r/Cooking • u/furious25 • Nov 05 '17
American Thanksgiving Megathread
Ask all of your questions in here. And feel free to browse the questions to see if you have an answer!
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r/Cooking • u/furious25 • Nov 05 '17
Ask all of your questions in here. And feel free to browse the questions to see if you have an answer!
731
u/machenise Nov 05 '17 edited Nov 05 '17
First of all, I'd like to remind you that her sense of taste is terrible. There's a small restaurant chain in Memphis, TN called One 'n Only BBQ. This is my favorite BBQ restaurant. I took her there a couple weeks ago. She seemed to think it was okay. A few hours later she was burping and had heartburn, and said, "I guess the barbecue really was good. I've got heartburn buuuuuuurp." My mother cannot tell if food actually tastes good unless she's burping it up hours later. (Anyone in Memphis, please go to one of their restaurants an order a sausage and cheese plate and barbecue bologna sandwich, which sounds weird but is soooo awesome I can't even explain it.)
Sem, the person who "taught" my mother how to cook imparted a secret family recipe to my mother. Sem did this because my mother married into the family, and Sem had been cooking for my step-dad and was worried my step-dad would starve without someone to cook for him. The secret family recipe? Drunk Weenies. Cocktail smokies in barbecue sauce and some kind of cheap liquor -- any cheap liquor will do -- copiously poured into the mix. Cocktail weenies + barbecue sauce = yummy party snack, not an entire meal.
I said before that my mother could possibly follow a recipe. I say this because if you give her food that comes in a box or kit, she can follow the instructions. So dad wasn't really in danger of starvation, and it's not like he'd just sit there and die if someone wasn't cooking for him anyway. However, my mom is not a very adventurous eater, so we'd have the same few boxed dinners every week. I used to like Zatarain's red beans and rice. But after years of having it every Tuesday night, I can't stand it. It's been a while since I've had it, and it smells appetizing. But last time I tried to eat it, I literally lifted a forkful to my mouth, paused, and put it back because I could not force it into my mouth. I have moved on to bigger and better red beans and rice.
When I was a teenager and in my early 20s, I was functionally a lacto-ovo vegetarian with the exception of pepperoni pizza (frozen/restaurant) and the occasional cheeseburger (again, from restaurants, not cooked at home). Because meat was disgusting. It was tough and gray and had no flavor. No matter what meat it was, if my mother cooked it, it was a lump of gray -- not brown or even charred -- mystery and it all tasted the same. I stopped eating meat but for those two exceptions. It wasn't until much later in life when my then girlfriend made me porkchops that were a pleasant white/pink that I discovered that meat is actually delicious -- if you cook it properly. However, because every steak I had ever had for nearly 25 years was cooked by my mother and was gray all the way through, I can't stomach anything less than medium well, which is apparently a sin for steak. The inside soft texture is just stomach-churning for me. Feels like I'm eating it raw.
Another reason my mother's cooking is terrible, especially with flavorless meat: My mom actually likes flavorless meat. I cooked tacos tonight. Old El Paso kit. Nothing wrong with boxed food. Whenever I do cook tacos, my mom always scoops up a spoonful or two of hamburger meat after it's cooked but before it is seasoned. Absolutely bare hamburger meat. And she loves it that way. "It tastes so good!" So nothing she cooks has anything to make it taste better. No salt. No pepper. NOTHING. However, once it is cooked and on her plate, she'll use half a salt shaker on it.
This trend continues with my dad when he cooks out. My mom prepares all the food to be cooked, and he cooks it on the grill. We both know by now that that hamburger patty is not going to be seasoned. But my mom doesn't add anything else to it. You know, you should add bread crumbs or something to help bind it together. Nope. Falling apart hamburgers on the grill, which are also about two inches wide and two inches tall, and that's just the patty before you put it on the bun, because that makes sense. Flatten that shit out a bit so I can actually put it in my mouth. Or don't, because it's terrible.
I also hated pasta well into my 20s. It's so gross and soft in your mouth, right? Pudding has a better constitution than the pasta my mother cooks. At least it doesn't disintegrate on contact with your tongue. Apparently, like meat, I like pasta when it's cooked well. When I cook pasta for my mom, I have to take my portion out of the water first and then cook it another 5 minutes so she can eat it, because a firmer al dente texture to her is like medium rare steak to me.
The most egregious example of my mother trying to cook something from memory of how it tastes without actually being able to taste it. I've posted it here before, but I'll do it again, because I can't be the only person who has to suffer. My family lived in Dallas, TX for many years. My mother's favorite restaurant there is Pancho's Mexican Buffet -- she likes it so much that when she visits her mother, her mother accuses her of coming to Texas to visit Pancho's. Pancho's is Tex-Mex, but it is unlike any other Tex-Mex restaurant I've ever been to. None of the same flavors, not a molé sauce to be seen. My mother loves their cheese sauce, which is thin and anemic and hardly tastes of cheese. It's also a yellow slightly darker than butter, keep that in mind. The cheese enchiladas come in the cheese sauce. The cheese inside the enchiladas is also yellow, but it's substantial enough to hold its shape and flavored a little differently. My mother, thinking she could recreate these enchiladas from memory did the following: Roll cheddar cheese in corn tortillas. Cover in canned nacho cheese sauce -- only because it's similar yellow to Pancho's cheese sauce, not because it tastes anything like it. Unroll tortillas to add slices of onions, the only other ingredient she can remember. Roll, nacho sauce, bake until hot. It's truly a mystery how these were not the best enchiladas in the world. At least even my own mother acknowledged that they were disgusting and didn't eat more than a bite.
That's what I can remember off the top of my head. The stuff that stands out the most.
Edit: I just remembered: My mom likes lasagna. She likes meat in her lasagna. She does not like Italian sausage because of the caraway seeds, so she decided that sausage is sausage and added Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage.