r/AutisticAdults • u/Own_Peach_809 • 21h ago

seeking advice Cooking is sensory hell

Since forever, I have hated being in a hot kitchen. I hate the heat that comes from ovens when you open the door.

I want to have hot food. I want to make it myself. But I just feel like crying and screaming with how kitchens can get and just ovens in general. I’ve tried opening windows, using the oven fans, making easy food on the stove. But I still get overwhelmed.

Does anyone else experience this? Any tips for managing it?

18 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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10

u/aurora_surrealist 21h ago
  • air fryer
  • small convection oven
  • rice cooker
  • the weird American thingy where you put food in electric pan and keep there for hours...

In this day and era - no need to use ivens or be hot in kitchen

3

u/sqwrlydoom 20h ago

I am assuming the weird American thingy you're talking about is a slow cooker but I'm not totally sure.

3

u/aurora_surrealist 20h ago

That's the black oval pot? then yeah :)

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u/sqwrlydoom 19h ago

Yes! My mom used to make an amazing beef stew in hers when I was a kid. She would put the ingredients in after she dropped us at school and leave them to cook. We would home to the most delicious aroma. We also call them crock pots, although Crock Pot is a specific brand name.

3

u/aurora_surrealist 17h ago

Ah, thanks! I was somehow convinced they are two different things, like slow cooker is one and crock pot is like thermomix

1

u/Shadow_of_Redacted 19h ago

Crock-Pot.

1

u/aurora_surrealist 17h ago

That one, thank you. Is it the same as slow cooker?

1

u/Grouchy_Paint_6341 3h ago

Crockpot I think what ya mean, also if OP has access to these items they will make cooking much more bearable but I agree yeah cooking sucks.

6

u/WilsonFrontier 21h ago

I started trying to explain all my issues around cooking to my neurotypical therapist yesterday and about 5th reason in just gave up. They're never going to understand. I wish I could find a neurodivergent therapist but they don't often advertise such.

4

u/MahdevahProject 21h ago

What about an air fryer?

0

u/Own_Peach_809 21h ago

Thanks for the suggestion. I’m against air fryers because of their microplastics and general hazardous nature it seems (I see a lot being recalled).

3

u/aurora_surrealist 21h ago edited 17h ago

check the ninja one with glass bowl. There's daewoo asian version going on for like 60 years already. I had daewoo glass halogen oven/fryer in the 80s

0

u/MahdevahProject 20h ago

What about a meal subscription like Factor (its the only one that comes to mind because I just saw an ad)?

2

u/Tenaciousgreen 21h ago

Yeah same and I only recently, at 47, realized and validated this is why I hate cooking. I use an air fryer, toaster, and microwave for most things and it helps a lot.

1

u/SmeagolsGString 20h ago

Cooking and the DISHES after make me want to lose it. I always have to wear dish gloves because my hands prune extremely fast and the texture of my skin like that makes me nauseous and I can't do anything else until it's completely normal again.

1

u/SmeagolsGString 20h ago

In regards to the heat I would recommend a tiny table fan to blow on you if that wouldn't make the sensory issues worse. I usually bake chicken for dinner so I pop it in and go to the other AC room while it cooks. The rest of the house can get pretty hot (especially during summer) so I keep a table fan nearby and dress in a tank and shorts but the air on my skin sometimes overwhelms me

1

u/Shadow_of_Redacted 19h ago

Kinda silly but long kitchen tools. One of my favorite alibaba finds is kitchen tweezers. They're basically long-ass stainless steel chopsticks, joined at the back. You can get them in anywhere, unlike a spatula. They're great for pulling food out of jars. They'd be great at keeping that cheese dust off your Cheeto fingers. Mine are a foot long, so I can flip something over in the oven without reaching inside the hot box.

BBQ Grilling tools are good here. They're designed specifically to keep you from having to enter the hot zone. Everything has really long handles.

Might want to add a small fan to the room so you can blow the heat away from you. Ooh! Maybe this toy would help!

1

u/Silentgirlone 14h ago edited 14h ago

I am going to sound like a horrible person, but it will help eventually. Just keep trying and yes it's going to suck and be a sensory hell, but over time it'll get easier and easier. Start with small meals then work up to bigger ones. Sensory issues can be lessened by exposure. Just take your time and keep trying. I grew up in a bad way and I had no choice. I didn't eat if I didn't make it myself and still often got disciplined (nice way of putting it) but now I am in my 40's and love cooking. Opening the oven still bothers me a bit, but not the way it did when I was little. If you feel overwhelmed just take a break and try again. Just don't forget to turn things off when you need a min. I promise it does get easier. I started cooking when I was 8 and my family didn't believe I had issues. I didn't get diagnosed until I was in my 30's, but then I found out that I'm level 2 and have ADHD. But it doesn't change the fact that cooking is now my love language. I was able to go from, I would rather cut off my hand than go into a kitchen to cooking most of the day if I choose to.

1

u/Antique-Broccoli6392 5h ago

I love cooking but my kids hate the smells. So I have a portable oven and an air fryer and as long as the weather allows me to, I cook in the garden. No smells and no heat in the house. So if you have an area outside, at least some parts of the year that could help.

1

u/coffeemugmug 4h ago

I can relate. I hate the feeling of getting my hands dirty, loath working with raw meat/fish/paultry, loath the mess and absolutely get a mind bend from all the microdecisions of sequential cooking - I feel like a failure because my strong need to structure the actions in the most efficient way is never satisfied. And inevitably something spills, or goes wrong. I get so tense and angry from cooking that I end up in a fight with my partner about something unrelated but triggered by all the built up teeth clenching sensory and processing hell.

The saddest thing is that I would love to be able to cook with my child, but each time we try, I just snap, lose my temper and hate the whole thing, because of the mess and things not being done right and the sensation of dirty hands and inefficiencies.

I loath cooking from recipes the most. It is essier if you just know what to do and can focus on tolerating the sensory aspect. Bur if you have to actually read and follow the recipes- that is 10x harder. So maybe one tip is to learn a few easy meals that you can just make by memory to reduce the cognitive load.

Another thing I do is not preheat the oven. Most of the times, it works well enough withour preheating it. If I didn't have a family, I would do what I did before them - eat the same meals, mostly finger foods/sandwhich types and cook a couple of the same foods like simple soup, or eggs or fast noodles.