30 Times People Were Disgusted Or Horrified By Something Done In The Kitchen, As Shared Online
We all love (with fairly rare exceptions) to eat, and not just eat, but eat some really tasty food. That is why cooks have almost always been perceived as incredibly important people in human history, and skilled chefs - as real wizards. And you must admit that a good cook, performing sacred acts at the stove, has the quality of a probable Hogwarts professor!
At the same time, there are a huge number of people who can rightfully be called 'culinary muggles', who have either not mastered the great art of prepping delicious food at all, or only by a fraction of a percent. And often such people become sources of true kitchen disasters - the kind to which this viral thread in the AskReddit community is dedicated, a selection of the best stories from which Bored Panda brings to your attention today.
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My super drunk roommate came out of his bedroom while I was heating up some food at midnight. He opened the fridge door and then pulled his pants down and started p**ing and then I screamed. He woke up from his daze and ran to the bathroom. I am an amazing roommate and friend so I cleaned up his mess. I asked him about it the next day and he said he didn't want to talk about it, but he's not going to drink for a long time. He venmo'd me $100 for cleaning and he's been sober for the last 6 months.
I read a story years ago in 'Reader's Digest' about a young wife who wanted to observe every step of how her mom prepared Thanksgiving dinner so that she could do it the following year. The next year, the young wife prepared Thanksgiving with her mom nearby her.
Everything went fine, but the mom had one question: 'Why did you place your dish-drying rack over the turkey as it thawed in the sink???' and the daughter explained: 'Because that's how you thawed your turkey,' and the mom replied: 'Yes, but you don't have a cat!'
This is less of a mishap and more of a miscommunication, but it's still pretty wholesome.
My sister made guacamole but used broccoli.
It was beyond terrible.
Horace Slughorn, the Potions professor from the Harry Potter books, liked to say that the ability to brew potions is an innate talent, and no amount of books or training will make you equal to a true genius. Well, when we read some of the stories collected in this list, we only see how right the wise old professor was. And from a culinary point of view, too. If you are not destined to become an outstanding cook, no amount of effort will probably help.
I once had a roommate take a sponge from the kitchen, clean the bathroom with it, then put it back in the kitchen sink. When I asked him why he put the sponge back in the kitchen, he said because that's where he'd found it. I wanted to burn down the entire house. And it's a good thing I noticed at all. Edit: there was a hair in the sponge.
i once walked into the back of a french bistro on a slow night and one cook was swinging a trussed, raw cornish hen around his head and the other cook was fending him off with each of his arms fully sheathed in a large baguette. i laughed so hard i cried, that night.
God bless my Mom, and her mac and cheese. Layers of elbow macaroni, slices of american cheese, a few tablespoons of flour, and a splash of milk. Repeat. She would stick it in the oven for 45 mins, and I would bite into ... gobs of flour. I swore for years I hated mac and cheese, until I realized, it wasn't supposed to have gobs of flour...
“Modern cooking, if we do not take into account the most exquisite examples of 'haute cuisine,' is moving towards simplification, standardization and optimization of dishes,” Roman Sardarian, a chef from Odessa, Ukraine, whom Bored Panda asked for a comment here, sincerely believes. “By optimization, I mean a certain set of standard actions and ingredients, with the help of which you can quite simply and quickly prepare a truly tasty and even outstanding meal. Even if you have never studied culinary skills.”
“On the other hand, any cook can have, let’s say, a bad day when everything gets out of hand, the oil burns, water spills in the wrong places and at the wrong time, and at the most inopportune moment you forget to remove the frying pan from the heat. This is life. But someone can, through their own carelessness or neglect, time after time become the source of disasters in the kitchen, and this also happens. Well, modern civilization with its fast food and food delivery industry really makes life a lot easier - it's true," Roman is petty much sure.
I had a roommate who would deep fry eggs
I walked into the kitchen and there was a quart pot of oil with a cracked egg undulating in it.
I later asked her about it. Because it was weird and also because maybe I didn't know?
No. She thought you fried an egg like you fried a piece of chicken.
It can't be the worst thing I've seen, but after browning ground meat, my mother would have us rinse it off in a colander under running water, to get rid of grease. RIP our plumbing and dinner.
My husband does this!!! I've never seen anyone do that until him. Thankfully he doesn't cook all that often so our plumbing is still functioning.
A girl in my uni dorm almost burned the place down because she tried to boil a potato (her words) - what she actually do was put a large, unwashed and unpeeled whole potato in a dry pot, put the lid on it, put it on high on the stove top, then left to go watch movies in her room while it cooked. She was bloody lucky that me and a mate were in the adjacent common room. We caught the smoke and whipped it off the heat, she was completely dumbfounded that she’d done something wrong. The potato was half raw and half charcoal 💀
Well, I myself have an old friend - an excellent person, smart and brilliantly educated, an excellent conversationalist and employee - but he never even knew how to heat a frozen pizza in the oven. Sandwiches and chocolate bars were a real salvation for him at one time - and in recent years he has been calmly ordering food at home, and feels quite great. At least the kitchen for him has ceased to be something that causes instant panic...
My friends former roommate, bless his heart, was not culinarily inclined. Put the jar of pasta sauce in with the boiling water and noodles.
My nephew tried to use plastic shopping bags as oven mitts.
When I was in high school, my mom and I were absolutely famished leaving a late-evening rehearsal for our community band. We called my dad and older sister to make dinner since it was about a 30 minute drive home, there were no drive-throughs on the way and our house was too far out in the boonies to get anything delivered. “Sure, no problem, we’ll have it waiting for you when you get home!” they said…
They had decided to make a boxed creamy pasta, but realized after the noodles were already cooked that the milk had gone bad. So they replaced it…with **french vanilla coffee creamer**. For some reason, they thought it was OK because the creamer was sugar free. It was not OK. We each had about one bite and threw the rest of our plates in the garbage. I think we ended up having canned soup for dinner that night 😂
My dad once was out of milk for mashed potatoes used coffee creamer I choked down four bites. Told him I was full. Though they usually kept half and half. Sooo...
And yet, it’s probably worth envying the incredible tenacity of some people who, time after time, despite all the culinary failures, still pick up a chef’s knife, heat up the stove... and thereby give rise to more and more new stories in collections similar to this one. And there are actually lots of similar tales. So now please feel free to scroll this list to the end, and if you have ever faced or witnessed something similar, just share your own tale in the comments as well. And let it be as instructive as it is funny.
I’ll fess up. This one was me. I had been working loong days and was very tired. I got up and poured a bowl of cereal. Then I poured some milk into my glass and some orange juice over the cereal. I didn’t have any money so I sucked it up and ate it.
When I was a kid, one of my friend’s moms made a sardine lasagna. It was a traumatic experience.
During my freshman year, my room mate put a frozen pizza in the oven with the plastic on. She thought it was like a popcorn bag and the pizza will steam.
Guy grabs 2 pound container of ground turkey, takes the wrapping off and puts it on the hot grill.
There were no additional steps taken.
My ex Sister In Law made Curry Chicken with Sweet Coconut Cream for BEVERAGES. not the canned stuff
I couldnt stand her. She always told me, "I have expensive tastes"
One year for xmas I got her and her hubby a 2 cup $27 bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and $15 bottle of Balsamic from Williams Sonoma.
About 2 yrs later we were sitting in my house chatting and she nonchalantly mentions, "oh someone got us Olive Oil one year and it was RANCID so we threw it out! Dumb ***** had never had really good olive oil and her expensive tastes didnt know what it tasted like. Im so glad I never have to see her again
You really have to research the various products made from coconut. Way different purposes, and they usually don't interchange well.
When I was 18, I started working at a restaurant. One night during closing duties, I dumped some water into the empty broaster so I could scrub it. Except I forgot to close the drain valve, and the water went straight into the bucket of hot oil that was still sitting underneath it! The following chaos of an oil/ water volcano preceded to cover the ENTIRE kitchen. It took about 3 hours to mop everything up.
My grandpa’s wife served us tacos with UNSEASONED ground beef that she rinsed in cold water before serving. Flavorless hell, she didn’t want the extra calories of grease or spices
This makes me sad. Our family tradition is "grandma's greasy tacos." I had her show me how she makes them because I wanted to know why they were so good. It's because she got the 80/20 meat, browned it, then let it sit "til the grease soaks back in" instead of draining it. I didn't know that was possible, but it is. 🤷♀️
I saw a video on Reddit or Pinterest of a woman washing her chicken in a sink with Bleach and a couple drops of Dawn dish soap. She said her Mother and Grandmother both cleaned their chicken this way.
I texted my boyfriend to throw some chicken breasts, cream of chicken soup, and some broth and seasoning into the crock pot as an easy meal for me since I was sickish and at school all day. I got home that night and one of the seasonings he threw in was cinnamon. It’s all you could taste. Bland chicken with some strong cinnamon from the cabinet. The taste still scars me.
A family member tried to make cheesecake for a family dinner. They didn't have sugar so they used cornstarch instead. Nobody enjoyed the cheesecake that night.
Why try a non-sweet substitute? It's like the time, my sister's MIL asked for a recipe. MIL was excited and invited everyone over for dinner to try Sis' dish. Didn't go over well, tasted nothing like Sis' recipe. Sis asked MIL what happened. "Well, it called for alcohol, and we don't drink so I substituted water." And there were a few other ingredients she didn't have and substituted ingredients she did have, but weren't close to anything. And then, complained my sis must not have given her the "right" recipe.
Was helping a friend prep for dinner, I was given the task of dicing an onion. I was using my usual method of slicing down half an onion and then making perpendicular cuts for a medium dice. He takes the knife out of my hand and goes, no my moms friend says just do it like this. He proceeds to chop violently and erratically at the onion until chaotic lumps of alum lay strewn about in various sizes and shapes. I dunno what’s wrong with his friend’s mom, but I have never and will never chop onions like that. I haven’t offered to help him cook since.
In college I saw a girl cooking a chicken breast in the shared kitchen in a Teflon pan. She decided to cut it while it was still cooking in the pan. Not only was she scraping the s**t out of the pan with the knife, she was cutting too close to her silicone tongs and shredding tiny little slices of it into her chicken.
You can also get into trouble by putting a dry teflon pan on a hot stove. If it gets too hot it emits toxic gasses.
My older sisters would always take a piece of cooked spaghetti and fling it at the ceiling. If it stuck it was done. I never knew if the spaghetti noodle eventually fell down or if they used a broomstick to knock it down, but it always magically disappeared by the next day. I also made it a priority to learn how to make pasta al dente because I was tired of overcooked noodles.
Microwaved dry pasta without water and complained it was underdone and crunchy.
My daughter did this with the easy mac and set the microwave on fire
Hospital cafeteria. Cheese burger. Guy grabs a frozen patty. Puts a cheese slice on it right away. Okay. Let's it sit for 30 sec, burger still frozen solid. Flips it, cheese down. Acts like this is a normal f*****g thing that normal humans with normal heads that think normal thoughts would normally f*****g do. Not normal dude, not f*****g normal.
when i wsa a kid (probably younger than 10), i watched my mom pour cold water into a glass or ceramic roasting pan that she had a roast in and had just pulled out of the oven. the pan shattered and we had to order pizza. no idea to this day what she was trying to accomplish. apparently is a core memory re: my mom's terrible cooking...
Watched a friend of mine in 8th grade attempt to make mac and cheese for us. I gave her a few minutes to realize her mistake and once seeing that she wasn’t going to, asked her how she plans on boiling the water with no water in the pot. Lol she just put the pot on the stove and turned it on high. Her parents overheard me from the living room and jokingly called to pray for her 😂
I knew a family that made all their famous spaghetti with plain ketchup. That was the family’s favorite. You go over there and they pull out the noodles and pour ketchup over it.
The amount of times I've read about ketchup for spaghetti sauce on BP is disturbing.
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Please teach children to cook. It shouldn’t be as hard as some people make it out to be.
It's not hard at all. Some people are just lazy. Feeding yourself (and possibly your family) is one of the most critical life skills a person can learn.
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Please teach children to cook. It shouldn’t be as hard as some people make it out to be.
It's not hard at all. Some people are just lazy. Feeding yourself (and possibly your family) is one of the most critical life skills a person can learn.
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