The French hate cooking that's ready on the outside and tough (8)
I believe the answer is:
leathery
'tough' is the definition.
(synonyms)
'the french hate cooking that's ready on the outside' is the wordplay.
'the french' becomes 'le' ('the' in French).
'cooking' indicates an anagram (cook can mean to falsify or distort).
'that's' says to put letters next to each other.
'on the outside' means to remove the middle letters.
'ready' with its centre taken out is 'ry'.
'hate' is an anagram of 'athe'.
'le'+'athe'+'ry'='LEATHERY'
'and' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for leathery that I've seen before include "(Of skin) having a tough and hard texture" , "Tough-textured" , "as old balls?" , "Tough textured" , "Like a football" .)