What was your last cooking failure?

[Diane Lane]

I used a different recipe for my last batch of hermits, and I'm not happy with how they turned out. I think the pan size and probably the cooking times were wrong, so the hermits ended up being too thick, and the centers were mushy and uncooked. I put them back in the oven, but still wasn't happy with the result. I'll try the recipe again, but next time, I'll use a wider pan, spread the mixture out more, and will cook them for about twice as long as the recipe states.

 

[L_B]

My last disaster was peanut butter cookies. I used the recipe that I have always used in the past because it is our favorite. I got busy doing something else and I forgot they were in the oven. By the time I smelled the smoke it was too late to rescue them. They looked like little cubes of charcoal. It took forever to air the smoke and smell out of the kitchen.

 

[juulicob]

My last cooking failure was a total miscommunication between my boyfriend and I. I made whole wheat dough for pizza and I told him it was to rise for 45 minutes, then he can pop it in the oven. He thought I said it's ready to go in the cast iron pan and cook - so that's what he did. It cooked at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes until I started to smell it... Oh no! I could only imagine how hard this will be. Turns out, my boyfriend actually did a pretty cool thing! He only used half the dough so the crust ended up being very thin and crunchy, like a flat bread, or a cracker! So we just added some toppings and broke off pieces to eat. It wasn't pizza at all. But it wasn't terrible This was about a month ago. We're usually awesome in the kitchen together but this was the first time something like this happened. And I expect there to be more adventures.

 

[Corzhens]

Last night was actually a cooking failure for me if we consider the quality. I fried the t-bone steak and then I mixed the gravy before I harvested it. But it was supposed to be frying the steak and harvesting before throwing in the gravy to boil. I was kind of disgusted because it has been a long time since I cooked. But anyway, my husband re-cooked the steak and we had a good dinner especially with the garnishings - boiled corn on the cob, french fries, cucumber with mayonnaise.

 

[winterybella]

I used a different recipe for my last batch of hermits, and I'm not happy with how they turned out. I think the pan size and probably the cooking times were wrong, so the hermits ended up being too thick, and the centers were mushy and uncooked. I put them back in the oven, but still wasn't happy with the result. I'll try the recipe again, but next time, I'll use a wider pan, spread the mixture out more, and will cook them for about twice as long as the recipe states.

Diane, what are you asking me here? You are asking me to go back to primary school...Cooking failure? Okay let me be honest now. Only today I did some oven baked fried chicken and I was not thrilled. For me it was a fail but no one complained. We will both try again.

 

[Diane Lane]

Diane, what are you asking me here? You are asking me to go back to primary school...Cooking failure? Okay let me be honest now. Only today I did some oven baked fried chicken and I was not thrilled. For me it was a fail but no one complained. We will both try again.

It's funny how something can come out o.k., but still not meet our expectations. I've had that happen before, and others have enjoyed it, because they might be used to a different standard. Oven baked fried chicken sounds good to me, and I'll bet it was yummy.

 

[kitchenwitch]

My boyfriend asked for fruit tarts a couple weeks ago and I thought I'd make them for a treat.
I don't know what was wrong with me that day! I love making pastries so the pie crust and pastry cream recipes were both ones that I had successfully used before.
This time though, the crust came out tough and chewy like old shoe leather and the pastry cream didn't set and got all runny and sticky. I didn't even bother glazing the berries on top because the whole project was such a mess at that point.
It's so disappointing working on something all afternoon only to have it turn out wrong.
I had a bunch of marshmallows though so I saved the day with some last minute rice crispy squares!

 

[MyExWasAChef]

I'm very bad at baking so I try not to do it unless I'm forced to and that's what happened last week when my mother asked me to make cupcakes for the family. Suffice to say the thing didn't rise and it came out too sweet. It was a chocolate and peanut butter cupcake that turned out like hell. Next time someone asks me to bake I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear it.

 

[SpongeyB]

I decided to try and try my hand cooking fish that I bought on my way home from the country. It had so many bones and I could not make it to debone it at all. I ended up getting rid of it altogether without cooking any of it!

 

[winterybella]

I decided to try and try my hand cooking fish that I bought on my way home from the country. It had so many bones and I could not make it to debone it at all. I ended up getting rid of it altogether without cooking any of it!

Oh no, no, no. You threw it out? Which fish was that with all these bones. The only fish I get around here with bones is something we call pot fish. A million bones and some people love it. Flying fish which is part of our National dish, is usually deboned by some skilled people before it is offered for sale. The bone lovers use theirs with bones.

 

[Diane Lane]

My boyfriend asked for fruit tarts a couple weeks ago and I thought I'd make them for a treat.
I don't know what was wrong with me that day! I love making pastries so the pie crust and pastry cream recipes were both ones that I had successfully used before.
This time though, the crust came out tough and chewy like old shoe leather and the pastry cream didn't set and got all runny and sticky. I didn't even bother glazing the berries on top because the whole project was such a mess at that point.
It's so disappointing working on something all afternoon only to have it turn out wrong.
I had a bunch of marshmallows though so I saved the day with some last minute rice crispy squares!

Oh that sounds very disappointing. I don't like wasting a lot of ingredients, since money is scarce here. I'm glad you were able to save the day with the rice crispy squares. Were you able to determine what happened with the original project? I have Fibromyalgia, and get Fibro Fog, so some days nothing I do seems to turn out right. I try not to do anything laborious on those days, because it's too frustrating.

 

[kitchenwitch]

Oh that sounds very disappointing. I don't like wasting a lot of ingredients, since money is scarce here. I'm glad you were able to save the day with the rice crispy squares. Were you able to determine what happened with the original project? I have Fibromyalgia, and get Fibro Fog, so some days nothing I do seems to turn out right. I try not to do anything laborious on those days, because it's too frustrating.

Definitely a disappointment. I'm the same way with ingredients, I have to stick to a budget and things like butter and heavy cream get expensive!
I don't know what went wrong, just one of those days I think
The crust might have turned out funky because I decided to blind bake it, which I don't normally do. As for the pastry cream...about a week before I was bragging to my mom about how well my pastry cream always sets up, so maybe it was just a case of baking karma!

 

[OhioTom76]

Somehow I managed to ruin a batch of mashed potatoes this morning. Ever since I started using a potato ricer, and discovered that you could put the whole potato in there without even peeling it, that was my go to, fool proof method of making them - no lumps and no gummy texture from over mixing either. However the potato ricer I was using I no longer have access to, so my family bought me an Oxo brand potato ricer for christmas, and while it's decent, it doesn't "rice" the potatoes as well, and sometimes things such as the skin, go through the openings.

Usually I would bake the potatoes in the oven then just pop them into the ricer. But today I decided instead to simply cut them up (unpeeled) into large chunks and throw them into my electric steamer instead, figuring it would be faster than baking them for over an hour. I washed the potatoes off really well but was too lazy to peel them. Unfortunately when I went to put them through the ricer, brown stuff which looked like dirt, was coming out of it along with the potatoes. The mashed potatoes looked "dirty" and not very appetizing at all. And for some reason, the usual amounts of butter that I normally put into them were too much, and/or the butter somehow separated because they also came out really greasy. I ended up tossing the whole batch down the drain before anyone else saw me do it, otherwise they would have yelled at me for doing that.

 

[Diane Lane]

Somehow I managed to ruin a batch of mashed potatoes this morning. Ever since I started using a potato ricer, and discovered that you could put the whole potato in there without even peeling it, that was my go to, fool proof method of making them - no lumps and no gummy texture from over mixing either. However the potato ricer I was using I no longer have access to, so my family bought me an Oxo brand potato ricer for christmas, and while it's decent, it doesn't "rice" the potatoes as well, and sometimes things such as the skin, go through the openings.

Usually I would bake the potatoes in the oven then just pop them into the ricer. But today I decided instead to simply cut them up (unpeeled) into large chunks and throw them into my electric steamer instead, figuring it would be faster than baking them for over an hour. I washed the potatoes off really well but was too lazy to peel them. Unfortunately when I went to put them through the ricer, brown stuff which looked like dirt, was coming out of it along with the potatoes. The mashed potatoes looked "dirty" and not very appetizing at all. And for some reason, the usual amounts of butter that I normally put into them were too much, and/or the butter somehow separated because they also came out really greasy. I ended up tossing the whole batch down the drain before anyone else saw me do it, otherwise they would have yelled at me for doing that.

Many places just keep the skins on for the nutrients, and call them smashed potatoes. I like that, because then I'm expecting skins, so am o.k. with seeing brown bits in them. I understand your consternation with having pieces of skin in with your mashed potatoes, though, since those are expected to be white. It sounds as if it was just an off day for you. What was the brand of the original potato ricer you had? I tend to lean toward Oxo brand, because they have a lot of ergonomic designs.

 

[purplepen88]

I recently tried to make scalloped potatoes. It was a huge disaster. After all that peeling of potatoes and grating cheese, I ended up with tasteless mush. It's too bad, my husband loves scalloped potatoes too. I'll attempt them again, but it seems for all that work it should taste better.