Cooking for loved ones can be a heartfelt way to connect, but sometimes that effort isn’t appreciated the way it should be.

One father found himself picking apart his teenage son’s homemade dish, sparking a conflict hotter than the frying pan.

Read on for the full story.

AITA For Critiquing my sons food?

I (48M) have a 15-year-old son who loves to cook.

In our culture, we have this snack that is ground beef with onions, garlic, potatoes, and carrots mixed in it that’s covered in a dough you also have to make.

Kind of like an empanada, but not really.

His son has begun to cook this dish regularly, with varying success in this father’s eyes.

So, my son learned how to make this in January because he knows I enjoy it.

The first time he made it, it turned out perfect.

Now, there’s always something wrong with it.

He goes into every little detail he hates about the dish.

The dough is either not up to my standards, the meat doesn’t have enough of the onion/garlic/potatoes/carrots, the ground beef isn’t seasoned enough, or the ground beef isn’t moist enough.

Last time he made this food was last Saturday. I took it to work that Monday to try since I hadn’t eaten it, and during my shift, my son called to see if I liked it.

So instead of sparing his son’s feelings, he decided to be brutally honest.

I told him no, because in this case, the ground beef wasn’t seasoned enough.

This is when I found out he had been making the meat instead of his mom, so I told him to have his mom make it instead.

The dough was fine, but I had to throw it away because the beef was bland in my opinion.

The rest of his family is much more complimentary about his cooking and think he’s being way too harsh.

His grandmother, his mom, and sister like it though, but I’m more picky about these types of things.

After he hangs up, my wife calls and says I’m wrong to be critiquing food that was made for me for free, especially given that he “cares a lot” about my opinion.

AITA? Conflict all around between my wife and son and me.

This moment of tension could have been easily avoided if this man had only had a little more tact.

Reddit is sure to have a lot to say about this one.

This commenter is quick to poke holes in his recounting of the story.

He’s being awfully harsh with his son, especially considering his age.

This father needs to understand that it takes practice (and ample care and reassurance from support figures) for a child to get good at a skill.

Didn’t it ever occur to this man that he could just grab an apron and get into the kitchen himself?

It’s his 15-year-old son, not the chef of a five-star restaurant.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.