What's the worst food you have ever eaten that was cooked by someone else?

[QueenOfMyWorld]

Under cooked bacon wrapped around philidelphia cheese. It was a starter that a friend did,I vomited that night,might have been unrelated but doubt it.Urgh can still taste it years later

@MarieVanGoethem I think we may have gone to the same college, I can well imagine my college buttery doing all of that. Were yours also prone to randomly serving (soggy, boiled, bitter) courgettes as a side dish at formals?

@ProseccoPoppy
We didn't ever have Random Rancid Courgettes, no...
My friends did tell me that any meal featuring a colour in the name (& they didn't just go for the traditional things like "green curry") were to be avoided at all costs; ditto anything that mentioned a place.

Brunch, though... College brunch was a glorious thing...

MIL's "chilli con carne" - mince was dry, no seasonings had been added, there was no sauce. Literally just the mince and beans together with some rice.

@BogstandardBelle - my sister and I used to get sent to stay with a friend of my mum for a couple of weeks in the summer holidays - and she had the same attitude towards leftovers as your MIL. They'd all be carefully kept in the fridge, and then, on Friday, she'd do 'Scraps Dinner and Scraps Pudding' to finish them all up before the weekly shop on Saturday.

Basically you'd get a bit of everything savoury, with veg or salad to bulk it out, followed by a bit of everything sweet.

She outdid herself one year, when she and her dd ended up coming back to stay with us - we all travelled on the coach, and she packed a picnic, comprised of the leftovers from tea the previous day. Tea had been slices of bread and butter with different toppings - including marmite, jam, peanut butter and chocolate spread - open sandwiches, basically.

She had turned these into actual sandwiches by putting slices together, based on what the filling looked like. Peanut butter was fine - it didn't look like anything else, so we got peanut butter sandwiches. Two different flavours of jam was interesting but not unpleasant.

Chocolate spread and marmite was ... there are no words for how disgusting it was. I get travel sick on coaches, and this picnic did not help!

Before the first time we went to stay, she asked my mum if there was anything dsis and I did not eat, and mum told her we both loathed liver - so the very first picnic she made included liver pate sandwiches . We were both too well dragged up to complain/refuse, so we held our breath and ate them - and she decided, based on this, that mum was wrong, so we got lots of liver pate sandwiches - which was bad enough - but then one day she made liver casserole. This broke dsis - she refused (politely) to eat it, but I held my breath and forced it down, because I didn't dare not. I did such a good job that she offered me seconds - and I finally got to say No thank you.

It is only very recently I have been able to face liver at all - dh likes it and occasionally buys it and cooks it for his lunch, but he cooks it very well, and I can eat a little bit and enjoy it.

Talking of liver - I remember working as a Student Nurse, and having to help elderly patients with their meals. One lady basically needed pureed food - she could hardly manage to chew at all, and so couldn't cope with anything bigger than mince. One day, the lunch I was given to feed her was a slab of liver with mash and cabbage, and I had to spend ages mincing tough ox liver with a normal knife and fork, until it was small enough to mix with the mash, so she could swallow it (and so the strong taste was somewhat disguised). Poor woman.

Went over a relative's for boxing day dinner.

I'm not fussy at all but the veg tasted sour/off and the cauliflower had black spots all over it, the yorkshires were inedibly hard, and everything was varying degrees of cold/lukewarm.

My Italian friend once made a risotto. It was awful, I spooned it into my mouth with increasing difficulty. DH said it wasn't that bad, so maybe it was just me. But DH eats all sorts of questionable things and has a cast iron stomach from growing up in the third world. My friend's mother is a great cook but sadly I don't think he ever picked up the skill, we've always met him at restaurants ever since

I’ve got a few!

Tripe soup when I was six (in the 90s) when we visited a family friend’s new wife for the first time. My grandma and Mum couldn’t stomach it and told me not to eat the white stuff, just the clear broth.

I rarely eat bacon and when I do, I only have it well cooked and crispy. I can’t stomach it pale and will avoid breakfast buffets at hotels etc. I went to stay at my best friend’s remote farm for 4 days and was quite underfed the whole time. She didn’t eat refined carbs and only ate plain food with no sauces or spices. So dinner would be a plain (dry) chicken breast, some kale and half a sweet potato. She didn’t ever offer lunch for us and breakfast was porridge made with water. She’d never offer tea or coffee and there were no biscuits or snacks, not even fruit. After three days, I was absolutely ravenous. Dinner on the third night was bacon and kale but it was barely cooked and quite thick and fatty. I put one piece in my mouth and immediately started to retch. I couldn’t possibly eat it, starving or not. Luckily I’d also managed to talk her into taking me in to the nearest town that day and I’d had treated her to brunch. I pretended to have food poisoning from the brunch rather than offending her and went to bed with nothing on my stomach. The next day, I made an excuse and left earlier than planned and headed straight to the nearest McDonalds Drive Thru for a McMuffin and some proper coffee 😂😂😂.

The worst was at a friend’s house when I was 11. She was vegetarian in the days before it was all that common. The first time she’d came for dinner we hadn’t known she was veggie and my parents had made one of their legendary roast beef dinners. She announced she was veggie and Dad was promptly sent to the nearest shop (it was a Sunday and supermarkets weren’t open) where he managed to pick up some Linda Macartney sausages for her to have with the other parts of the roast dinner.

When her mother reciprocated and had me round for dinner, she served up what I can only describe as a plate of orange and grey slop which was different to what my veggie friend was served. I really didn’t want to eat it and politely said, “excuse me please, what is it?” Her mother said, “Well you see in THIS house, we actually cook and don’t rely upon convenience meals like YOUR parents. It’s cottage pie and you WILL eat it all. I want a clean plate.” The “cottage pie” was made with turkey mince, onions, peas and turnip. No potatoes, no gravy or sauce. It was vile and I had that horrible lump in my throat sensation that you get as a kid when you are desperately trying not to cry and not to puke. Needless to say I refused to go back. Especially after my Dad, who is not white, turned up to collect me and the mother hissed “You might have told me about your father! The last thing I was expecting on my doorstep at night was a foreign man. If he hadn’t have said “I’m Shady’s Dad” I would have been telling him to get on his way.” 😡😡😡

Beef comsomme with a thin layer of sherry flavoured single cream on top and a dollop of caviar. It was vile.

Hands down MIL's Christmas dinner.

1. Greasy "roast" potatoes.
2. Turkey cooked the night before, totally dried out and stone cold.
3. Super strong Bisto gravy (complete with lumps) served with said turkey.
4. Veg boiled, and boiled, and boiled to mush.
5. No pigs in blankets or bread sauce because "FIL doesn't like them".
6. Prosecco served warm.

It was disgusting. Awful, awful meal. Never again.

OMG Shady, what an appalling woman!

I once made my dad a fish curry but accidentally put a table spoon of apricot jam In it - he said it tasted like fishy pudding 😷

Worst thing iv been fed was a carbonara but I'm sure the cream was off - it tasted like sick 🤮

A FROZEN sausage pie. I just left it. My friend (her mum 'cooked' it said nothing either. The mother obvs wondered why it was untouched.

My DHs very lovely nanny makes biscuits which i’d imagine were the sort of thing taken to sea / war once upon a time as they take a lot of water to manage to get through them.

Shell pasta fried with blackcurrants and brown sugar which was dished up by my friend's MiL's DM. I loathe and detest pasta and flicked the greasy globules into several layers of paper handkerchiefs on my lap to be disposed of as soon as I left the house.

Was that main course or desert?

She sounds awful Shady

When my mum first got a food processor, she was so taken with it that pretty much everything that could be puréed was puréed, including mashed potatoes. The thing is when you mash potatoes, the starch molecules in them get crushed, but importantly not broken. In a food processor they get chopped up and the structure changes to that of glue. Just vomitous. Tasted like something between wallpapers paste and dental adhesive.

There was also a lentil lasagne that was like a solid fart on a plate. And during the same health kick, everything was sprinkled with wheat germ and microwaved. Microwaved chicken breast you could use as a discus.

A friend had just done a Thai cookery course and invited us round for dinner.

She attempted spring rolls but didn't heat the oil enough so they just opened up and soaked through with fat. She then rinsed them with water. Never again!

Corned beef hash, with mashed potato and peas. Watery baby food mush on an adult sized plate. Can't stand peas and can't eat potatoes once it's gone warm/cold. Took one bite never to be polite

Spaghetti bolognaise that my work colleague cooked for the residents. She got a large saucepan, dumped in the mince, chopped onion, a tin of potatoes, a jar of value pasta sauce, some ketchup and a packet of spaghetti and then just stirred it round and round like a woman possessed for about an hour.
One of the residents had told me her cooking was 'legendary'.

I didn't even eat it but the sight of it all mushing around like a cement mixer stuck with me.....

Just reading these things has made me feel queasy.

I suspect the Leticia Cropley cookbook has been at play.

I had a boyfriend whose mum was a terrible cook but thought she was brilliant and would try out all sorts of fancy recipes. I had an arrangement with my mum that if I was round there and rang home asking if I could stay for lunch my mum was always to say no

I remember one speciality was some kind of Chinese pork dish that was just a tiny chop of meat absolutely surrounded in gelatinous fat. I picked the minuscule amount of meat out and she said “you are supposed to eat the fat too - it’s a traditional Chinese recipe” but I just couldn’t - I can’t bear the feel of chewy fat in my mouth.

But the good thing is, now I have my childrens’ friends round and if they leave everything I say nothing about it but then; “would you like an ice cream anyway”? and they look at me as if I am queen of the world.

I don’t think I am a crap cook but I know that food is often “different” at other people’s houses and I also remember that feeling of looking at a dinner and knowing I didn’t want to eat it.