What's your worst cooking disaster?

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Over the years I have had a few that come to mind but one sticks out more than anything else.

As at student at Uni I had a limited budget and blowing £20 of a homemade New York Cheesecake was unheard of and a once only event. We had saved up, found all of the ingredients and the cheesecake was made, cooked and cooling on the counter whilst I cleaned up. My fiancé at the time, came into the kitchen and somehow caught the cheesecake and the entire thing ended up upside down on the kitchen floor which was carpeted... it pretty much exploded on impact and doubled in diameter... there was no recovery option!

There was only one thing for it. The bowl of whipped cream and the strawberries joined us on the floor and what we could eat was eaten off the carpet... the house dog (a lovely Rottweiler called Kim) finished off as much as she could manage and then the carpet had to be washed... It was a lovely cheesecake, never again made and numerous comments over the years have been handed back as reminders to my husband about him landing it on the floor..

 

[Shellyann36]

When I became a homeowner for the first time I was so proud of myself. I decided to invite everyone in my family (extended) family to my home for Thanksgiving. I got started super late on the meal and we did not eat until really late. Was quite embarrassing but I was in my early 20's and although the food was pretty good it was served really really really late. Everyone got to the house at around noon and we did not eat until six. I did serve appetizers but still there were several complaints from the men in the family. First and last time I ever tried cooking for a crowd unprepared and spur of the moment!

 

[isabbbela]

I would say it was the first time I tried to prepare zucchinis steamed... that was really bad! The zucchinis started releasing a lot of water and started looking like a soup or a disgusting sauce. And on top of that they became really mushy and soft, which was awful. It turned out so bad that I had to throw it all away, because there's no way anyone would have managed to eat that. I have to say that after that I never try to prepare zucchinis ever again! I love the zucchini s but they are too hard for me.

 

[Tara]

I made a couple of sweet potato pies for a potluck at an old job. One came out really well, the other one turned out stringy. Ugh....there are few things that are worse than a stringy sweet potato.

 

[Sammy Siren]

It's been years since this incident but I had just received a new meat grinder. I boiled up a chicken and thought I could make my own ground chicken. It looked and tasted like baby food. I was mortified. Recently married and all. It was one time my cooking skills just didn't work.

 

[ReadmeByAmy]

When I was in college and I already know how to cook, I asked my mother one Christmas day that I will be the one to cook our Chicken soup for our Christmas Eve dinner. What happened because I was in a hurry because 12 midnight is fast approaching and my siblings family are already in our house, I turned on the stove too high and then I got busy with the other dish and I forgot my chicken soup that is why the pasta turned out too soft and the soup is like a creamy oatmeal already and I was really so ashamed to my family but still they ate the soup even I know it should not be cooked that way. And that experienced made me to be careful already when I am cooking soup with pasta and that serves as a learning lesson in my cooking.

 

[MyPaperBleedsInk]

Cooking accidents count?

I've had my hair caught in a blender. This was back when I was young and pissed at my parents and my mother forced me to make banana bread. I hate behind forced to do stuff. So while making it I was slouching really far forward whilst scowling, and got my hair caught.

Sliced my thumb pretty deep while cutting potatoes... ruined all of them already cut up in the bowl. :/

And I'm pretty sure there are too many times to count when I added salt instead of sugar to a recipe when I was young and couldn't tell the difference in appearance.

 

[OhioTom76]

I made a big batch of homemade macaroni and cheese from scratch for my family one year, and went all out buying some rather expensive cheeses to put into it. Everything was going smoothly, and I had it in the oven to bake off, then one of my sisters friends decided to pop over unannounced to "visit". So we had to leave all our food in the oven to keep it warm, waiting for her to finally leave - she ended up staying for over two hours. By then all the food had become dried out, and the worst casualty of them all was the mac and cheese, which basically turned into cement.

Another time, I tried an Ina Garten recipe for roasted vegetables and orzo. It was awful, and the dressing that it was all tossed in made the whole dish taste like vomit - literally. It was like that acid taste you get in your mouth when you throw up a little. I had to dump the whole thing out.

 

[warmweatherwoman]

My worst cooking disaster was when I was learning how to cook spanish rice. It takes great patience as once it comes to a boil and all other ingredients is added it is imperative that the lid NOT be removed for a good 35-40 mins to allow rice to cook fully through. One quick peak lets out all the built up steam used to cook the rice to perfection- so you actually show the cooking process everytime you take the lid off.

 

[Kate]

I've been passionate about cooking for many years and I'm glad to say that there haven't been a whole lot of blunders... but wow, when I make them, I really make them!

Scene: New wifey wants to impress by making catfish. (Yep, caught it myself!) I followed a fish recipe that I knew was good... and it wasn't long before the stench began. I mean *total* stench. I tossed it (after gagging for a while) and opened all the windows. It still lingered for days.

In the meantime, I had a really nosy neighbor lady who smelled it coming from my open windows. Yeah, a little embarrassing there! She marched right in and gave me "that look" before saying "Oh my, we don't cook MUD cat, dear." OY!

What was your biggest cooking blunder?

 

[Willie84]

My worst cooking disaster was a Christmas dinner! It was the very first time I had ever bought a Honeybaked ham. I did not realize it was already cooked. So you know what I did, yep, I cooked it! It was terrible. It was too dry to eat! My husband was furious. It was an $80 ham!! I will never live that one down in our household. :0)

 

[Jessi]

Willie, how big was that ham for it to cost $80 at Christmas time?? O.o That's rather expensive for a ham.

As for me, I had a kitchen fire due to frying eggplant for eggplant parmesan. I'm still not entirely sure how it even happened because I was right there at the stove and the heat wasn't super high. I feel like there had to have been a spark involved somehow or there's no way it would've lit on fire like that, but the whole pan exploded into flames. Smoke went everywhere, down the hallways, etc. I put it out immediately, but the damage was already done. I spent a couple weeks scrubbing walls after that because even just the 30 seconds worth of smoke that drifted through the house ended up staining the upper portions of the walls.

 

[Caffajake]

There was that time when I tried to grill a panini, came back a minute later and it was on fire... I like to think my cooking skills have improved a bit since then!

There was another time when my sister and I were making pumpkin and sweet potato soup. We had to simmer the veg for 45 minutes before blending it. Put it on to simmer, came back in 45 mins and found that we'd accidentally put it on to boil instead so all the water had evaporated, and we'd created a weird substance that can only be described as 'mulch'. Which actually didn't taste as terrible as it looked. But still, not quite the soup we were hoping for