family recipes but that’s the exception and not the rule.

My mom fried most everything as quick as she could because she hated cooking. It was all delicious to me….except chipped beef in cheese sauce. Dad called it SOS. Gag!
When I was 13 my dad thought it would be funny to tell me, at dinner, what SOS stood for! THAT DID NOT HELP!
The school hamburger SOS was dyno-mite tho!

When we lived in Wichita we had a Vietnamese neighbor. She asked me to help with her citizenship test. I did and found out what an idiot I am!
In return she taught me how to make egg rolls.
She put raw chicken in them. When I asked why she didn’t cook it first.
She said “It cooks when you fry them! You Americans always double cook your chicken.”
Things that make you go “Hmmm.”

My mother was a pretty good cook, having learned from her mother who was a domestic. My paternal grandmother was a horrible cook, having learned to cook in Scotland and only knowing gawdawful British and Scots cooking. She made her cookies with chicken fat instead of butter.

My mother’s only cooking fault was having learned to cook vegetables in the 1930 and 1940s she overcooked them. When I bought her a vegetable steamer in 1980, she was amazed at how much better her meals were. My dad was happy too.

My mother moved 40 times in the first 38 years of marriage, and learned something new in each place. But she always remembered the enchiladas her mother had taught her, and which I would put up against any restaurant anywhere.

Depends on the person in the family. Both of my grandmas were good cooks; my maternal grandmother was great on traditional Jewish food (latkes, brisket, chopped liver, etc.) while the other one was a great baker as well (German chocolate, kuchen, etc.)

Sadly the cooking gene was not passed to my mother. Average at best.

@Dutchess_III my dad told me that (when he was in the Navy during WW2) SOS was sort of a generic “some sort of meat on toast” – whatever they had a supply of on base.

He was not impressed.

Both of my grandmothers as well as my mother were good cooks. I still make some of their dishes myself.

SOS is traditionally creamed chipped beef on toast. It’s not very atttrative visually, but I like it.

It’s nasty @smudges! I liked the cheese dip when was on baked potatoes.

Home cooking varies so much, and so do people’s tastes. So there’s no way to solidly measure this. Everyone’s experiences will be different in ways atop ways.

My own tastes applied to my ready memories of my own experiences, let’s see, the raw data looks something like:

So-so
Ok
Great
So-so but became very good
Great
Great
OMG WTF is that? Yuck!
Good
Good
Not Good
Not Good
Good
Good
Good
Very Good
Good
Good
Good
Good

So my experience has been mostly good or very good (around 60%) another over 10% great, a bit over 15% Ok or So-so, and about 17% not good or worse.

Pretty good odds, and a good chance of getting very good or great food – almost certain, if you go back to those people, and avoid the others.

The demographic pattern I seem to notice is, for my own tastes and experiences anyway, that rural American home cooking had the highest chances of being bad. I think cities in the US tend to have much more exposure to good food (especially restaurants in Seattle, San Francisco, Portland), while people in rural areas often haven’t been exposed to as many types or ranges of quality – although if they’re using fresh local ingredients, that can be amazingly good.

My Mom was a good Jewish cook, having cooked for her family of origin since she was 12. She made a killer roast beef and roast potatoes as well as traditional foods such as matzoh ball soup. She also was a great baker of pies and cakes. I learned a lot from her even though I don’t cook many of the same dishes.

No one can answer this, so it goes in the “Nonsense” file.

My grandmother was a great cook and she could cook so many things so well. I wish I learned more from her. She also did all kinds of things like embroidery and upholstery and sewing clothes, and I wish I learned all that, too. She made great soups, roasts with roasted potatoes (perfectly soft inside and browned and slightly crispy outside), cakes, pies, rice pudding, the list goes on. I wish I knew how she made her soup, which had beef and vegetables in it and I’m not sure if it was a beef broth or a broth with a slight tomato taste. She died when I was 14.

My mom was a great cook and everything at holidays was all cooked from scratch. She didn’t brag about it and she didn’t use social media, so there were no posts about everything being homemade, from scratch, she just did it. She would often research new recipes from the NY Times and other places and try things out. She learned how to make fried chicken from a southern friend and so her fried chicken was perfect (flour coating in a brown paper bag, shaken up) and her mac and cheese was divine. She was known for a bunch of other things, Waldorf salad, potato salad, pies, Irish soda bread, so many things. On work nights, she would also make everything from scratch but it was more basic – a meat, a starch and a vegetable.

^^ I think you and I are sisters! My dad used to say that it was so much cheaper to eat at home because Mom could make an entire meal for 5 for $3.00.

@smudges Hello, sister!

Some of this is about nostalgia. Recalling meals from the past. Memories of the event and the foods that went with it. Even simply the sitting around the table with family can make a meal better.
My Dad’s Mom’s cooking was amazing. Every one of her children (9) could cook. My Fathers cooking was great.
My Mom’s Mom’s cooking was not so glorious but she was a great baker. She loved her sweets.
My siblings and I love to cook and bake. My daughter is always texting me to ask for recipes. She herself started cooking at age 3 and does a good job of it for being in her early 20’s.
All of these 3rd generation down from our Grandparents (nearly 100 great grandchildren to them) comment on how good food, family and music is centering to their lives.
Perhaps it is not the norm today, but I am thankful for this.

@Forever_Free MY brothers cook as well. In fact, they’re the primary cooks in their family.

When I make a slow cooker pot roast I use onions, potatoes baby carrots and boxed beef broth (I make homemade bread for dipping…omg!) When my oldest grandson was 5 he suggested tomatoes so I did. Took it to a whole new level!

@Dutchess_III I’ve seen where people make pot roast in the slow cooker (aka crock pot lol) and they use an envelope of Lipton’s onion soup mix.

That might be good too @ jca2! I’ll try it and let ju know. :D.

The women in my family who have passed were stay at home moms who cooked everything from scratch. I was the only girl in two families interested so I got all the training.
I cook for many people and there’s no complaints usually unless it needs more ‘salt’, as I’m not a big fan.

@Dutchess_III Your SOS is curious because you said cheese sauce. I’ve only had it in white pepper gravy like biscuits and gravy. I cant imagine a cheese sauce balances the salty dried beef as well as a nice smooth white gravy.

That’s what the school had only they used hamburger. My favorite lunch.
Mom’s SOS was just yuck. But it’s what Dad told her to make cuz they had it in the navy.

@Dutchess_III
You are lucky he was not in the marines, because then he would have forced you to eat crayons.

LOLL Raggy!

Oh! Best dinner ever. Salmon with sweet potatoes. Rick puts brown sugar, cinnamon and butter in the taters then wraps them in foil and bakes them.SO good!
The salmon he cooks on the grill.

I already do not like sweet potatoes (potatoes should not be sweet). To then add even more sugar to it. Pfui Deibel.

Delicious!

I will just keep eating raw pork mince.

@ragingloli Sweet potato fries w sea salt are amazing. I’m not a huge fan of sweets either but they are full of great anti-oxidants and vitamins. Great for your immune system!

^^ Yes! Sweet potatoes are amazing. I cut them into 1” thick disks and roast them with olive oil and spices.

I don’t think I’ve eaten such a family recipe. A lot of Polish home cooking has some common dishes that are generally similar, and some made better than others depending on the old aunt/grandmother making them.

I’ve been mostly vegetarian for 20 years, and more recently completely vegan. Most traditional cooking is based on the flesh of some tortuously treated and brutally killed animal, so it’s all generally terrible to me.

@KNOWITALL I always go for sweet potato fries.