30 Times Folks Online Messed Up A Meal In The Most Entertaining Way Possible For Unexplainable Reasons
One of the biggest, yet in some ways most beautiful, things about humans is that we err. Yep, mistakes make us unique and beautiful and while we ought to avoid them, we shouldn’t feel bad if they happen.
And some of the most entertaining mistakes we can make are those very temporary mental lapses in reasoning the way we ought to—brain farts. They happen, they’re unavoidable, so why not have some fun with them?
A Redditor by the nickname of u/BeauteousMaximus recently paid a visit to the r/Cooking subreddit with an open question urging people to share their biggest “brain farts” in cooking, and sharing how they themselves tried to make a cup of pour-over coffee into an upside-down mug.
And folks were eager to share their unexplainable cooking mishaps, making the post gain some modest attention with nearly 4,600 upvotes and over 2,700 comments.
We’ve siphoned the best responses to the call to share and created a lovely curated list below, so check it out, vote on the cooking disasters you laughed at the most, and why not share your own stories in the comment section below!
More Info: Reddit
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made an absolutely gorgeous vegetable stock from scratch using scraps i'd been collecting & freezing for weeks & lots of beautiful fresh herbs. poured it into a colander and - yep, straight down the f******g drain. all of it. my brain forgot it was the liquid i was saving, not the colander bulls**t.
i immediately just sat down, bump, on the kitchen floor, & contemplated my life choices for a while.
Lololol so one time, I was boiling eggs in the morning, and one of them cracked while in the pan, so I scooped that one out. Then I added another egg in and I was like “I’ll just leave that one in a little bit longer” AS IF I WAS GONNA BE ABLE TO TELL THEM APART
Was really upset when I couldn't find my leftover bacon to have for breakfast. Found it the next day in the knife drawer.
I once roasted a lettuce and found the chicken in the salad drawer in the fridge. Goodness knows what my brain was doing.
Was making a stock in a pressure cooker at 2 am, accidentally dumped a couple cinnamon sticks into it for unfathomable reasons.
It was godawful. Smelled like Santa had passed at a chicken restaurant.
Bruh I made eggs Benedict on Christmas and spent so much effort getting the hollandaise sauce right I totally forgot to poach eggs and served an English muffin with sauce
My gf wanted a hot chocolate and asked me if I could get her one, while I get my coffee.
I took the bag with chinese five spices mix and mixed it with milk. I do know that this bag contains five spices and not cocoa, because it's my only plastic bag in that shelf and it it's written on it, but my brain was like 'brown powder - close enough'.
She didn't like it.
Sooooo many times when I’m making a dish served over rice I forget to start the rice until I’m almost finished cooking. Then have to keep the food warm while I wait for rice to cook. Face palm every time.
Since I've got a rice cooker it's easier to remember cooking the rice.
Went to drain some shrimp that I thawed at work. Had the strainer setup over the sink, garbage next to me to toss the bag in. Cut the bag open and dumped the shrimp right in the garbage
I once left a glass pan with lasagna on my electric stove, covering the back 2 burners. I then decided to make tea, put the kettle on the front burner, but turned on the wrong one. Walked away, but a few minutes later the lasagna pan exploded, covering my kitchen in tiny glass shrapnel.
Used coconut flour instead of bread flour for a loaf of bread--that didn't go so well.
I also deep fried a pot holder once. I don't even know what was going on in my brain on that one.
Never heard of coconut flour before but my mission now is to aquire some ,mistake for you- new thing to try for me.
I very frequently pull things out of the oven and forget that they're stupid hot because they are no longer in the hot place.
Greased the pan for rice krispy treats with bug spray rather than cooking spray. Fortunately, I realized before serving them to anyone (but not after filling the pan, so I had to run to the supermarket for more ingredients).
I used a colander to strain my linguine, but the holes were bigger than the pasta so it all went through and fell into my sink.
That's why I have two colanders, regular and mesh - and both stainless steel.
My father grabbed the ground up Graham Crackers instead of the bread crumbs for clams casino. You DO NOT want to eat Graham Cracker Clams Casino.
When I was a teen I accidentally put used vegetable oil in a packet chocolate cake mix. Cake tasted like baked potatoes and lamb with a hint of chocolate.
I was making pancakes and put the two tablespoons of sugar into the container that holds my flour rather than the pancake bowl
I was making my daughter sone medicine in juice as she doesn't like the taste and poured the juice into a full medicine bottle husband laughs at me then does the same thing 3 weeks later - we need more sleep lol
Spent a bunch of time making filet mignon with an herb and Cabernet gravy out of the leftover fat in the pan and on the final bit of thickening the gravy, I added powdered sugar instead of flour.
I once slow cooked a large ham for 9 hours, came to get it out and it was still wrapped up in its plastic.
I was making French toast for too many people and forgot to dip a batch in the egg stuff…. Enjoy your pan fried toast.
I accidentally started to pour vanilla extract in salad dressing instead of vinegar.
I guess it's not the stupidest mistake since it was clear imitation vanilla extract in a bottle that looked extremely similar to the vinegar, and I realized pretty quickly and only put a tiny bit in, but after tasting it out of curiosity, I have to say that the flavor was certainly... memorable. It turns out that vanilla can taste amazingly horrible in savory stuff.
My sister mistook anise extract for almond extract; really gross cookies
squirted skin lotion into the soup
put coffee in the dishwasher detergent dish
get this person the f**k outta the kitchen... or .. or wherever they were
I once used my blender plunger to push something into the food processor.
Those replacement plastic plungers are surprisingly expensive
I accidentally put a plastic jar of peanut butter in the microwave for 20 minutes instead of 20 seconds. Came back to a molten puddle
I once made a yogurt parfait and sprinkled garlic powder on top instead of cinnamon. Such a dumb mistake when I was in a rush lol
I've done the gravy thing, total duh moment.
Soy Sauce and Worcesterhire bottles sometimes have a pour spout when you uncap them and sometimes they don't. I've made messes a few times by not checking before pouring. most recently I put half a bottle of soy sauce into my soup.
Sometimes I lose count of how much flour I've already measured and have to re-measure it, which is odd because I bake often, sometimes I just totally blank.
Soy sauce and worcester sauce can sucessfully substitute for each other in gravy although the flavor will be slightly different.
Was making homemade cheese sauce for mac/cheese and accidentally used powdered sugar instead of flour
Ahh my MIL did same with potatoes au gratin but it was really good. 10/10 would make again
I used to have a bowl of oatmeal and nuts with a jasmin tea for breakfast. I chopped the nuts and poured them in the tea cup that was full of boiling water.
Started blending my hummus with soaked but uncooked chickpeas. 3/10, would not repeat.
I was deep in thought when I realized I added 60g of salt into the pan.
I once added salt instead of sugar in croissants. For some reason the dough didn't rise.
A few different times while making sauces, my brain has entirely turned off and I've grabbed the baking soda instead of the cornstarch to thicken them.
my sister did the opposite recently, making corn bread. It tasted pretty normal but had the approximate density of a neutron star. I suggested that maybe her baking soda had lost its oomph, so she got it out to check. She came back with two very-similar-looking containers, and said, "I think I know what happened."
Note: this post originally had 40 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I managed to burn a salad during Thanksgiving. I was mixing up a salad since I’d been banned from the oven after the Great Yam Fire of 2018 and managed to knock a candle from the windowsill into it. Burned salad doesn’t taste good, especially when parts of it are coated in wax.
The Great Yam fire of 2018...oh you gave me a good laugh there. Thanks ☺️
Load More Replies...
Once made carrot cake: grated the carrots, mixed the ingredients, poured into the pan, and placed in the oven to bake. 20 minutes later, realized that the pile of grated carrots was still sitting on the counter. It was pretty good carrot-less carrot cake, but still...
I feel your pain. Don't you just have this undescribable feeling when you look over and see something like that? Like - "I have just wasted part of my life on that mistake!" - type of feeling.
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Not cooking, but more than once I have walked into my bedroom with my phone and a glass of water, put the phone on a coaster and thrown the glass of water onto the bed. Now I mutter to myself as I enter the room "glass on coaster, phone on bed, glass on coaster, phone on bed..."
You're just paying libations to the chicken gods for their generosity.....
Load More Replies... In a rush (alright, with drinking involved too) poured all the hot bacon grease down the sink. Later, guiltily helped to snake out the clogged pipe outside the house. (Sigh.) So many dumb thoughless mistakes through the years. So many...and yet I still love to cook.
I was making turkey burgers and it was too soft and mushy. Bread crumbs weren't helping. It was like a batter. So, rather than turkey burgers, we had turkey waffles. We've been making them on purpose since. Spice them how you want. Dip them in what you want. They're convenient and delicious!
Can I get the recipe? Like, I understand spice them how you want, but it's ground turkey, breadcrumbs, and... What?
Load More Replies...
Once I made a quiche (my signature dish) for friends who are both excellent cooks. It came out soupy! I was all apologies and couldn't figure out what I did wrong. The only thing that makes sense is that I left out the eggs. So embarrassing.
On a vacation to a spanish island, i bought some salt for the pan fries we would try make that evening. We poured salt on the fries and get a strange sentation in our mouths. My wife asked asked if it was salt i bought, i showed her. She is good at spanish and told me i had bought baking powder.
My husband forgot that when you are eating something oily, it's harder to grip glass, ceramic and other slick surfaces. He lifted up a bowl of Marinara sauce to dip garlic bread in and the bowl slipped out of his hand, hitting his desk and slopping marinara over his laptop. He spent the next few hours cleaning his computer bit by bit.
my first time trying to cook fried chicken on my own. I had the heat up way too high and got chicken burnt on the outside and raw on the inside. I had plenty of chicken left so I thought I would just sift out the burnt bits from the oil and start over at a lower hear. Fine idea. but... I used a plastic colander and the oil was still hot... *sigh* We ordered pizza
The worst I ever did was to open the oven door part way through baking a cake. It was a cooker in a rented house with a solid door, so you couldn't see what it was doing, and unlike others I've see, didn't have a glass inner door. Result was a concave chocolate cake. Edible, but only just!
I wanted to double the amount of dough for my muffins, but managed to quadruple the amount of flour. I noticed after I already mixed the dough, the consistency was far off. So I added more of the rest of the ingredients. In the end it worked out fine, but I had soooo many muffins...
I've cooked potatoes and Schnitzel for lunch and invited my new bf over... As we started to eat, i quickly realized that I've added sugar into the water which i cooked potatoes with instead of salt.. so yeah.. wasn't edible >_< .. we ordered pizza afterwards
I have put black pepper on a milk tart (type of custard tart popular in South Africa) instead of cinnamon. I had to remove the top layer to be able to eat it. Since then I try to always cook and bake with my entire brain present rather than day dreaming at the same time.
My MIL once decided to make lamb for Easter. She didn't have any mint so she used peppermint extract...have you ever eaten and brush your teeth at the same time?
Grilling hamburgers on foil, I went inside to wash the plate they had been on while raw. When I came back outside I found that the grease from the foil had fallen on the open flame which traveled to the burgers which then caught on fire in a burning puddle of magma grease. I had to put this chain of events together after the fact when I found I had charged hockey pucks instead of burgers after stepping away for maybe 5 minutes.
I posted it in comments above: I half blame the employee. I made gravy for my roasted garlic mashed potatoes with icing sugar instead of cornstarch. I clearly remember the label on the bulk bin saying cornstarch. I didn't figure it out till it was on my lovely potatoes. I don't buy icing sugar or cornstarch from bulk bins anymore.
I knew someone who frequently made peanut butter cookies, usually forgetting to put the peanut butter in! I had many screw ups when I was younger and just married, so now I make a point of pulling everything out that I need and putting it on the counter, not just the ingredients but things I might need like cornstarch, since it is so easy to grab the wrong box or bottle out of a cabinet.
I have also grabbed the hot cast iron out of the oven with bare hands on many occasions as well. Also turned on the wrong burner many times and ruined an empty pan while wondering why the food I am trying to cook is not hot yet. (I hate the stove nobs, on the left two burners the left is the back burner and on the right two burners the left is the front burner. And they are all the same size and hight.)
I bought some Arm and Hammer washing soda for the laundry on sale. My mother-in-law that lives with us was baking zucchini bread and ran out of baking powder and so she went to the laundry room to get the baking soda she saw my unpack. The zucchini bread came out very dense, no rise. My partner and mother-in-law ate it anyways thinking that it was because it was baking soda instead of baking powder. When I got home I explained that I did not think that you were supposed to cook with it, that it was specifically for laundry. She was like baking soda is baking soda. I went and got the box out of the laundry room to read it. (You are not supposed to cook with it.) I find the box unopened. I walk my mother-in-law through what she did, turns out she grabbed the regular laundry detergent. Luckily they did not get sick.
My dad put powdered soap in a metal spice/cheese shaker to take camping. He took a sharpie and labeled it with a big "S" for soap. Well my uncle cooked dinner over the camp stove and instead of salt on our steaks we had powdered soap. After someone ate a bit, we figured out something was wrong and had a little detective work to do before we found out the culprit.
Made cookies in college, but used Bisquick instead of flour. They were in identical glass jars. Cookies expanded into big spongy discs.
Once I poured black coffee into the bowl I was going to put my cereal in. My mom looked over and asked what I was doing. I groggily stared at the bowl, realized my mistake, and poured the coffee into my mug. My cereal did taste strange 😂
My mom was not taught to cook. She learned by practicing on Dad after they were married. She wanted to impress her MIL, so baked a lemon meringue pie. She followed the recipe to the letter. Unfortunately, after telling her to add lemon, it neglected to say stir. At dinner, Mom got the piece with the lemon in it. She's never said how the rest of the evening went.
Apparently one time my mom was cooking something and the recipe called for evaporated milk. She couldn’t find the evaporated milk, only knew it was different from normal milk, and put sweetened condensed milk in instead. It didn’t taste very good.
I once added cumin to my coffee, thinking it was cinnamon. I smelled it first and everything! My brain was just convinced it was cinny, lol. It tasted awful and I couldn't tell why, until I smelled the spice again! XD
Many years ago it was Christmas day and I was pregnant and tired. Put the turkey in the oven and went to lay down. Got up a few times to check on it, topped it up with some water in the pan. After doing that about three times- God only knows how long it was in the oven- I went to top the water up and it was burnt to a charred crisp. Being tired won out that day. I said eff it and went back to sleep 😆
So many stories... My aunt pulled the classic mistake when making a lemon pie - forgot the sugar. I thought our faces would turn inside out after the first bite! I made my own mistake as a young restaurant cook. I was so proud when I made a holiday torte for the owner & they approved it to be on the menu as a special holiday dessert for a limited time. I was totally in the zone, crushing graham cracker crumbs, grating & shaving chocolate, whipping up the rum-flavored whipped cream for the topping & filling....that I forgot to add powdered sugar to the whipped cream to sweeten it. Result: the elderly "grandma" that helped peel veggies in the kitchen tasted it before I assembled the first torte - and immediately screwed her face up into a grimace and squealed, "OOOOHHHHH!!!" while shuddering and spitting it out. Not a mistake I made again.
Mu husband used the salt container to sweeten his coffee one time. He said it tasted like death.
I was baking with my friend once in high school. We were almost done and I had asked her to grab something from the pantry. She walked back over to me holding a full gallon of milk that my brain had decided belonged on the shelf instead of in the fridge…
Making cupcakes for the first time as a teen ive read the recipe kinda wrong, used 3-4 cups of sugar instead of 3/4 :) They were edible but crunchy with sugar
I have put batter into a pan without adding baking powder way too many times. Goddamn baking powder!
I managed to burn a salad during Thanksgiving. I was mixing up a salad since I’d been banned from the oven after the Great Yam Fire of 2018 and managed to knock a candle from the windowsill into it. Burned salad doesn’t taste good, especially when parts of it are coated in wax.
The Great Yam fire of 2018...oh you gave me a good laugh there. Thanks ☺️
Load More Replies... Once made carrot cake: grated the carrots, mixed the ingredients, poured into the pan, and placed in the oven to bake. 20 minutes later, realized that the pile of grated carrots was still sitting on the counter. It was pretty good carrot-less carrot cake, but still...
I feel your pain. Don't you just have this undescribable feeling when you look over and see something like that? Like - "I have just wasted part of my life on that mistake!" - type of feeling.
Load More Replies... Not cooking, but more than once I have walked into my bedroom with my phone and a glass of water, put the phone on a coaster and thrown the glass of water onto the bed. Now I mutter to myself as I enter the room "glass on coaster, phone on bed, glass on coaster, phone on bed..."
You're just paying libations to the chicken gods for their generosity.....
Load More Replies... In a rush (alright, with drinking involved too) poured all the hot bacon grease down the sink. Later, guiltily helped to snake out the clogged pipe outside the house. (Sigh.) So many dumb thoughless mistakes through the years. So many...and yet I still love to cook.
I was making turkey burgers and it was too soft and mushy. Bread crumbs weren't helping. It was like a batter. So, rather than turkey burgers, we had turkey waffles. We've been making them on purpose since. Spice them how you want. Dip them in what you want. They're convenient and delicious!
Can I get the recipe? Like, I understand spice them how you want, but it's ground turkey, breadcrumbs, and... What?
Load More Replies... Once I made a quiche (my signature dish) for friends who are both excellent cooks. It came out soupy! I was all apologies and couldn't figure out what I did wrong. The only thing that makes sense is that I left out the eggs. So embarrassing.
On a vacation to a spanish island, i bought some salt for the pan fries we would try make that evening. We poured salt on the fries and get a strange sentation in our mouths. My wife asked asked if it was salt i bought, i showed her. She is good at spanish and told me i had bought baking powder.
My husband forgot that when you are eating something oily, it's harder to grip glass, ceramic and other slick surfaces. He lifted up a bowl of Marinara sauce to dip garlic bread in and the bowl slipped out of his hand, hitting his desk and slopping marinara over his laptop. He spent the next few hours cleaning his computer bit by bit.
my first time trying to cook fried chicken on my own. I had the heat up way too high and got chicken burnt on the outside and raw on the inside. I had plenty of chicken left so I thought I would just sift out the burnt bits from the oil and start over at a lower hear. Fine idea. but... I used a plastic colander and the oil was still hot... *sigh* We ordered pizza
The worst I ever did was to open the oven door part way through baking a cake. It was a cooker in a rented house with a solid door, so you couldn't see what it was doing, and unlike others I've see, didn't have a glass inner door. Result was a concave chocolate cake. Edible, but only just!
I wanted to double the amount of dough for my muffins, but managed to quadruple the amount of flour. I noticed after I already mixed the dough, the consistency was far off. So I added more of the rest of the ingredients. In the end it worked out fine, but I had soooo many muffins...
I've cooked potatoes and Schnitzel for lunch and invited my new bf over... As we started to eat, i quickly realized that I've added sugar into the water which i cooked potatoes with instead of salt.. so yeah.. wasn't edible >_< .. we ordered pizza afterwards
I have put black pepper on a milk tart (type of custard tart popular in South Africa) instead of cinnamon. I had to remove the top layer to be able to eat it. Since then I try to always cook and bake with my entire brain present rather than day dreaming at the same time.
My MIL once decided to make lamb for Easter. She didn't have any mint so she used peppermint extract...have you ever eaten and brush your teeth at the same time?
Grilling hamburgers on foil, I went inside to wash the plate they had been on while raw. When I came back outside I found that the grease from the foil had fallen on the open flame which traveled to the burgers which then caught on fire in a burning puddle of magma grease. I had to put this chain of events together after the fact when I found I had charged hockey pucks instead of burgers after stepping away for maybe 5 minutes.
I posted it in comments above: I half blame the employee. I made gravy for my roasted garlic mashed potatoes with icing sugar instead of cornstarch. I clearly remember the label on the bulk bin saying cornstarch. I didn't figure it out till it was on my lovely potatoes. I don't buy icing sugar or cornstarch from bulk bins anymore.
I knew someone who frequently made peanut butter cookies, usually forgetting to put the peanut butter in! I had many screw ups when I was younger and just married, so now I make a point of pulling everything out that I need and putting it on the counter, not just the ingredients but things I might need like cornstarch, since it is so easy to grab the wrong box or bottle out of a cabinet.
I have also grabbed the hot cast iron out of the oven with bare hands on many occasions as well. Also turned on the wrong burner many times and ruined an empty pan while wondering why the food I am trying to cook is not hot yet. (I hate the stove nobs, on the left two burners the left is the back burner and on the right two burners the left is the front burner. And they are all the same size and hight.)
I bought some Arm and Hammer washing soda for the laundry on sale. My mother-in-law that lives with us was baking zucchini bread and ran out of baking powder and so she went to the laundry room to get the baking soda she saw my unpack. The zucchini bread came out very dense, no rise. My partner and mother-in-law ate it anyways thinking that it was because it was baking soda instead of baking powder. When I got home I explained that I did not think that you were supposed to cook with it, that it was specifically for laundry. She was like baking soda is baking soda. I went and got the box out of the laundry room to read it. (You are not supposed to cook with it.) I find the box unopened. I walk my mother-in-law through what she did, turns out she grabbed the regular laundry detergent. Luckily they did not get sick.
My dad put powdered soap in a metal spice/cheese shaker to take camping. He took a sharpie and labeled it with a big "S" for soap. Well my uncle cooked dinner over the camp stove and instead of salt on our steaks we had powdered soap. After someone ate a bit, we figured out something was wrong and had a little detective work to do before we found out the culprit.
Made cookies in college, but used Bisquick instead of flour. They were in identical glass jars. Cookies expanded into big spongy discs.
Once I poured black coffee into the bowl I was going to put my cereal in. My mom looked over and asked what I was doing. I groggily stared at the bowl, realized my mistake, and poured the coffee into my mug. My cereal did taste strange 😂
My mom was not taught to cook. She learned by practicing on Dad after they were married. She wanted to impress her MIL, so baked a lemon meringue pie. She followed the recipe to the letter. Unfortunately, after telling her to add lemon, it neglected to say stir. At dinner, Mom got the piece with the lemon in it. She's never said how the rest of the evening went.
Apparently one time my mom was cooking something and the recipe called for evaporated milk. She couldn’t find the evaporated milk, only knew it was different from normal milk, and put sweetened condensed milk in instead. It didn’t taste very good.
I once added cumin to my coffee, thinking it was cinnamon. I smelled it first and everything! My brain was just convinced it was cinny, lol. It tasted awful and I couldn't tell why, until I smelled the spice again! XD
Many years ago it was Christmas day and I was pregnant and tired. Put the turkey in the oven and went to lay down. Got up a few times to check on it, topped it up with some water in the pan. After doing that about three times- God only knows how long it was in the oven- I went to top the water up and it was burnt to a charred crisp. Being tired won out that day. I said eff it and went back to sleep 😆
So many stories... My aunt pulled the classic mistake when making a lemon pie - forgot the sugar. I thought our faces would turn inside out after the first bite! I made my own mistake as a young restaurant cook. I was so proud when I made a holiday torte for the owner & they approved it to be on the menu as a special holiday dessert for a limited time. I was totally in the zone, crushing graham cracker crumbs, grating & shaving chocolate, whipping up the rum-flavored whipped cream for the topping & filling....that I forgot to add powdered sugar to the whipped cream to sweeten it. Result: the elderly "grandma" that helped peel veggies in the kitchen tasted it before I assembled the first torte - and immediately screwed her face up into a grimace and squealed, "OOOOHHHHH!!!" while shuddering and spitting it out. Not a mistake I made again.
Mu husband used the salt container to sweeten his coffee one time. He said it tasted like death.
I was baking with my friend once in high school. We were almost done and I had asked her to grab something from the pantry. She walked back over to me holding a full gallon of milk that my brain had decided belonged on the shelf instead of in the fridge…
Making cupcakes for the first time as a teen ive read the recipe kinda wrong, used 3-4 cups of sugar instead of 3/4 :) They were edible but crunchy with sugar
I have put batter into a pan without adding baking powder way too many times. Goddamn baking powder!
