Kitchen jobs you hate beyond reason

[heidih]

Dishes - which is why, though ecology concerns me, I am often seen using those disposable aluminum ones, or paper plates. I grew up standing on the chair by sink helping dry and I do find it enjoyable if one or more folks do it with me at a gathering. We head to kitchen and it is our private mid party chat time. I abhor dishes stacked up and visibly twitch when a host says "oh leave them for later" as in I'll do them in the morning. Not a sight or task I personally want to start the  day with. My 99 year old dad insists on doing their dishes including scrubbing pans - a holdover from his days as an apprentice cleaning the meat machinery and a bargain his wife will not sport red talons as long as he does the dishes. I'll dry as there seems to be detente in those minutes. Oh and I detest cleaning oily things like measuring cups or roasting pans. Old mucky drains (I've had a camera through them - stalagmites and stalactites) so care is really important. No grease down the drain so it is a cumbersome task.

[BeeZee]

  On 12/27/2021 at 5:02 PM, Katie Meadow said:

The worst ones involve raw protein. I simply detest touching raw chicken. I can't stand cleaning and deveining shrimp.

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THIS! I have a box of latex gloves that are put to use when I make ground meat balls/patties/loaves. And some of those shrimp, what did they eat, yuck! I've started buying "EZ Peel" shrimp sometimes just so I don't have to deal with deveining. I love my kitchen shears for trimming raw chicken, I can hold it with a utensil or gloved hand and "snip snip" with the other.

[Darienne]

Hmmm...I really hated cooking at all until I was about 67 and joined eGullet.  An overnight change.  And to think that the unknown term "ganache" started it all.

 

Most of all I hate deboning cooked turkey or chicken.  Ugh.  Still it has changed in our house from throwing away all those bones to making broth for our dogs, particularly Kyra, our 12 1/12 year old Spoiled-Rotten-Weiler, who tends not to drink enough water.  

 

Next on the most hated list...defrosting the two big chest freezers...not because I hate defrosting and cleaning freezers, but because I am short by modern standards at probably now 5'2" and reaching to the bottom of the freezer is a painful procedure.  

And hearkening back to dishwashers, we are a two person (4 bodies) family and the dishwasher is full every evening.  I'm not sure how we could use fewer dishes.

[Annie_H]

  On 12/27/2021 at 1:57 AM, blue_dolphin said:

"...I installed one of the 2-drawer Fisher-Paykel dishwashers.  I just love it and run it almost every day.  If I do a round of baking or anything involving the big food processor, I can just fill up one of the drawers, turn it on and be done with the mess. More importantly, it uses WAY less water than I do washing and rinsing by hand which is important here in..."

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We have the single tall dish drawer and love it!. Run it every evening. No bending over. Can open just a bit and add glassware quickly. Nothing collects in the sink ever. Can open just a few inches to let the silicone items dry overnight before we get around to emptying am while making coffee.  

We put in a heavy duty telescopic drawer where the lower washer would be for all our heavy cast iron and enameled cast iron. 

 

Don't care for grocery shopping at all. DH used to do the small list weekly Thursday or Friday night. (hated it but never complained). A rotation between a local Italian grocery, HMart, and Fairway(bankrupt and shut down). I always did the Costco twice or three times a year. Now I just order and have delivered everything. I've had an open cart with AmazonWF for weeks. Have used it just a couple times since May-June 2020. Local farm share and Baldor have their own delivery trucks so nothing gets lost. Very dependable. 

If I'm out and about wandering the streets, love popping in a NYC specialty store or spice house or many favorites in ChinaTown. A thirty dollar lunch with co-workers? Na. Not even hungry. I would rather take a walk and buy a treat from a restaurant supply store or a couple cheeses from Murray's. A roadside farm stand in the Catskills. ❤️...always a pleasure.

 

Compost is a 1/2 gallon stainless pail I picked up at a farm feed store. Has hooks so it hangs on one of my magnetic knife blocks just over my main prep. I fold a NYTimes page and line it like a coffee filter to absorb veg juice. Surprised how much compost we produce as we use much extra veg and peelings, kale ribs, etc in pup food. And celery root ends and leek tops, etc, go in a gallon zip in the freezer for stocks. Empty every three-four days. 

 

DH is a great chopper/mincer as long as I set up a 'meis en place' 1/4 sheet pan of ingredients. Teamwork. 

 

 

[kayb]

I hate unloading the dishwasher. Don't mind loading it, don't mind running it. Hate to unload it.

 

I also hate putting away freshly done laundry. I prefer to leave it stacked on the chair and observe it a day or two.

 

[Darienne]

  On 12/27/2021 at 8:39 PM, kayb said:

I also hate putting away freshly done laundry. I prefer to leave it stacked on the chair and observe it a day or two.

 

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I've never understood the 'putting away the laundry' thing which so many people seem to have, KayB included.  I've hated many household jobs in my life and am happy as a lark that I finally have a lovely young woman who comes and cleans our house every two weeks, but folding or hanging up laundry and putting it away has never been one.  

 

Can someone explain what is so onerous and dreadful about it????

[blue_dolphin]

  On 12/27/2021 at 9:42 PM, Darienne said:

I've never understood the 'putting away the laundry' thing which so many people seem to have, KayB included.  I've hated many household jobs in my life and am happy as a lark that I finally have a lovely young woman who comes and cleans our house every two weeks, but folding or hanging up laundry and putting it away has never been one.  

 

Can someone explain what is so onerous and dreadful about it????

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I like to fold or hang each item as I take it out of the dryer while I marvel that I have my very own washer and dryer and don't need to go to a laundromat or a shared apartment laundry room so I'm not averse to the task and can't speak for @kayb, but people who have large families and especially with small kids, the sheer volume of laundry can get pretty overwhelming and I'd imagine it could leave a negativity that would persist even after those little ones are launched and on their own.  

 

Growing up, our neighbors had 8 kids. It was the job of the youngest to do the laundry on Saturday.  They dumped all the clean laundry in the living room and each kid was expected to collect and fold their own items from the massive pile.  It was a sight to behold but surely would have put me off!

[scubadoo97]

  On 12/27/2021 at 5:37 PM, BeeZee said:

THIS! I have a box of latex gloves that are put to use when I make ground meat balls/patties/loaves. And some of those shrimp, what did they eat, yuck! I've started buying "EZ Peel" shrimp sometimes just so I don't have to deal with deveining. I love my kitchen shears for trimming raw chicken, I can hold it with a utensil or gloved hand and "snip snip" with the other.

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I use latex gloves more often when dealing with hot peppers.  Chicken juice or beef fat I can wash off with soap 

[TdeV]

@Katie Meadow, about cutting onions . . .

my DH puts on his KN95 which seems to solve the teary eyed stuff.

 

And I wear the KN95 to cut poblano peppers. 🤣

[Greg Jones]

  On 12/27/2021 at 1:42 AM, BeeZee said:

I have a dishwasher and rarely use it, I find hand washing dishes meditative and the noise as it runs for an hour or two just annoys me. As a two person household, we wouldn’t have enough dishes to justify running it most days, I can’t stand the idea of leaving dirty dishes for multiple days…so it generally gets used when we have guests for dinner. Which is to say, rarely these days.

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Same here, on all the points you  mention. 

[dcarch]

I envy folks born in another few generations. I have no doubt that most of the house work will be done by domestic robots.

 

dcarch

 

 

 

Edited December 28, 2021 by dcarch (log)

[ElsieD]

  On 12/27/2021 at 5:02 PM, Katie Meadow said:

 

The act of mincing onions is so horrid I have my husband do it.

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And here I thought I was the only one.  I detest prepping onions though I enjoy eating them.

[chromedome]

My bugbear is scrubbing tile, or more accurately scrubbing the grout between tiles. I have lived in rentals with tile countertops, tile floors and/or tile backsplashes in the kitchen, and none of those things will be in any kitchen where I have any say in the matter.

I cringe when I watch renovation shows where the designer puts the stove in a brick surround, or under a hood wrapped in reclaimed wood. Do these people not cook at all? Or do they just "have people" to do the cleaning?

[JeanneCake]

  On 12/28/2021 at 5:28 PM, chromedome said:

My bugbear is scrubbing tile, or more accurately scrubbing the grout between tiles. I have lived in rentals with tile countertops, tile floors and/or tile backsplashes in the kitchen, and none of those things will be in any kitchen where I have any say in the matter.

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For the first three years in our commercial kitchen, I scrubbed the grout with a tile brush and it made my arms feel as if they were going to fall off.  Then for some reason I found an electric scrub brush on Amazon, bought one and it changed everything!  Now everyone wants to scrub the grout lines 😆 (we make it easier by using soft scrub cleanser or scrubbing bubbles on the really bad parts but usually soapy water and a few minutes does the trick).  I got one for the bathtub at home, but that's beyond the scope of the thread LOL

[TdeV]

@JeanneCake, what marvellous news! An Amazon search shows brushes which can be added to the end of a drill, or a Rubbermaid thingy which looks like an electric toothbrush. Could you please tell us a little more about your devices?

[weinoo]

You won't hear complaining from me.

 

I have this...

 

 

 

[scubadoo97]

  On 12/28/2021 at 4:52 PM, ElsieD said:

And here I thought I was the only one.  I detest prepping onions though I enjoy eating them.

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The sharper the knife the less fumes are released.  At least I like to think that 

[scubadoo97]

  On 12/27/2021 at 7:18 PM, Darienne said:

Hmmm...I really hated cooking at all until I was about 67 and joined eGullet.  An overnight change.  And to think that the unknown term "ganache" started it all.

 

Most of all I hate deboning cooked turkey or chicken.  Ugh.  Still it has changed in our house from throwing away all those bones to making broth for our dogs, particularly Kyra, our 12 1/12 year old Spoiled-Rotten-Weiler, who tends not to drink enough water.  

 

Next on the most hated list...defrosting the two big chest freezers...not because I hate defrosting and cleaning freezers, but because I am short by modern standards at probably now 5'2" and reaching to the bottom of the freezer is a painful procedure.  

And hearkening back to dishwashers, we are a two person (4 bodies) family and the dishwasher is full every evening.  I'm not sure how we could use fewer dishes.

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I actually enjoy cutting up a chicken 

[gfweb]

  On 12/29/2021 at 3:31 AM, scubadoo97 said:

 

I actually enjoy cutting up a chicken 

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Me too. I pretty much enjoy all of it. Emptying a dishwasher is least favorite,  but not odious.

 

Fooling with risotto or polenta...enjoyable and a reason to drink some wine.

Making stock....ditto

Breaking down a bird....surgery!

Baking is like accounting, I hire that out.

 

.

Edited December 29, 2021 by gfweb (log)

[liuzhou]

I can only think of one thing that I avoid doing.

 

Breaking down a chicken? No problem. Boning a duck? Great fun. Filetting a fish? Ditto. Chopping onions? A breeze. Prepping squid? My favourite kitchen job!

 

But one of my favourite dishes is 辣子鸡 (là zi jī ) or chicken in chillies. This Sichuan dish requires that 50 grams of dried chillies be snipped in half and then as many of the seeds as possible removed. I'm not squeamish about it or worried about the heat or anything similar. It's just plain boring and always takes longer than you can imagine. 50 g of dried chillies is more than you might think.

 

So I have to work myself up to it. This means I don't eat it as often as I would like. I need to find a volunteer chilli snipper.

 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2021 by liuzhou (log)

[scubadoo97]

  On 12/29/2021 at 3:53 AM, gfweb said:

Me too. I pretty much enjoy all of it. Emptying a dishwasher is least favorite,  but not odious.

 

Fooling with risotto or polenta...enjoyable and a reason to drink some wine.

Making stock....ditto

Breaking down a bird....surgery!

Baking is like accounting, I hire that out.

 

.

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Exactly the same way

 

i Always equated cooking to chemistry.  Regular cooking is like organic chem and baking is like quantitative analysis 

[Martin Fisher]

Washing dishes in my old single bay cast iron sink — no dishwasher.

[liuzhou]

I don't have a dishwasher. Don't want one.

[weinoo]

  On 12/29/2021 at 11:29 AM, scubadoo97 said:

i Always equated cooking to chemistry.  Regular cooking is like organic chem and baking is like quantitative analysis 

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See, I think that cooking is more like art, whereas baking/chocolate work, etc. are the scientific jobs, which require much more precision of ingredients, weights and temperatures.

[blue_dolphin]

  On 12/29/2021 at 11:29 AM, scubadoo97 said:

...

i Always equated cooking to chemistry.  Regular cooking is like organic chem and baking is like quantitative analysis 

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  On 12/29/2021 at 12:40 PM, weinoo said:

 

See, I think that cooking is more like art, whereas baking/chocolate work, etc. are the scientific jobs, which require much more precision of ingredients, weights and temperatures.

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I always figured cooking was like biochemistry and baking/candy was more like physics 🙃