Sometimes, despite our greatest efforts, things just seem not to go our way. On those days, whether because of inattention, rushing, ignorance, or anything else, we may accidentally mess up something that could’ve been perfectly good.
Cooking is one of the activities most prone to this kind of back luck. In this Reddit post, both professionals and amateurs share their greatest accidental kitchen misfortunes that have ever befallen them on one of those unlucky days. Scroll down to read what they wrote!
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Was hosting a few people for a pretty fancy dinner. I'd prepped dessert during the day - fresh apricots poached in white wine and light syrup, to be served with marscapone. I had beautiful duck breasts for main course. Everything was superb.
After the first two courses, I went to get the dessert and the syrup looked slightly odd - darker streaks in it, which I hadn't seen on previous times I made it. I checked it and it TASTED slightly odd. Then I identified the taste... Evidently when I'd taken the duck out of the fridge to cook it, I'd managed to tilt the plate and tipped a little bit of duck blood into the fully prepared apricots. Absolutely no way to save them, straight in the bin they went. I was devastated 😭
Msg helps to make my savoury dishes taste good right? So 17 year old me thought it would go great in the chocolate cake I was making for my grandads birthday. I put a heaped teaspoon in for good measure too.
Folks, let me tell you, mistakes were definitely made that day.
My mom made chicken stock. And young me at 10, trying to be helpful, threw the stock away, thinking it was "waste water from cooking the ingredients" and washed the pot for her.
Needless to say, my mom was NOT pleased. And she was asian mom level displeased.
Made fried shallots and you strain them out of the oil before putting them on paper towels to make sure they’re crispy. It all has to happen quickly because they can easily overcook.
Well, I drained the pot of fried shallots and boiling oil into a plastic strainer. Melted straight through and I was left with a rimless basketball hoop and a bowl of plasticky, shallot-y oil.
We went to Costco on Monday to get a bunch of stuff for my in-laws.
We had just been there over the weekend for ourselves so we didn't really need anything but realized we didn't get any boneless skinless chicken breasts so we decided to grab some. Fast forward to today and my wife complains about her car smelling funky on her drive into work. On her way home it's gotten even worse, she asks me to smell it - it's pretty unbearable. Yup, we'd left like 10lb of chicken in the trunk for two or so days at 85F.
Luckily only air had escaped the packs, though they were all ballooned up and looked like they were ready to blow.
Opening the trunk was an experience I don't want to have again - her car is RIPE right now, we have the garage open with the trunk open and all the windows down with a couple sticks of incense burning.
Made a big batch of tzatziki sauce once at work and accidentally used the vanilla yogurt instead of the plain. Absolutely disgusting.
Accidentally made icing with corn starch instead of icing sugar. It tasted "zippy" ;)
Had extended family over for Thanksgiving. Decided to make (for the first time) fresh home made gravy from giblets, onions, carrots, celery, sage, etc etc. Simmered it lovingly and carefully on the back burner the entire time was roasting the turkey, preparing the sides, etc etc. Finally it was time to serve it. Got out my trusty colander..... and watched helplessly as I accidentally poured the entire saucepan of gravy down the sink
My boyfriend looked up substitutes for nutmeg in a savory chicken dish. He used cloves. A full teaspoon of cloves.
He also sent me a text once asking if I liked grilled cheese "with or without the bones" followed by a picture with the plastic twist tie from the bread melted into the grilled cheese.
This weekend I made a lovely mushroom soup - [https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-minnesota-wild-rice-mushroom-soup-recipes-from-the-kitchn-164295#post-recipe-10445](https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-minnesota-wild-rice-mushroom-soup-recipes-from-the-kitchn-164295#post-recipe-10445) - my first soup of the season! Right towards the end I realised I had left a bit of the stock from the rice in a cup in my sink (had drained the rice and left the colander sitting on the cup in my sink, as I often do), having intended to put the stock in the soup along with the rice. So I threw it in the soup and continued on. Of course I had completely forgotten that I had already squeezed soap over the dishes in my sink and then got distracted.... so I made soap soup. Had to throw it all out, F- do not recommend.
In my early days of cooking I was determined to make sesame chicken
When confronted with garlic I learned the difference between a "clove" and a "bulb" that day, christ that dark, garlicky sludge still haunts my taste buds
Something similar happened to a friend of mine. They were making potato soup and it called for 6 cloves of garlic and by the time I intervened they had added three bulbs. Most garlicky thing I've ever tasted lol.
I was on a baking spree this past weekend. I baked a cake, 30+ waffles and homemade pasta. Turns out my flour was sour.
I was making myself an Old Fashioned with a pretty good single barrel bourbon. Added the simple syrup, bitters, and orange peel to the glass to muddle, then added 4 ounces of the $80 bourbon. Dropped in the ice, stirred, and dropped in 2 Luxardo cherries. This is gonna be a high class cocktail experience, let me tell you! Went to take my first sip and noticed a distinct smoky nose to it, which was definitely not right… Tasted it and got a mouthful of deep chemical smoke flavor…
Went to the cabinet and retrieved my “bitters”, and realized that I had instead grabbed a bottle of liquid smoke!
$15 worth of bourbon down the drain… Devastating 😂
Was babysitting my sisters when I was a teenager, made them scrambled eggs for lunch. Was grumpy with them for a bit when they said it tasted really weird. Unfooortunately, turned out I had used lamb’s milk (as in milk formula for hand-reared lambs) that my parents had prepped and left in an old milk jug identical to the cow’s milk jug….whoops 🤣😂
Used too much sesame oil first time trying it.. inedible..
I hate sesame oil. There was a period when my dad was crazy about sesame oil because he heard somewhere about its health benefits. He ordered my mom to cook everything with sesame oil instead of the usual vegetable oil. It lasted for a while, but it was long enough to turn me off from sesame oil for life.
My Rottweiler ate my linguine as I was feeding dough through my KitchenAid. Does that count?
A couple of weeks ago, my local store had a bunch of 16oz ribeyes on special sale for $5 each. They were all “sell by” that day and they were just trying to get them sold.
I seasoned them perfect, seared them, and finished them in the oven. They were beautiful. For some reason I couldn’t get them up to temp. TWENTY minutes later, I realized my thermometer had its Celsius/Fahrenheit settings switched.
My beautiful steaks were shoe leather.
My best friend once spent hours making the perfect, clear turkey stock. You could see the bottom of the pot, it didn't boil once. All the leftover goodness from the holiday condensed into liquid bliss.
He then put a colander in the sink and strained the lot down the drain, saving the bones and waste. His dear mother was sitting in the kitchen and she said 'X, did you just...? Oh, honey, you better just go outside to your mancave'.
The pain is still there in his heart.
Was making a tuna noodle casserole, and added crushed up potato chips on top. Put it under the broiler on the top rack and proceed to wait. A minute or two later the oven starts making some weird beeping it's never done before and the display is just blinking FIRE.
Sure enough, open the oven and the chips are on fire. I tried scraping off the top half of the casserole, but the burnt oil flavor had seeped through the whole thing. In the garbage it went.
It seems so dumb in hindsight-putting it on the TOP rack under a GAS broiler. But I am proud to say I haven't set any casseroles on fire since then :)
In my early 20s and as a young wife, I tried to make fried chicken. Once the crust became pale yellow, I felt it looked as good as churches chicken, a fast food place that has a light golden crust. It was completely raw on the inside and wasted lots of chicken, hours of my time, and my dignity. Lol
Really early in learning to cook; I was prepping a beautiful Capon. I reached for a can of cooking spray to give a the bird a spray & after giving it a good long once over,realized too late I'd hit it with Lysol. Tried rinsing it but it still reeked of Lysol so yep,in the trash it went. Grilled cheese anyone?
I call BS on this story. Who keeps their cooking products and cleaning products together?
One of the first times I was making stroganoff and my broth wasn't thick enough. I remember my mom adding flour to it to thicken it. Well, I kept pouring flour in. Probably close to a cups worth. It was thick alright but tastes awful. Totally ruined it. I affectionately named it "glue-ganoff"
I didn't ruin it, but I made a wedding cake that the groom said only going 2 blocks and 2 turns so a box isn't needed. The best man was holding it. It made it 1.5 blocks and one turn. Luckily one store in town had a decent size cake and could decorate it quickly. The cake made it to the reception 15 minutes before the bride and groom got there.
I was following a Food Network recipe for Carbonara by Marc Murphy and he said to make the water "as salty as the sea." Seemed a tad excessive, but I wasn't going to question a good network chef. I know what seawater tastes like, so I seasoned accordingly.
My God it was inedible. And I had made such a big batch too, a whole box of noodles, several eggs, a pack of bacon (only bacon was available in my town, we had no proper meat market.)
I had to toss it out. I was so disappointed.
I suspect that's the same thing I watched. And tried. Let me say that salting the water to be as much as the sea... nope nope nope. Ruined dinner...but it was a memorable mistake that we have learnt from.
I have been making meat loaf for years and have perfected making it to my taste. Part of that is to add some Worcester sauce to the mixture. I distractedly reached into my pantry for a brown bottle of sauce and chucked it into the mixture. It was not Worcester. It was toasted sesame oil. At that point, there was no point of return.
I’d like to say that I had somehow fumbled my way into a new and exiting concoction. One that would spawn a cooking blog, success and recognition as an innovative home chef.
Yeah. No. It was not good. I got through a bit of it because I was super hungry. It was worse on day 2, when I thought I’d try one of my favorite things, a delicious meat loaf sandwich. Ew.
Whoever chose the stock art with this has clearly never even seen a meatloaf...cuz this pic ain't it!
I made peach cookies that smelled fantastic while baking. Had to spit out my first bite it was so salty. Went back to the recipe and noticed I quadrupled the amount of baking soda. It pained me to toss them because they were made with fresh peaches a friend had grown.
My mom once added liquid dish soap to a cake she was making for my sister's class party. She was supposed to add oil...
I've almost entirely quit buying spice mixes for that very reason. Every damn one seems to have salt as its first ingredient...And I love salt but god damn.
One time I bought like 30 dollars worth of ingredients for a HUGE pan of Mac n cheese. Used a recipe, followed it to a T, and it turned out absolutely horrendous. So eggy and dry. It was such a waste. I’ve ruined/burned plenty of things but that one always stands out to me.
When I was a kid I put buttermilk on my cereal.
I burn garlic more than I are to admit. And there’s fewer things as toxic as burnt garlic
Note: this post originally had 44 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I made a batch of chili once. When I took out the dried chili peppers to carefully season it, the lid got off. In my panic I somehow managed to drop the whole glass into the pot. Opinions were divided: Of twenty people, twelve declared the chili inedible, while the other eight insisted it was the best chili they had ever tasted.
Yep. Hot stuff is like that . I personally loooove it <3
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I made peanut butter cookies one time and forgot to add the flour. It held together when I scooped it because of the peanut butter, then turned into puddles in the oven. My daughter still loved them, I couldn't eat them.
My sister was making Italian rainbow cookies and accidentally used anise extract instead of almond; she didn't realize until they were baking. They weren't horrible but just too much anise for me to consume. I tried to eat the cookies since I'm the guilty party who bought anise extract (we never had it in the house before) but I just couldn't.
I made a batch of chili once. When I took out the dried chili peppers to carefully season it, the lid got off. In my panic I somehow managed to drop the whole glass into the pot. Opinions were divided: Of twenty people, twelve declared the chili inedible, while the other eight insisted it was the best chili they had ever tasted.
Yep. Hot stuff is like that . I personally loooove it <3
Load More Replies... I made peanut butter cookies one time and forgot to add the flour. It held together when I scooped it because of the peanut butter, then turned into puddles in the oven. My daughter still loved them, I couldn't eat them.
My sister was making Italian rainbow cookies and accidentally used anise extract instead of almond; she didn't realize until they were baking. They weren't horrible but just too much anise for me to consume. I tried to eat the cookies since I'm the guilty party who bought anise extract (we never had it in the house before) but I just couldn't.
