Cooking for yourself is a basic life skill because everyone needs to eat and takeout or eating out all the time is not an option for everyone. You can find really simple recipes, but when you start wanting variety, that’s when it becomes more complicated. It is even more likely to make a mistake and create a disaster when you feel confident enough to experiment, change up recipes or invent your own.
Playing in the kitchen is fun, but as mentioned, it may not end in success, so if you want to avoid the mistakes other people have already gone through, you can read through this list in which people reveal their worst cooking blunders as they thought their ideas would be praised by Michelin Star chefs.
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Baking thanksgiving turkey upside down… it was an accident but it was also the juiciest turkey I’ve had, makes sense if you think about it. The brown fatty meat on top cooks and drips down to the dryer white meat essentially basting itself
OK so had chicken breasts but had nothing to coat them in at all. Realized I had Wasabi peas so I made them into a powder and coated the chicken breasts. It did not taste like Wasabi deliciousness. It was heinous and tasted/looked like a Shrek s**t.
I once made a truly deliciously looking butternut squash soup, it was bright orange. Then I thought I'll make it healthier by adding spinach, but it made it look like diarrhoea. I had to get my kids to taste it with their eyes closed. Once they opened them they weren't so keen. In fact we all ate it with our eyes closed. It was delicious but gross 😝
Next time, maybe just serve the spinach as a salad so the family can eat soup & salad with their eyes open.👀
When I was first living off campus in college, I had to learn how to cook for myself well, and how to balance my budget and cook interesting food for my meals.
I once decided to be adventurous, and cook a middle eastern dish that sounded amazing. I had all the ingredients except a big one - plain, whole fat yogurt.
That was the day I learned that when a middle eastern recipe calls for yogurt (or any recipe really), Yoplait flavored yogurts are NOT an appropriate substitute.
Instead of lasting 3 days of lunches, like it was supposed to, it went into the trash after 2 and a half spoonfuls.
When I was just starting to learn how to cook, I had a big piece of pork that I didn't know what to do with. Knowing that mint is a flavor used with pork sometimes and that alcohol can tenderize meat, I took the logical step of making peppermint schnapps pork. Recipe: pork into crock pot, pour peppermint schnapps on it, cook for a few hours.
Peppermint Schnapps doesn't go with pork. At least, not when your recipe consists solely of schnapps, pork, and heat.
*ETA:* I used like half a bottle of schnapps on it.
This sounds like the kind of culinary genius that hits us all when we’re pissed at 3am.
Not a cooking one, but a cleaning one.
I made pasta sauce and was being lazy/thinking I could save time cleaning a few of the dishes. Pasta sauce is oily right, so I wanted to soak the plate in hot water to make it easier to scrub.
Big brain idea... I am about to have a shower anyway.. shampoo removes oil, and the water is hot. I can let the dishes soak by my feet like a pre rinse cycle or something and then it will be super simple to finish in the sink. So smart!
Anyway the sauce did not really come off the plates, the oil made it a bit slippery and I almost fell on the plates, the splashing water made it so I had to clean sauce marks off the bathtub. I had to spend extra time scrubbing the tub, my feet and washing the dishes anyway.
First time cooking a ham, thought fresh pineapple would be better than canned. BIG mistake. Turns out fresh has an enzyme that turns ham to literal mush with no flavor and the consistency of fat you want to spit out. Canning somehow eliminates the effect.
Who would have thought? Lucky I even looked it up, or would have attributed the phenomenon to a bad ham or something, and made the same mistake the next time.
So only use canned pineapple on ham!
Making mint pesto using only mint plants out of my garden… apparently you’re supposed to use 90% spinach and 10% mint, not 100% mint. Oops.
Not mine, but my partner was cooking roast beef (I think, maybe some other beef dish) shirtless while I was at work and mentioned through text that he “burned himself a little.” He didn’t make it out to be a big deal so I figured it was like his fingertip, whatever. Came home and the man had a huge grease burn on his chest, his arms, his hands, and bit on his cheek. He ended up being fine, and was pretty unfazed by his injuries despite some rough blistering. He was only hung up on how sad his roast beef tasted lol. Months later he still has the scars to remind him what not to do when cooking beef, and has become quite the grill master.
2 things you never do naked, fry food, and owning a cat.... ( the last One is exclusively for men )
In high school, my friend and I thought it would be amazing to make a chocolate and peanut butter omelet. Mixed cocoa powder into the eggs, filled it with skippy and chocolate chips. Was not amazing.
I spent a ton of time and money on a standing rib roast prime rib. Had friends over…I couldn’t get the au jus dark enough so I added just a little blue food coloring dye…Smurf blue is what came out. Everyone said I “blew the jus” it looked horrific
Making brownies from a boxed mix and didn't have any vegetable oil. Thought sesame oil would be okay. They were the most foul brownies I've ever tasted.
Hotdog in homemade bun? Great! Fried dough? Great! Hotdog wrapped in dough and deep fried? Explodes!
In a college drunken stooper I thought it would be great to make chicken breast with some cheese and a wine sauce.
Chicken breast. Done.
Don't have any parm? Mozzarella will be just fine.
No white wine? This $3 bottle of merlot should suffice.
Fast forward 30 minutes and I have overcooked chicken and a disgusting looking lump of mozzarella that is purple due to the wine.
Maybe it'll taste good? No. It tasted like Satan's a*****e.
Dumped in the garbage. Guess I'm getting Chipotle delivered.
Made taco beef mac n cheese. A staple I lived off of in college. One night I was starving and craving it, but had no beef. So I substituted beef for salmon. Threw some taco seasoning on that salmon and hoped for the best. Turned out f*****g terrible.
In my defense, I had never had a fish taco before that and thought fish and taco seasoning worked together. They..uh...
They do not.
You can't make 'pumpkin fries' by deep frying...slices of raw pumpkin -- discovered age 19ish
You *shouldn't* fry watermelon unless you like fryer flavored pink slime -- discovered age 22
Sharper knives *aren't* safer than dull ones when you're scooping a julienned onion up into a 40qt tub and the knife hits the tub with the dull size and your opposite palm with the *razor sharp* side -- discovered age 31
Sharper knives are safer when using as per design. Dull knives are safer when mishandling
Biggest one that comes to mind is combining the directions of “salt your steak a day before cooking” and “let rest on the counter before cooking.” Yes, you’re supposed to do both of those things… But you ARENT supposed to let it rest on the counter for a day before cooking lmao. I left a nice piece of meat out overnight, and when I woke up I instantly was like “how tf did I think this was correct?”
Fortunately I'd never make this mistake, as I have two cats who would helpfully make sure that the meat was not left out on the counter overnight. Of course, they would accomplish this by consuming it entirely... XD
I made a blunder yesterday! Was making sponge cake for the first time and the recipe called for using a skewer in a zig zag pattern to free large bubbles. I did that, then had the bright idea to get rid of as many bubbles as possible by tapping the pan on the table multiple times
Guess who ended up with an overly dense cake instead?
This isn't *that* bad. It probably still tasted like cake. Cake with the consistency of a brick, but still cake.
Mixing Gatorade powder with milk to make an awesome milkshake. I almost puked.
What color is the sky in the world you live in, this person? /j
I had pre-shredded beets and I had this idea to fry them as a unit like a big hashbrown. I knew for hashbrowns shredded potatoes are we ften squeezed to get excess water out to encourage browning and get the hashbrown to cook through without turning to mush, so I did that to the beets. Squeezed SO much juice out of them their color started to fade- should have been my first clue.
Finally go to fry it and while they are taking on some color, they really aren't getting crispy at all, so I just keep cooking.
When I was satisfied I removed it from the pan. A faintly pink, barely crispy blob of shredded beets. Go in for a taste, completely flavorless. I salted the s**t out of it too, all I could taste was the salt. The texture was awful too. Any semblance of crisp was overcome by the chewy, leathery, stringy sensation of munching through a damp piece of paper.
I realized after the fact that beets are mostly sugar and have very little starch. The lack if starch meant it wouldn't crisp up, and the high sugar probably meant most of the flavor was locked into the juice that I squeezed out of it. 10/10 would not try again.
I was going to say something about the starch. You might have been able to saute them with some butter or olive oil with a little salt and pepper. If you like onions you could add a little bit of it chopped... I don't like beets but I cook alot of vegetables this way and they taste delicious. Just don't overcook them or use high heat.
I made a cheese enchiladas with kimchi as a filling, with a Thai plasamrot sauce as a gravy. I thought it is gourmet a la espana y oriental masterpiece, but it turned to be so awful.😅
In college, I was just starting to really cook on my own.
I have always been an adventurous eater and food lover, but hadn’t really made anything beyond basic dishes to that point. I had a summer internship that left me with some extra cash on hand, so I figured every once in a while I’d experiment a bit.
One Sunday, I decided to make a mussels in a red curry coconut broth.
I spent all day making homemade fish stock, adding lime leaves, ginger, lemongrass, etc. and making this amazing red curry broth. The mussels were cooked perfectly and I served it all on top of some rice noodles.
My roommates and I feasted and there was a good half pot of broth left over that would make excellent quick lunches for the week.
In an effort to save space, I tossed the left over rice noodles in the broth and put it all away in the fridge.
When I went to heat it up for lunch the next day, the noodles had soaked up every bit of broth. The pot was almost completely dry, and the noodles were decently flavorful but nowhere near the taste or texture they were the day before.
Keep starch away from any sauces or soups when storing them - that was a painful lesson.
I was on some pain relief that was very high in codeine and whilst being extremely drowsy, I had the brilliant idea to make myself a baguette with a hot dog and Nutella. I don't even normally eat meat...
My stomach joined the kidneys in the pain party after that.
Edit: I also buttered the baguette before putting on Nutella
I made a huge stock pot of gumbo based on a recipe I found on Instagram. It was my first time making gumbo. It was so disgusting that I had to throw out a whole stock pot full of soup out. Lesson learned- don’t use Instagram recipes and make small quantities of recipes I am unfamiliar with
oh yeah, instagram chefs, some of them might be real, don't forget the word MIGHT.
Thought I could skip using most of the flour in a mug brownie recipe, got chocolate eggs instead. 🤢
I was supposed to make a turkey for Thanksgiving, so I just did a turkey breast as it was a small get together. I misread the directions or miscalculated the time (thanks, ADHD) so we were screwed and I couldn't make it before we had to drive 40 minutes there. I go to the deli and get some turkey breast sliced thick and heat it up in the oven. I swore I chose turkey at this damn deli, but we get to the gathering and everyone is eating it and saying it tastes a lot like ham. This was also the first time my boyfriend was meeting my family. It was pretty hilarious. My sister later found the wrapping/receipt in the top of the trash and it was for sure ham.
Sucks when the lettering on a label says one thing and the letters mysteriously rearrange themselves to say something else.
When I was about 11 or 12, I tried making ragù alla bolognese for the first time. My dad refused to buy me white wine for it. I figured balsamic vinegar would make an okay substitute. Both made from fermented grapes, right? Wrong.
This sounds absolutely horrific. I am so sorry you had this experience.
Do you know that if you put purple cabbage into eggs, like in a frittata, the eggs near the cabbage go green? It is not an appetising look.
Coconut tilapia in an air fryer. Might have been ok in oil, but it came out looking like a melted pile of wax adorned with 200 burnt candle wicks and tasted about the same. Not even my blood alcohol content at that time could influence my perception of edibility of this monstrosity. Threw it in the trash and opted to crush a bag of chips for dinner instead.
first time reading it I thought, sounds unnecessary to crush a bag of chips before eating them... then aha-moment...
The mushroom ice cream I made...that was a mistake. I used mushroom powder, cardamom, and ginger, I thought it would be amazing but it was not.
My 12 year old self thought if that powdery parmesan cheese tasted good, and that Kraft sweet & sour BBQ sauce tasted good, then the two of it together would make an awesome dipping sauce, right?
I've blown actual chunks that tasted better.
I thought that pancakes are good, barbecue sauce is good, together it would be great! And it wasn't bad. Like the time I mixed hot sauce and Captain Crunch. I was completely sober both times
I have a breville juicer and was always impressed with the way it removed the juice from stuff. I figured I'd juice some potatoes and make latkes with the leftover pulverized potato bits. I thought I had a genius idea. To put it lightly, it failed. It was disgusting. Weird flabby patties that didn't want to crisp up. On a side note though, as I was experimenting with the potato bits the "juice" separated. The potato starch sunk to the bottom and I was able to dry it out over time. So, homemade potato starch. Not worth the effort though.
Do you know how we use oils / fats for pan frying?
Do you also know how mayonnaise is like 98% fat?
This had me thinking - what difference could 2 % possibly make?
Enough to make a nasty, shifted mess in your pan. Made me want to throw up. Luckily I realised my mistake soon enough and didn't even bother to try frying anything..
On a similar page : you cannot fry in peanut butter. It is not the same as arachide oil.
I tried to make a savory pumpkin pie by cutting the sugar in half and adding cumin and turmeric, cutting the traditional pumpkin pie spices by half. It was disgusting.
Probably would have been okay if you'd left the sugar out completely and fried the spices
Usually you brush on barbecue sauce to your oven roasted chicken like either after baking or during the last 5 min. My dumbass put in the raw chicken with the bbq sauce brushed on it into the oven. It will for sure burn your chicken!!!! (Especially honey bbq)
If using chicken stock for rice works great on a chicken dish, I bet fish stock for rice on a fish dish tastes great!
Edit. - I bet with my taste buds, and lost. It was awful.
I made my husband chicken and rice once. He complained it tasted like feet. Mine tasted fine. He said all he did was add soy sauce. I looked over and saw the soy sauce bottle…right next to the same sized bottle of fish sauce. I still tease him about it.
Parsnip soup and used duck stock that I had leftover from making duck confit French onion soup. It was awful.
Was so exited to use my new smoker and thought I’d break it in with chicken wings. Bought the quality “air chilled” (no water added) fresh chicken from the store as well a popular rub recommended for chicken. Went to town seasoning the wings before smoking for 90 minutes.
They looked great and were cooked well, but had WAY too much seasoning and were disgustingly salty. Ended up throwing most of them away.
I learned a valuable lesson not to over do it when it comes to seasoning, particularly when smoking which adds so much flavor on its own.
When I was, like, 8 I’d made this “fruit soup” from a Scandinavian section of a cooking around the world book. That was good. As I was allowed far too much autonomy, I thought one night for dinner I would make fruit spaghetti. Soup and pasta took up the same space in my brain as dinner foods; so if one could be fruit-ized the other should, right? Wrong. For the sauce I had cranberry juice, oranges, other miscellaneous fruit, allspice and cinnamon thickened with cornstarch. Not a good topping for spaghetti. At all. Maybe would be good on panna cotta? I don’t particularly want to try it again though lol.
I put shredded cheese in my crepe batter. It was a nightmare. I thought it would be all crispy and delicious, boy was I wrong
I made jello pudding with heavy cream.
disgusting.
I needed to make mayonnaise the other week but I was out of canola oil. I had a bottle of some higher end olive oil and said “Sure it might be a bit pricey but, I love olive oil it should be fine” and oh boy was I wrong. The gelatinous green mess was one of the worse thing I had ever tasted. When they say “neutral flavored oil” they mean it.
I have tried many time to come up with q mixed drink that is made with meat. Many failures. The closest to success was the Panangarita which my wife described as "pretty good but still completely disgusting". The others were just disgusting.
I tried to make special cupcakes with special butter i bought but I essentially baked all the thc out of it and just ended up wasting $30
Was making pierogi and a roommate hated the texture of onions so we put them through the food processor and basically liquefied them. They turned copper green and smelled metalic once we applied heat. Turns out they oxidize when you do that.
?? I purée onions all the time. They've never turned green, a little orange maybe if I don't use them in time. I keep a small jar in the fridge because my husband hates the texture but I need to cook with them.
I tried to cook ground pork in some grapefruit and orange juice from fruits I wanted to get rid of. Was so, so average.
I was 16, and I thought a cream sauce with lots of fresh rosemary, and Krab meat (you know fake crab), would be delicious. It wasn't.
Give yourself credit for being adventurous and learning from it. So many people are afraid to try new things.
When I first started cooking for myself like 20 years ago I remember making this “sauce” to put over my awesomely overcooked chicken breast. I honestly can’t remember what I had in there. It would be easier to list what I didn’t put in. I just remember it was soy sauce based with probably every dry herb I had. Soy sauce and oregano? Why the hell not? I didn’t know wtf I was doing. It was f*****g wretched. I’ve had numerous blunders since then, but I’ll always remember how nasty that was.
Many years ago my wife and I ordered a curry for delivery, for quite late in the evening. Went out had quite a few drinks. Then got a call that their driver had broken down and they would not be able to deliver. No problem I proceeded to throw just about every spice, paste, or ingredient, that may, or may not, have been involved in Indian cooking, into, a frying pan. Whether because we were drunk or not, I don't know but it was without doubt the best thing I have ever cooked. Sadly I have no idea what went into it and I have tried to replicate it numerous times, to the extent of even trying whilst tipsy, all to no avail.
I tired making a soup once and I thought bacon would be great to add flavor but all it did was make a huge greasy soup
When I was younger, cooking spray wasn't as popular as it is today (Yes, I'm old.) so when you needed to grease the pan, you spread a little bit of shortening or butter on the surface. Flash forward a few years, and we're making garlic bread. I'd never made it, didn't realize the butter went on the bread. I smeared butter on the pan instead. My sister laughed and put butter and garlic on the bread for me :)
When I was younger, cooking spray wasn't as popular as it is today (Yes, I'm old.) so when you needed to grease the pan, you spread a little bit of shortening or butter on the surface. Flash forward a few years, and we're making garlic bread. I'd never made it, didn't realize the butter went on the bread. I smeared butter on the pan instead. My sister laughed and put butter and garlic on the bread for me :)
