Broadcaster Barbara Scully said this woman’s husband should take charge of the cooking if it is not up to his standards.

On this week’s ‘So You Think You’re an Adult’ segment, one man said he loved his wife but cannot stand her cooking. 

“How can I be honest without being cruel?”, he asked Moncrieff. 

“I’ve been married for two years. 

“I love my wife deeply. She's kind, thoughtful, in the centre of our home.

“But there's one thing that's becoming harder for me to ignore - her cooking. She puts a lot of effort into making meals for us, and I know it comes from a place of love. The problem is, she's not a very good cook. It doesn't come from a place of skill. 

“I often struggle to eat the food. Sometimes I find myself making excuses, or secretly grabbing something else later. She pairs random foods and spices together honestly. Sometimes it makes me feel sick.

“I don't want to hurt her feelings or undermine her confidence. But I also don't want  to keep pretending.” 

Couple cooking. Picture by: Pixabay.

Broadcaster Barbara Scully said that the answer should be that the listener should start doing the cooking at home. 

“There’s no special magic that makes us the centre of the home,” she said.

“We don't have some kind of magic that makes us better at cooking than men, or better at kind of hoovering, or tidying the bathroom, or cleaning the toilet, or any of that kind of stuff.

“It’s down to centuries of conditioning, so this man needs to stop moaning and take over.”

Host Sean Moncrieff suggested that he may already be responsible for much of the household labour or practice a job that is incompatible with cooking for the household. 

Mrs Scully said that regardless, he could take on at least half of the cooking or do some batch cooking over the weekend. 

TV Personality Declan Buckley said that the issue could be skill-based or taste-based in which case he would suggest that the cooking is not up to par by “taking over the role himself”. 

“Let's just assume for reasons that we do not understand that the division of labour has left the job of cooking the dinner in the hands of somebody who is being judged by somebody else to not have the appropriate skills,” he said. 

Mr Buckley suggested that working together might be the way for this couple to move forward. 

“Working together you can go, 'why are you putting jalapeno peppers in with the strawberries, dear?' "

“You've got to work out what the problem is.  Is it about skills? Find a way for the skills to be improved. You can't just point somebody's flaws out and go, ‘You're a bad cook’.”

The response to that is “why don’t you do it?”

“If it's about taste, you go, well, maybe you need to modify your taste.”

Listen back here:

Main Image: Woman cooking. Picture by: Lumina Images.