Why do old people boil vegetables to death? Did they just not know how to cook or was there a reason for it?

Islamic tradition. Something to do with the heat.

My bf's mother cooks chicken until it's sawdust. He says it's because she has a phobia of food positioning. Her chicken is inedible.

We do it simply to annoy you, OP.

My mother boiled every single vegetable-broccoli, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, etc. She would just boil them for 20 minutes or so. It was awful. And she would burn bacon to a crisp because she was worried that pork was dangerous.

Some people are afraid of the pesticides that are sprayed on them. They don't feel just washing them gets it all off of them.

I think most are simply horrendous cooks.

My grandmother's Sunday roasts with Yorkshire Pudding would have been perfect if it weren't for the overboiled vegetables. She was a fantastic baker, so I don't understand why she boiled every vegetable, aside from potatoes, carrots, and parsnips, to death.

My mom does the same thing. Her mother was of Irish background so must be a cultural thing

I believe many if not most people's cooking habits derive from experience watching their own mothers' cooking habits. If we're talking about old people, then we're talking about the parents of old people (who, in turn, learned their cooking habits from their own mothers, and so on). Way back then, buying vegetables off of a pushcart or from the stand of a greengrocer adjoining a city sidewalk meant dealing with foods which had been subjected to the vagaries, vicissitudes, germs, and unhygienic characteristics/habits of passers-by (and of the greengrocers themselves). Going overboard boiling things seemed like common sense in that unhealthful environment.

My mother made *perfect* carrots. She knew just how much water to put in the pan and when the water was gone...they were done...perfectly.

Use the water in the gravy/sauce to get the goodness.

My Irish mother also boiled vegetables to death. The first time I had broccoli in a restaurant. I thought they forgot to cook it.

I made mashed carrots yesterday. Boiled them for about 20 minutes, pureed them in the blender with some olive oil, added butter, salt, and pepper. They were delicious.

Mashed is not pureed R13, are you new here?

Haha. Yes my older irish relatives would turn anything green into pure slop. It's like they thought that everything needed the amount of cooking a potato does.

I think it stems from traditional British cooking, I've read some old recipes and they all say "Addeth a goodly amount of salt and pepper, and boileth until soft, like for a whole fucking hour".

It's carried over into the cooking of the modern southern US, where they'll still cook veggies until they fall through the fork.

I don't know where this comes from. I'm British and don't do it, my Gen X parents never did, my grandparents had a cook who knew what she was doing... maybe that's why? No bad habits were learnt!

Personally, I steam mine.

OP, R9 Your grandmother is dead. Get over it.

Mentioning her here achieves nothing.

The only vegetable I cook to soggy is green beans, because I like them overcooked and swimming in butter. Love those yellow beans that way, too.

I sautee or stir-fry my veggies.

You gays eat crappy food. Wow. 🤮🤮🤮🖕

You gays obviously hated your parents and grandparents.

[quote] Everyone gets old!

Not everyone.

Dear OP, please tell us about the other crimes your parents and grandparents made upon you.

All you people commenting on you parents' inferior cooking must have superior cooking.

I wish we could put your arrogant claims to the test.

[quote]I made mashed carrots yesterday. Boiled them for about 20 minutes, pureed them in the blender with some olive oil, added butter, salt, and pepper. They were delicious.

sounds like baby food

[quote] I made mashed carrots yesterday. Boiled them for about 20 minutes, pureed them in the blender with some olive oil, added butter, salt, and pepper. They were delicious.

It would have been preferable to have blended fresh carrots.

[quote] olive oil, added butter, salt, and pepper.

Anything can be made palatable by adding those condiments.

I don't know, fear of dysentery, cholera or some other old disease I guess? My mom cook the steak until is so overcooked it looks like leather and the pork until all the fat it's melted.

I refuse to eat Benger's. It's baby food.

I never boil evegetables, but I cook cruciferous vegetables thoroughly so I’m not farting all the time.

[quote] Why do old people boil vegetables to death?

Why do old people produce ungrateful children?

Chinese people do that too, but they fry the vegetables first and then boil them as oil will keep them green and shiny.

I boil my veggies, then I deep fry them, then bake them and finally zap them in the microwave.

I believe it was easy, and the process requires virtually no special skills, or tools. Passing down the method probably does account for how pervasive boiling still is.

I must admit I like overcooked cabbage, swedes, neeps, and the like. I digest completely cooked or overcooked carrots more easily than "tender crisp" or raw. My mum was a cook ahead of her time, as she often steamed veg somewhere in the middle of raw and tender crisp.

[quote] Chinese people do that too, but they fry the vegetables first and then boil them as oil will keep them green and shiny.

I think it's the other way around. Boiled or blanched quickly in water. Then put into whatever stirfry they're making. Chinese cooking is not known for vegetables boiled to death.

In the old days, the attitude towards vegetables was different. Vegetables were treated almost punitively.

R36, yes they fry them first and then boil them. Look up Chinese 10-vegetable stew, it's really delicious.

It's not just the Irish and English who do it. My Spanish parents did it, too. My mother's family sent her off to Madrid to work as a maid and cook for a wealthy family when she was 19 or 20 in the late '40s. The stint was for a year and the family wanted to keep her on, but my grandparents refused. The reason they wanted to keep her on? She was a good cook. I about fell off my chair when my cousin told me this bit of lore during a trip to Spain. No vegetable could be cooked too long or a piece of meat overcooked to the point of the unbearable toughness that required chewing and chewing. Awful when I had braces. Also, very little to no salt in the food. Garlic, pepper and paprika in negligible amounts were the only seasonings.

R39 Quite right about other people doing it as well: Jews and Eastern Europeans are two good examples.

R17 Same here. The only thing I remember gran boiling was cabbage. Actually, it was a parboil. And even that wasn't done to death.

They can’t chew or digest them

This is to make them soft and disguise that half the time, they are canned anyway.

After people get used to old style canned vegetables (overcooked, too much salt), everything gets cooked like that.

Especially if the person did their own canning or grew up in a household that did.

Steaming or roasting is best. There's nothing worse than a lifeless limp vegetable.

The British and the Irish overcook all their food, especially their meats.

Massive generalisations happening in this thread. Or perhaps listening to gossip from 30 years ago.

Sterility. The preservation of our precious bodily sanitation. Vegetables are grown in feces and must be sterilized. Meat is animal It must be sterilized. Mushrooms, sterilize them.

R46 Agree with you a bit, yet many responses seem spot on. R43 Offers the most likely and logical explanations, IMHO. I had not considered his ideas before, on my own thinking of it.

I boiled my grandmother to death and all I get is judgmental remarks and lots of attitude

OP, do you think Irish and Italian people are old? How many Irish and Italian people have offended you with overcooked vegetables?

You poor thing.

How weird - my husband always complains I overboil veggies - and I have Irish parents. Maybe it is a taste I grew up with - but I do find hard cooked veggies weird, as if they weren’t cooked at all so what’s the point. I also feel it kills whatever germs may be on them - however illogical that may be.

If you overcook vegetables you end up destroying most of the nutrients, especially if you're boiling them.

Prior to the early 70s, most American home cooking was as bad as UK cooking is. I believe that most vegetables were to be boiled till "fork tender". I believe most cooks in the 60s had some pretty dull forks.

I love sweet carrots. Someone please tell me how to roast/boil/fry raw carrots to bring out their sweetness.

That and had a grandparent that boiled meat. Sounds as gross as it is.

My mom was a pretty typical 60s/70s cook - vegetables were usually of the canned Green Giant variety. I would go to bed rather than eat peas or string beans.

In the late 70s she started serving raw string beans, and it was quite a revelation. We all loved them. Pea pods too. I think there was a much better variety of produce in the supermarkets starting around that time.

[quote] I love sweet carrots. Someone please tell me how to roast/boil/fry raw carrots to bring out their sweetness.

Cut some raw carrots into cube-sized pieces. In a bowl, pour in some oil. Maybe 1-2 Tbsp. of oil per 1 lb. of carrots. Toss in some salt, maybe 1 tsp. of kosher salt (less for the normal, grainy salt) per 1 lb. of carrots.

Toss all together.

Sheet pan: spray some Pam on there.

Spread out your carrot mixture on the sheet pan. Bake at about 375 to 450 F until the carrots look like they're shrinking down and caramelizing a little.

This should be delicious.

My Cuban grandmother didnt cook vegetables. Well,potatoes and cabbage on occasion.Mostly it was rice,beans and meat. She was a fabulous cook ,her food cant be copied and Ive eaten at many Cuban restaurants trying to find that taste again. My mother,who is 80 ,also boils vegetables to death.Even now ,though Ive told her I cant stand it.

German cooking is the worst. Boiled veggies, processed meat/wurst, so many pickled and vinegary things. Retchhhhhh! 🤮🤮🖕

Another thought--this is some kind of leftover way of cooking from when our ancestors were poor European serfs tossing any old dried turnip or cast off animal parts into the pottage.

Really, they had nothing before the New World but parsnips and kale. How else to make that palatable?

My great aunt was a germaphobe and before she boiled her vegetables into oblivion she would scrub them all with a toothbrush and dish washing liquid. Even heads of lettuce and cabbage. We never ate her salads.

They’re old, they usually have dental problems and the fiber hurts their tummies. It’s also cultural. Old people like what they know and they demand things be cooked traditionally even if new techniques result in better tasting food and texture.

R53 hit the nail on the head. My mother learned from her mother how to cook, and it involved an awful lot of pressure cooking and boiling vegetables to death.

Meanwhile, my paternal grandmother would fry any- and everything. Even her field peas and butter beans were cooked in lard. My father recently admitted that he's shocked he hasn't had clogged arteries from growing up eating his mum's cooking. I still dream of her fried catfish and okra, though.

R63 It's a myth that saturated fats clog arteries. It's a very complicated process, and perhaps the aetiology is different in different patients. Each has his own health risks, or heritable weaknesses.

Inflammation, refined sugar, Trans fats, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Refined Seed Cake Oils, and carbs, coupled with an imbalance of too many PUFAS is thought to be the real cause or the catalyst which begins the inflammatory process,. The plaque build-up is the the body's attempt at healing the inflamed lining or endothelium of the arteries, and small vessels.

Many do perfectly fine consuming mainly saturated fats, leading quite long, active, healthy lives.

Other factors for Atherosclerosis are smoking, high Triglycerides, Hypertension, Obesity, and a sedentary lifestyle. Certain strains of Streptococcus, as well as other bacterial strains involved in periodontal disease are not only found in the mouth, but are also implicated in this process; as they can be found within the arterial plaque. A disease of multiple co-factors, and genetics.

Yes, and "low fat" eating is generally not healthy for everyone most of the time.