35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
Cooking can be an incredibly rewarding experience… most of the time. Whether you’re just starting out, perpetually stuck at the level of a beginner (hi!) or you’re a gastronomic veteran with your own TV show (“It’s fudgin’ RAW!"), nobody’s truly immune from making mistakes in the kitchen.
The size of those mistakes, however, can vary quite a bit. On one side of the kitchen scale, you have silly blunders that you tell your friends whenever you have them over for dinner—they make for a lighthearted story. On the other side, you’ve got Fails with a capital ‘F’ that are so big, recounting the tale of how you messed up is akin to a horror story.
We’ve collected a bunch of tasty posts from a thread on r/Cooking where people opened up about the dishes that they cooked “so amazingly wrong” that they still cringe to this very day. Scroll down, upvote the tales that really got you salivating, and if you’re feeling up to it, tell us about your own cooking fails in the comments.
Meanwhile, be sure to scroll down for Bored Panda’s chat with talented pie artist Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin about how to embrace failure in the kitchen, and the biggest fail that she’s ever personally experienced!
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First time I tried to make chocolate chip cookies. To this day I still don't know what the hell I did wrong but they came out the size of dinner plates and were just as hard.
My kids decided it would be fun to throw them like frisbees and ended up breaking the front window....
Those inedible, harder than rock cookies cost us about $500 in the end lol
My first (and last) attempt at bagels made excellent, highly durable hockey pucks.
While making stir fry noodles I somehow forgot that water exists and kept adding soy sauce when the liquid in the pan had evaporated. It had my wife googling "how much salt can kill you?"
Lmao, you just reminded me of a coworker i had lol, She decided to do fries but forgot you need oil, só She peals and cuts the potatoes, gets the frying pan, and puts water in it instead of oil. Which was a good thing because web She finaly started using oil ended up burning half the kitchen because She didn't know you can't put out and oil fire with water....
My wife made something called Porcupine Balls. She rolled up ground beef with dry rice and baked them. The rice didn't cook.
Porcupine meatballs are really good. You have to use uncooked minute rice though
You can use plan white rice and 20 minutes in the instapot and they are cooked through.
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I make these on the stove. Mix the meat, rice, and seasonings. Shape into meatballs. Brown them in some oil. Then add tomato sauce, a touch of brown sugar, and some worcestershire sauce. Cover and simmer them about an hour. The rice cooks perfectly.
This is basically what I do for mine. I also fry some jalapeños in hot sauce on the side to add on top of mine.
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Okay, porcupinre balls are actually amazing when done right though. XD
It's the same technique as in Albondigas, a Mexican meatball soup. But they're simmered in broth so they cook. So good!
We make this food at our home. We boil them not bake them. It is hearty food. Good when it is cold outside.
this usually happens when you don't cover the pan to allow the rice to steam. better yet, just use "instant" rice but still remember to cover it.
The rice should cook, if you have enough liquid, and it’s covered, and you bake for at least an hour…
My BFF used to make these for me every time I was in town. Not sure what happened with your wife's recipe but these are extremely good. I make Cowboy Soup the same way and they are ready in 30 minutes.
Interesting. I've never heard of Porcupine Balls. Maybe, I should give it a try.
Yes! It is a super filling and inexpensive meal. If you have an instapot they will be ready in 20 minutes!
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I thought this was just some random family dish. I melt mozzarella on mine after it’s almost done
Porcupine Meatballs. You have to steam them in a pressure cooker, for best results. My grandma served them with mashed potatoes, a tomatoe soup-based "gravy" and green peas on the side.
I make these all the time with dry rice, but I don't bake them, I simmer the meatballs in the sauce until the rice is cooked. Perfect - the ones on the outside fluff and the ones on the inside soften so they're the same texture as the meat and carrot. Mum used to make them for me as a kid, now I make them for her (we called them Hedgehogs though).
The trick is to use the right kind of rice. It sounds like that might have been the problem.
my grandma made these all the time for me as a kid! here’s a good recipe if you want to try them out :) https://www.thespruceeats.com/baked-porcupine-meatballs-3058245
Your wife was conjuring Cacodemons, she just didn't tell you. Time to bust out the super shotgun before they are fully grown and you have to resort to the BFG9000.
My mom made these and they were like meatballs with the rice mixed in with the meat.
I make this occasionally. We just call it meatball hotdish. That's pretty close to the full recipe, other than some tomato sauce.
this has tons of asians crying and shivering over destroying rice
I've screwed this one up, too. The recipe never said precooked or minute/instant rice. Just "rice," so I had crunchy meatballs too. So gross.
I put my rice (mix of jasmine/basmati) in hot water while I prepare the mixture. Ready in 30 minutes.
Load More Replies... On the menu at grade school cafeteria. The rice was cooked, but I still hated the things.
It is basically stuffed peppers without the pepper shell. It is delicious when made properly.
Load More Replies...World-renowned pie artist Jessica, the author of ‘Pies Are Awesome,’ told Bored Panda that mistakes are a part of life. And working in the kitchen is no different. Learning from your failures is about embracing the blunders, even if you might not feel like doing it.
“I’m a huge proponent of celebrating failure and learning from mistakes,” she said. “But, man, in the moment, it sure can suck!”
According to baking and cooking expert Jessica, having a lighthearted approach, learning to laugh with and at yourself, can help turn mistakes into learning experiences.
“Having a sense of humor definitely helps when things are going pear-shaped on you!” she said that life gets easier when you allow yourself to laugh during difficult moments.
When I first lived by myself I was really craving pierogies and the s**tty grocery store walking distance from my house didn't have Mrs. T's. Decided I would make them from scratch instead with 0 knowledge of how to make any type of dough or assemble anything resembling a dumpling.
Spent hours making these little lumps of sadness only to watch them all promptly fall apart in the water. Tried to eat the super thick dough and weird boiled filling anyways and it was unfathomingly bad. I also found out a week later that the grocery store did have Mrs. T's and I was just looking in the wrong section.
Luckily now I am pretty good at baking, making various doughs, and make my own pasta and dumplings regularly so it was a nice teaching moment. Still haven't tried pierogies again so maybe I will have to give it a go now that I actually know what the f**k I'm doing.
Box of white rice had a recipe for rice pudding on the side. This was before I knew about egg tempering and the directions assumed you knew about it.
Just cracked the eggs right into the pot and stirred.
It was the texture of disappointment.
First time grilling as a new wife. I bought horrible steaks (eye of round) because I had no clue. I put them on a hot charcoal grill and burned them to old boot leather. Needless to say no amount of A-1 could hide that. But he ate it and even went back for seconds to spare my feelings. They were terrible and I’ve never bought eye of round again.
I will say I make a mean steak now. On both gas and charcoal grills and cast iron skillets. I’ve overheard my husband telling his buddies I make the best steak in town. He doesn’t know I’ve heard him and it’s so sweet. I still remember his face on that first grill attempt though. He was miserable throughout that meal but did everything he could to lie to my face and tell me it was terrific
The pie artist was happy to open up to Bored Panda about one of the worst kitchen experiences that she’s ever had.
“My worst ever baking fail came from a fancy lemon meringue pie with a stained glass flower design that I was making for the Food Network,” she said.
“I had to make that pie five times before I got it right. On the second to last attempt I was so frazzled, I actually dropped the pie taking it out of the oven and it exploded all over the floor,” Jessica told Bored Panda.
However, when that happened, the pie artist didn’t panic! “I could have freaked out at that point, but things had just gotten so absurd I just burst out laughing. Oddly enough, I found that rather cathartic and was able to refocus afterward and finish the project.”
First time I cooked bolognese. Said to use 3 cloves garlic. I thought a bulb was a clove. Took me hours to cut it all up. U can imagine how garlicky it was lol
My husband and I once made homemade Mac and cheese - but used condensed milk instead of evaporated milk. Canned milk is all the same, right?? Yeah, no.
I did that thing that people joke about. I spent about 4 hours making trotter soup (aka bone broth aka paya soup) and then decided to get fancy and strain out the meat and bones. So I strained all my soup into the sink and exactly when I was done, I realized I had strained the soup into the sink instead of a container.
While it’s great if you want to improve your cooking skills, at the same time, it’s important to remember that ‘perfection’ exists neither in the kitchen nor anywhere else in life.
Professor Suzanne Degges-White, from Northern Illinois University, recently shared with Bored Panda that having a sense of humor and being flexible are two things that will definitely help you be successful in adulthood.
“No one likes to 'lose face,' and that is engrained to varying degrees across cultures. Unfortunately, our brains may be especially prone to catastrophizing events and so we might make something more out of something no one else really noticed and no one else will recall later on," she said about embarrassment and failure.
My cousin and I once served lemonade to our extended family by mixing water with yellow paint
Red Velvet cake… the Yanks use a different name for something than we do in the UK… so this thing I made was so bad it got thrown out for the birds… a week later us was still outside and intact. Even the birds thought it was s**t.
We have ~red velvet cake~ but I think most of our recipes don’t use vinegar? I’m not sure what else would be different.
Cooking while high.
Usually turn out really delicious stuff.
Was making Pasta Salad and got the big idea to add BANANAS...
It was one of the very worst things I have ever done.
This was over a decade ago and my family who were served this atrocity still bring it up.LOL
As they should, if you forget the past, you are bound to repeat the same mistakes in the future lol
“When our personalities are wired to feel that we must be 'perfect' in all that we do, we internalize negative feelings about the mistake we made and mistakenly assume that everyone else is judging us due to that one moment," the professor said.
"Fortunately, our brains are designed to protect us from pain and many of us may suffer horrible humiliation at some point in our lives, but we can benefit from a brain that allows us to 'selectively forget' the incident or else we're able to rationalize it by reminding ourselves that 'everyone makes mistakes,' 'it was just one time and no one will remember it,' or similar healthy responses."
A few years ago I lived with a guy from the Czech Republic. One day he starts making traditional Czech sourdough which has caraway seeds in it. He spends a few days making a starter and then quite suddenly the house starts to smell strongly of curry. I come home that evening to the guy looking very dejected telling me he had messed up his bread and had to throw it away.
You see, the Czech word for caraway seeds is “Kmin” and this guy had added quite a lot of Cumin to his bread thinking they were the same thing.
When I was 4 or 5 I wanted to make lemonade, so I put lemon juice in water and added some white powder to it like my grandma would. It didn’t taste the same, so I added more white powder, still no. I persisted tho. After a while my dad entered and told me I was using salt.
Once my cousin was making tea(chai) for us(we were both pretty young)Instead of the tea we usually add he added Nigella seeds. He kept adding that since he was not getting the color of chai. He said there is something wrong with this tea. I had the first sip. My aunt later was surprised to see how a good portion of Nigella seeds were used.
Early 20s. I had cooked some but I was not an experienced cook. Tried to make fried chicken. No instructions or recipe just winged it. Crispy rare chicken. Looked good on the outside, salmonella on the inside.
There's a chicken wing punny joke somehow, but my brain is too fried.
The professor noted that some people become perfectionists because of the way their parents raised them. "For those people, making mistakes throughout adulthood may be experienced as something that would provoke punishment and that brings on even more humilation," she said.
"The best way to embrace our mistakes is to acknowledge we've made one—or else no learning can take place. Then remind ourselves that everyone makes mistakes—that's totally normal behavior! Then figure out a way to laugh at yourself before allowing someone else to laugh at you first. When you laugh at yourself, others laugh WITH you, not AT you."
The recent one that springs to mind was my snickerdoodle cookie disaster. Apparently butter can be TOO warm for baking, leading to cookies turning into pancakes of greasy melted butter. They were disgusting and inedible. Everything went into the trash.
After some research I discovered the bit about butter being too warm, so the next time I tried snickerdoodles, I kept the butter quite cool. They turned out perfectly. The more you know…and knowing is half the battle.
If your butter is too warm, pop the cookies in the freezer before you bake them. It firms up the butter, and makes better cookies.
I made mulled wine this Christmas and somehow added cumin instead of cardamom. It tasted like barf.
Oh man I did the same thing once! Except I thought the cumin was cinnamon powder. It came out smelling like a curry.
I managed to gloriously screw up heating a frozen pizza once. I'm not quite sure how the thermodynamics of this worked, but the edges were stuck to the tray and the middle had risen far enough for the cheese to glue itself to shelf above it. I had to take the whole thing out and prise it off on the counter, scarcely avoiding burning my arms in the process.
The worst part was that this wasn't long after I absolutely nailed making a souffle for the first time.
From 18-22ish I didn't realize what a massive difference there was between butter and margarine. I used margarine to cook and bake everything and when I discovered "real" butter my life changed forever.
Not me - but my sister made an Indian dish (can’t remember what exactly it was) and used vanilla yogurt rather than plain yogurt. It was awful
Meringues, specifically coffee flavoured. I cooked them directly onto an aluminum baking tray, some sort of chemical reaction occurred and they went a sort of khaki green colour. They came out looking like a cow [poop]
I made cookies with refrigerator baking soda. That was 15+ years ago and I still haven’t lived it down
My first try at donuts, I used baking soda instead of baking powder. Oops.
Not mine, but my husband's.
He's actually a fantastic cook and was a professional for several years. But before that, in our early days together, he tried to make a lemongrass curry, but didn't have lemongrass. So he threw in some lemongrass tea or something, and when we ate it there were these little lemongrass needles that just stuck in our gums.
I have two from when I very first moved out and started to cook for myself and my then boyfriend/now husband.
1) pumpkin pasta - I had the most delicious pumpkin ravioli in Italy one time and wanted to replicate it. But hand making ravioli seemed like an impossible feat. So I mixed up a can of pumpkin in rotini instead. It was mushy and disgusting and I gagged on the first bite. But my husband powered through no matter how many times I said I wouldn't feel bad if he didn't eat it lol.
2) hamburger helper - I didn't have any regular milk so I used vanilla almond milk thinking the spices and such would cover up the vanilla. It did not. It was disgusting. Husband couldn't even fake it through that one haha.
I was 11, my parents were in the hospital having my sister. My dad's friend was staying with me. I wanted a Chef Boyardee pizza (those were mine and my mom's comfort food back then). I had made them before, but always with my mom's help, so I didn't realize it was supposed to make TWO pizzas.
By the time the dough was baked through, all the toppings were incinerated. We ended up just ordering pizza.
I remember these! It was the first thing I was allowed to make for myself in the kitchen! (I was a latchkey kid who was always hungry after school). Waiting for the dough to rise seemed to take forever.
The first time I made box Mac and cheese I was trying to boil the water faster so I had the burner turned as high as it could go. Went a little too high and hit a sweet spot where the light was on to signal the stove was working, but somehow was registered to the off position so no heat was coming out. After being extremely impatient that it wasn’t boiling yet I decided the water was probably hot enough and poured the noodles in. Then I realized the stove wasn’t actually on so I turned it on for real to heat up the water. When the water finally hit a boil I was so excited I drained the pasta right away, forgetting it needed to actually cook in the hot water. Happy to say I have come a really long way from that mistake
For me it was vegetarian chili. I've been cooking for as long as I can remember so I rarely duff out so badly that what I make is inedible (it's certainly not always great, just rarely a complete disaster). But I grew up in a meat heavy household and mostly knew veggie dishes as sides. When I met my now fiancee she was vegetarian and told me she missed her dad's chili. So I was like, I can make chili with a blindfold on, vegetarian chili just means skip the meat. But I totally underestimated how much depth of flavor I traditionally got from the meat and how the fat balanced out the seasoning and it was tasting pretty flat, so I started trying to amp up the flavor... I should've just served the initial, mediocre version! By the time I threw in the towel I had a chili that was somehow simultaneously bland, acrid and inedibly spicy. And we love spicy food, it just tasted like chewing on cayenne powder. I don't even remember what I did to it, but it was a disaster.
And everyone in here is talking about how their significant others put on a good face and ate their awful meals... not mine. She took one bite, turned bright red, and told me it was awful lol. We both started laughing and said screw it and made a box of pasta instead.
Now I've learned some tricks and can make a mean vegetarian chili... but shes not strictly vegetarian anymore and will eat meat from local farms so I never make it anyways.
Good on you for trying and good on you both for making it a fond, funny memory!
I have a Macaroni and cheese cookbook. The definition of Mac and cheese for the purposes of this book is any combination of pasta with cheese. Most of the recipes are fantastic. However, a very long time ago I tried one of the more interesting (and consequently expensive AF) recipes. It has a couple of Greek/Turkish cheeses that are a little hard to find and are quite pricey and then spices I don’t usually associate with Mac and cheese but hey I’m always down for a food adventure, right? Pasta, garlic, olive oil, milk-so fat so good…cinnamon, cloves, oregano, V8, Kasseri cheese….this combination was awful. OMG. Like legendarily bad. Neither me or my SO could finish it. So bad.
Fried rice, for years! I've never liked fried rice but my husband loves it. So years ago I looked up a bunch of recipes. They all said that it's a good use for leftover stale/dry rice. I took from that, and from the name of the dish, that the goal was to make the rice really crispy and crunchy. So I got in the habit of frying the rice in oil until it was firm and crunchy, then added eggs, etc. I figured that was a better way of achieving the 'desired' outcome then stirring the rice into the egg. It was only after several years of this that I learned that the reason that leftover rice is recommended is because the dish brings it back to life by adding moisture. Quite the opposite of what I was doing. Oops.
My parents have a garden. I worked as a school teacher and had summers off, and my sisters first child was about to be born.
So my mom left town for a week, and I was happy to visit and help run the house/garden/handle food for them.
And I made. The most. Delicious dill pickle brine! We had so many cukes from the garden and my mom left me the ball canning jar book and gave me notes on anything she did differently. I was excited!
But my mom forgot one thing. For pickling cucumbers specifically, she used the pressure canner, but without the little weight on top. So, not knowing better, I had a little weight on there.
And that's how I ended up with 16 pints of dill baby pickle mush.
All of it. All of it was cooked to mush. I have not forgiven the pressure canner.
It's bad enough when you screw up at home but when you screw up at work and the entire restaurant is aware, it gets a little bit more. The kitchen is, as any cook knows an extremely fast place to work in. Beyond that a high volume restaurant doesn't have on Morton box of salt and the pepper shaker. They literally have bins full of sugar, salt and other things that we need to have on hand right away. Unfortunately when I was making coleslaw I mixed up the salt and the sugar. I got it done quick, it looked good but I made the stupid mistake of not tasting my food before sending it out. 5 minutes later the server comes back and every table that received the coleslaw complained. I wonder why. The funny part was that after that happened and my coleslaw was returned to the back of the house everybody had to taste it to see how salty it was including the manager and assistant manager. And to be clear, nobody was told to taste it but I don't know if it's true with all cooks but it was just this morbid curiosity to see how salty it really was and my goodness. Everybody, including me spit it out. Embarrassing but a good lesson learned.
I thought you had put sugar in, instead of salt.How much sugar was in the recipe if people were complaining it was so salty?
Was feeling ambitious and going for a chicken ballotine. Got chicken brick.
I had my parents over for our first Thanksgiving in my new apartment. One of my dishes was green beans... and mint. Just chopped up mint leaves mixed with the green beans. To this day I have no idea what I was thinking. Wasn't like mint was all I had. I actively bought mint with the intent of adding them to the beans.
I skipped the whole "cooking" part and served a raw pork sausage as charcuterie!
To be slightly fair, it's packing was in another language and I thought "to be cooked" actually said "was cooked"
One time I decided to make pumpkin soup, followed the recipe & did everything right. But I couldn't figure out why it tasted funny. Turns out I I used pumpkin pie filling instead of pumpkin puree....the flavor was so wrong.
The first cake I made for my boyfriend (now husband) was lemon as it's his favorite. I was so busy making a good dinner...which turned out. I didn't realize my eggs were older & I used a cake mix. Well something went wrong & it stuck to the pan, I tried decorating it hoping it would help. He ate it & said it was really good. Soon as he left I threw it out. That was my worst baking flop ever!! Can't believe we actually ate it.
Not mine, but my oldest kid's...
Found a 2.5 pound chuck roast I had in the freezer. Decided it looked like the most awesome steak ever and pan fried it. They got it to medium rare, and it was edible, but can't say it was exactly tender and way too chewy. Said it took 30 minutes to fry enough to eat and it was hard to cut.
"In hindsight, I should have known something was up when it didn't fit in the pan."
I gave my sister a cast iron pizza recipe and she had made it and told me that it got her very sick and that she wasn’t gonna do that one again.
A week later I was telling her what I was cooking and mentioned that I put my cast iron in the oven to roast some veggies. She asked me if you could put a cast iron in the oven, and it made me realize she had not baked the cast iron pizza in the oven.
Turns out she made the dough, put it in the cast iron, and sautéed the pizza for 15 mins, and ate that. She neglected to read the recipe entirely.
For my birthday one year (6 or 7 maybe?) I asked my mom for a coconut cake
the frosting for the recipe called for 1/8th tsp of Cream of Tartar, like a teensy little bit. If you don't know, Cream of Tartar is pretty sour. (or tart-ar hehe)
It's kind of unknown exactly how much she put in at this point as this was almost 20 years ago (ew) but it was somewhere between 8 tsp, 1/8th tbs, maybe even 1/8th cup (she's recalled thinking it was an odd measurement)
It somehow ended up on the cake, complete with the coconut shavings, without her taste testing the icing first. It looked soooooo good, just like in the store. Can't remember who or how the oopsie was first discovered, but it was before we actually cut into it. She ended up basically shaving the cake as best as she could and re-making the frosting. (My dad ended up having to get a new thing of Cream of Tartar for obvious reasons lol.)
​
Second time around we were all hopeful. Icing was perfect, it still looked amazing and morale was high.
It tasted awful. I remember feeling bad because my mom felt bad, (I think I tried to tell her it was fine,) but the old icing was still in the cracks and crevasses, and you really couldn't look past it. Imagine like, super sour...paste? It may have been in the cake as well, but still it was a unanimous consensus; the cake was inedible
My dad ended up making a new one (he always was the chef growing up) and it was all dandy. However now we kind of have a cake oracle: if it looks good it'll taste bad, if it looks bad it'll taste amazing (last part referencing a delicious chocolate pound cake that fell into an undeniable shape of a very large turd)
My first meatloaf. I used my mom's recipe (she's a terrible cook) it had saltine crackers as a binder. I used too many so it was mushy. It also had onions that I diced too big and they were mostly raw. It was flavorless and awful. It took me YEARS to attempt another meatloaf. Luckily now my meatloaf I'd one of my families favorite meals.
Our secret is using almond flour as a binder. It is surprisingly yummy!
Not my mistake, but the veg chef at a place I used to work left 30 liters of leek and potato soup on to boil for too long, and it lost all its colour. To remedy to overwhelming beige tone, he asked the pastry chef for some green food colouring to rescue it.
I'm honestly confused. Vichysoisse (?) doesn't use much of the green part of the leek and is supposed to be beige/white. Does leek and potato soup include the green?
Sifting the weevils out of the bisquick before making the dumplings.
I told no one.
When I was maybe 6-7 I woke up early and wanted to make my dad salsa but I didn't know what was in it. I knew it was spicy though so I tried to get some cayenne pepper off the shelf and poured it directly INTO MY EYES. I didn’t know what to do but was too embarrassed to wake my parents up so I sat in front of the TV with two freezy pops (the frozen sugar water in a plastic tube) over my eyes until they got better
On my 21st birthday I was so upset about how my family treated me*, that I was a hot mess. Decided to use newly acquired kalua to make tiramisu but since I was a bit mess, I mixed the egg steps up and "whipped" the yolks instead of the whites. Hard to see through the tears, though. Friends cane over to see me and cheer me up and laughed at it calling it tiramisoup because it was watery. They still laugh about it.
*I suggested that has been a sort of tradition, we go to the gambling boats for my 21st birthday, family was like yes. Only I was low on cash and expressed that, sorta expecting then to be like "well I'll pitch in $10 as a birthday present" but nobody did. I literally got nothing. So after talking about it for an hour or so, I just say "if I dont have money I can't go". They were like... okay. Then a few weeks later my birthday comes and they literally call me while I was in line at the bmv getting my new license (already a s**t experience) to tell me they were going to the boat without me. So the whole family went to my birthday party without me, while I spent my last $20 to make my shitty tiramoup.
Oh well at least they didn't reminded you every day that you where a piece of s**t that had nothing ( i was unenployed 2008 Crash, i'm Portuguese ) because if you can't pay for your stuff, the banc doesn't let you keep it.
Peanut butter cookies. I followed a recipe that called for way too much oil but I was new to baking. they never cooked and after about an hour in the oven I dumped my blobs of oil.
I recall a camp camping trip where we couldn't understand why the pan brownies weren't ever done - the little stick kept coming out covered with chocolate. It turns out the counselor was using the fudge packet instead of the brownie one. At least it was all delicious!
I’m part Cuban, and I always cringe, because I did not inherit the ability to cook “Moros y Cristianos” properly. My rice never cooks fully in that dish. But everyone I’ve ever asked for guidance says, “but it’s the easiest thing!”
My husband and I try to do meatless meals for dinner for at least 3 meals a week, and we love hummus. Found a recipe for hummus pasta. It was ATROCIOUS. Imagine tasting a fart.
I was in high school and trying to bake a cake for my girlfriend at the time. I had no baking experience so I felt that a box cake would be a safe bet. I mix the ingredients and that goes fine, but I was worried about the cake sticking to the bundt pan I was using so I decided to spray it down with Pam. How much Pam do you need for something like that? Who knows? I'll just use a lot.
The cake came out tasting like a crayon and I really haven't baked since.
I tried to make a curry with tomatoes, dried chickpeas that I soaked before hand, and potatoes. It was an absolute disaster because the acid in the tomatoes kept the beans and potatoes at an al dente sort of texture. Everyone was hungry so I had to switch gears and make something else for dinner. Absolutely my biggest cooking failure lol.
I can't remember what the dish was, but there was one my mum cooked that she warned me you can use any other additions, but if you add tomatoes do it as the last step for this reason.
The first time I tried to make pancakes with my dad's handwritten recipe...the quantity of salt was smudged on the paper. Was supposed to be 1/8 tsp, but the smudge made it just look like a 3. I was like 10 or something, had no idea about typical proportions. Needless to say, those were some extremely savoury pancakes .
A few years later I also made waffles (not for the first time, but it was a catastrophic mistake), and I think I missed a whole cup of flour or something. Batter was obviously way too thin, probably burnt within like 30 seconds and completely fused onto the waffle iron. I was distraught, thought I'd ruined it (I'd gotten it for my birthday that year). My aunt, who was staying with me at the time while my parents were on vacation, was an absolute gem and spent a solid hour chipping away all the charcoal caked onto the iron and we still have the waffle iron to this day!
I’m trying to remember some of my worst…
Here’s a few from a friend while I keep thinking about my own mistakes:
-accidentally confused sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk for a mac and cheese recipe. Turned out inedible.
-Accidentally misread a dinner roll recipe as calling for kneading for 20 minutes instead of 20 times. You know those delicious, super fluffy rolls you get at places like Texas Roadhouse? These were supposed to be that and ended up the density of hockey pucks.
Girlfriend at the time: i was making twice-baked potatoes for a potluck, back when those were all the rage. Taters in the oven, prepped the ingredient mix in a bowl. Needed to run out to a work thing and left basic instructions for finishing the job for my GF.
Came home to find empty potato skins/husks with a pile of burned cheese/ingredients in the bottom and a Trashcan full of soft, warm potato innards.
Scrambled egg carbonara. Rookie mistake.
A pasta with pecorino and guanciale and salted pasta water. Inedible.
“Crispy eggplant” = olive oil sponge
I tried making eggplant pizza where a slice of eggplant is the crust. I do not advise trying that recipe, was not a happy outcome
I tried to make a sweet potato soup with beer and apples (was going for a fall thing, had some recipes I was using as a basis but definitely went off in my own direction). My lovely mother really tried to help me fix it and she and my dad both ate it and pretended it wasn’t disgusting. It was. I don’t know how they kept it down.
Soda bread!! Everyone told me it was supposed to be so easy... mine came out like a rock, almost entirely inedible. So embarrassing, but I have no idea what i did wrong!
I don't really know about soda bread, but if the dough is similar to scone dough, maybe it was over-kneeded?
For whatever f****n stupid reason, I couldn't cook rice to save my life one time.
My regular jam is Cajun and Creole dishes. So yes, I know how to cook rice perfectly. I was visiting my out of town squeeze at the time, and he wanted me to cook jambalaya. Sweet. Easy peasy. We go to the store to get ingredients and I decide on brown rice. Not white. Grt back to the stove and I start preparing everything. Made the roux perfectly, got those veggies and chicken and sausage absolutely choice. Then it came time for the rice. Cool. Put it in, start cooking. 10 minutes goes by. Still hard.
Okay, more time for the rice to soak up all the stock anf juices. 10 more minutes. Then 5.
Looks better, but I taste it and it's turned into a gelationous sludge mixed with sand. I can't cook it much more, because all semblance of rice is GONE. Looks like lumpy mashed potatoes with hunks of meat mixed in. I turn off the stove, tears in my eyes. My guy looks at it, dips a spoon in, and with a grin takes a huge bite.
Chews. Swallows like it's cement.
"The.....flavor is good, babe."
He ate alot of it.
I couldn't stomach it lol
Brown rice should only take twice the time of white. I don't cook it on the stovetop, but in the microwave white takes 10mins and brown 20.
I was making vodka sauce. I combined the vodka with the milk instead of putting it in separately to let it cook off. Worst pasta of my life! I threw our entire dinner in the fire!
This last Super Bowl I salted wings the night before, but I used the same ratio as I do for a whole hen. I second guessed myself, but it was too late.
The ratio was so off they tasted more like fish than chicken. Definitely not the desired effect.
My fiancé made some bomb sauce to toss them in, which helped some. We were hungry, so we ate them and drank lots and made a note that we’ll salt them together next time.
Shepherd's pie (American version).
I cooked the ground beef, made mashed potatoes from scratch, and that's where it started to go wrong. I added some peas and carrots (either canned or frozen, I don't remember), and *mixed that all together*.
It was tragic. No layering, just a giant casserole dish of mush.
I'm a little better at following directions now.
Monster Bacon
The op said that they tried to essentially cook bacon in the Monster energy drink.
I’m perpetually banned from the kitchen - have a tendency to get sidetracked and wonder what science experiments I can do. While producing a plasma ball effect in the microwave sounds cool t wasn’t very good for making dinner.
I went to bake bread. The dough wasn't rising correctly. Turned out I had used powdered sugar instead of flour.
I tried to make breaded, fried shrimp. Used frozen, raw shrimp. Dredged them in flour, eggs, and panko crumbs. Deep fried them to golden perfection. Bit into one and was amazed at how crunchy they were. After eating a few, I realized I forgot to shell them. They still had their legs and everything. It was so gross!
One time when my half sister was baby sitting me and my full sister (half sis around 25, full sis and me 8 and 10), we wanted to bake something. we mixed up a dough in a bowl, but then we got distracted and left the bowl including whisker just standing on the counter. Sometime later when we remembered we returned to the kitchen to find that the dough had solidified into concrete. we had toss it out with bowl and whisker ^^°
My husband, then fiancé, made blueberry pancakes for my Mom and I for her birthday brunch. In the blender. Green, thin, rubbery pancakes with extreme blueberry flavor. We smiled and ate them though. Bless his heart.
I have several. Latest was rice pudding. The jar of cinnamon and the jar of cayenne had the exact same label - except for the spelling. I made a pumpkin pie for my boyfriend. The pie was awesome, but the crust was so hard we literally scored it with a knife, picked up the whole pie, and cracked pieces off. He married me anyway. Early attempt at cookies. Baking soda is NOT the same as baking powder.
The very first time my step mom left me to cook I was making lasagna hamburger helper. (90s) and forgot to put the noodles in somehow. Idk. Well now to this dad my tells everyone about that time his daughter made liquid Lasagna!! IDC I got to go to the cafe and my step mom ended up cooking me dinner anyway. Lol . I loved her food.
One time, me and some classmates tried making chocolate for a class project. The second try came out great, but the first one? Some kind of black sludge that, after it dried, was tough and shiny like plastic. You could have made toy cars from it. We had to break it up with a hammer to get it out of the pot.
Not MY mistake, per se, but one I tried desperately to save. Thanksgiving at my sister's house, 2004? My gravy is spectacular (often said to be it's own food group) so I'm always in charge. I'm scraping the roasting pan for "the good stuff". Oh, yeah. My sister hands me the flour and I start slowly whisking it in. A little sage, a little thyme, a little onion powder, a little garlic powder, a hint of freshly grated nutmeg (you're welcome) salt & pepper - looking good! I add just a touch more turkey fat, whisk, whisk - slowly start adding the warmed broth. Oh, yeah! Taste test! My sister had handed me powdered sugar instead of the Wondra flour. We tried everything to salvage it, and we actually got it edible. It became a family funny and my battle cry for making sure EVERY THING in my pantry is very clearly marked. I'm laughing just remembering.
I will humbly brag that I am actually a pretty amazing cook (never trust a skinny chef). My Dad told me in high school that if you want to eat well, you need to learn to cook well. SO - almost 15 years ago when I met my husband, he came to dinner (as one does) and I made what I call "cheater's lasagna". Mixing leftover bolognese with pasta, usually spirals but you can use bow-ties, layering it with extra sauce and plenty of cheeses in a casserole dish and bake. We got to talking & flirting & I burned it. Yeah, great first impression.
I once made a blackberry cobbler from berries I had picked. It was rank. Who knew lard can go bad?
I was a newly wed and decided to make my husband a spinach (thick soup, don't know the exact word), my mom's recipe. I called her up and she gave me instructions. Well the seasoning is sweet paprika but I confused my MILs jars and instead added hot paprika... A lot of it. No one could eat it, save my husband's uni colleague who happened to come to visit us. She ate 2 whole plates. I guess she loves spicy foods. I threw the thing away as soon as she left and we still joke about it to this day
Not sure if it was exactly a fail, as we have never had it before, and he followed the recipe, but when my brother made cornbread he refused to eat more than one bite. It was sooo sweet, not at all what we were expecting. It wasn't great but I hate wasting food and talk myself into imagining it was cake and I ate most of it!
I’m perpetually banned from the kitchen - have a tendency to get sidetracked and wonder what science experiments I can do. While producing a plasma ball effect in the microwave sounds cool t wasn’t very good for making dinner.
I went to bake bread. The dough wasn't rising correctly. Turned out I had used powdered sugar instead of flour.
I tried to make breaded, fried shrimp. Used frozen, raw shrimp. Dredged them in flour, eggs, and panko crumbs. Deep fried them to golden perfection. Bit into one and was amazed at how crunchy they were. After eating a few, I realized I forgot to shell them. They still had their legs and everything. It was so gross!
One time when my half sister was baby sitting me and my full sister (half sis around 25, full sis and me 8 and 10), we wanted to bake something. we mixed up a dough in a bowl, but then we got distracted and left the bowl including whisker just standing on the counter. Sometime later when we remembered we returned to the kitchen to find that the dough had solidified into concrete. we had toss it out with bowl and whisker ^^°
My husband, then fiancé, made blueberry pancakes for my Mom and I for her birthday brunch. In the blender. Green, thin, rubbery pancakes with extreme blueberry flavor. We smiled and ate them though. Bless his heart.
I have several. Latest was rice pudding. The jar of cinnamon and the jar of cayenne had the exact same label - except for the spelling. I made a pumpkin pie for my boyfriend. The pie was awesome, but the crust was so hard we literally scored it with a knife, picked up the whole pie, and cracked pieces off. He married me anyway. Early attempt at cookies. Baking soda is NOT the same as baking powder.
The very first time my step mom left me to cook I was making lasagna hamburger helper. (90s) and forgot to put the noodles in somehow. Idk. Well now to this dad my tells everyone about that time his daughter made liquid Lasagna!! IDC I got to go to the cafe and my step mom ended up cooking me dinner anyway. Lol . I loved her food.
One time, me and some classmates tried making chocolate for a class project. The second try came out great, but the first one? Some kind of black sludge that, after it dried, was tough and shiny like plastic. You could have made toy cars from it. We had to break it up with a hammer to get it out of the pot.
Not MY mistake, per se, but one I tried desperately to save. Thanksgiving at my sister's house, 2004? My gravy is spectacular (often said to be it's own food group) so I'm always in charge. I'm scraping the roasting pan for "the good stuff". Oh, yeah. My sister hands me the flour and I start slowly whisking it in. A little sage, a little thyme, a little onion powder, a little garlic powder, a hint of freshly grated nutmeg (you're welcome) salt & pepper - looking good! I add just a touch more turkey fat, whisk, whisk - slowly start adding the warmed broth. Oh, yeah! Taste test! My sister had handed me powdered sugar instead of the Wondra flour. We tried everything to salvage it, and we actually got it edible. It became a family funny and my battle cry for making sure EVERY THING in my pantry is very clearly marked. I'm laughing just remembering.
I will humbly brag that I am actually a pretty amazing cook (never trust a skinny chef). My Dad told me in high school that if you want to eat well, you need to learn to cook well. SO - almost 15 years ago when I met my husband, he came to dinner (as one does) and I made what I call "cheater's lasagna". Mixing leftover bolognese with pasta, usually spirals but you can use bow-ties, layering it with extra sauce and plenty of cheeses in a casserole dish and bake. We got to talking & flirting & I burned it. Yeah, great first impression.
I once made a blackberry cobbler from berries I had picked. It was rank. Who knew lard can go bad?
I was a newly wed and decided to make my husband a spinach (thick soup, don't know the exact word), my mom's recipe. I called her up and she gave me instructions. Well the seasoning is sweet paprika but I confused my MILs jars and instead added hot paprika... A lot of it. No one could eat it, save my husband's uni colleague who happened to come to visit us. She ate 2 whole plates. I guess she loves spicy foods. I threw the thing away as soon as she left and we still joke about it to this day
Not sure if it was exactly a fail, as we have never had it before, and he followed the recipe, but when my brother made cornbread he refused to eat more than one bite. It was sooo sweet, not at all what we were expecting. It wasn't great but I hate wasting food and talk myself into imagining it was cake and I ate most of it!
