The dumbest cooking-related mistake you ever made?

[Holliemorrisonx]

I would say cooking a chicken wrap for twice as long as I needed to and it burnt

Drained the pasta into a colander. Unfortunately the colander was on the work surface and not over the sink...

Looked into oven to see all the liquid for my quiche dripping onto the bottom of the oven. I get the yips when I make quiche or anything else with liquid poured into a pastry case.

Cooking at a friends' house who had no roasting trays, just a china roasting dish. I roasted a chicken successfully, put it to the side to rest and then put the China dish on the hob to make gravy...it shattered all over the kitchen.

Made bread with no yeast. I don't know how I convinced myself it had doubled in size, but I baked it and could have used the resulting loaf as a brick.

I accidentally put a massive lump of frozen ginger into my pasta sauce base rather than frozen garlic. It was absolutely disgusting and what’s worse, it was for guests coming over for dinner

DH has done this twice in 2 months : put some chicken into the steamer and gone off to watch tv. Completely forgotten about it, chicken has got charred to death and the water has evaporated from the steamer, leaving it completely burnt and black. Replaced it the first time, not bought a new one yet!

I took the lid off the saucepan to stir the contents and put it on to of the dishcloth. No idea why, it's not like it'd damage the worktop or anything. Anyway, it turned out that the cloth was made out of some sort of plastic and melted to the lid, cutting a perfect circle out of the middle. The cloth had to go in the bin and I managed to scrape off the melted plastic. Pan saved, hurrah! I did it a second time though, the following week. After that, on a different day and whilst cooking something else, I took the same lid off the saucepan and put it into the sink full of cold water where it immediately shattered into a million pieces and I had no choice but to throw it away.

There was also the time when I was cooking some frozen burgers in the frying pan when I lived with my parents. I'd put too much oil in and heated it up too much when I put the frozen, frosty burgers in. It insistent m immediately burst into flames and I panicked and ran to the closed end of the kitchen and screamed, trapped by the flames. Luckily my mum and step-dad were in the house and came rushing in. Ask that did was turn the gas off and the fire went away!

ask that did all they did was turn the gas off...

I've done the colander on the work surface thing and looked for seasoned flour in the shops!
First time I followed a recipe that said 'zest and juice of a lemon' I decided to juice it before zesting it, rather than the other way round. It did not work.

Poured sesame oil into a teriyaki sauce i was making instead of soy sauce. It was vile.

I haven't made any funny ones. Ones of people I know include:

1. Baking a cake with talcum powder rather than baking powder. Tbf that was partially my fault, as I was playing shops and dm had given me some empty packets to play with, and I'd filled it to make it more realistic. however it wasn't my fault it got back into the cupboard.
2. The half-baked cake. Cake made as normal and then dsis decided to use the lower oven rather than the usual one. Unfortunately it was also the grill, and she accidently put that on. She also put it on heating one side only, so I suppose it was more like the quarter-baked cake.
3. The over cooked pies. Well they said cook for 40 minutes at 160, so surely they should cook in 20 minutes at 320?
4. Peeling rice. That was my fault. Although maybe they shouldn't have asked me how to prepare rice.
5. Frozen peas cooked for 45 minutes. Misread packet. 4-5minutes.
6. Sherbet doesn't work if you mix up teaspoons and tablespoons. Again my fault. I copied it wrong. However tablespoons of citric acid and teaspoons of sugar makes it uneatable. My poor friends.
7. Malting chocolate. Dm used to do it with a pan of hot water and the chocolate in a glass bowl dangling over it. Pity dsis used a plastic bowl. More pity that she forgot the boiling water. I think the pan had to be thrown out and we nearly died of the toxic fumes from the plastic.
8. And one not really mistake, but done by dd1 aged 3. We used to make a kind of rice crispie cake with marshmallows and toffee melted. We bought the stuff, and while I was dealing with baby dd2, DD1 thought she'd make it for me. So she poured marshmallows toffees and rice crispies into a pan and stirred. She came to tell me it didn't look quite right. She then spent a very happy half an hour picking the rice crispies out and putting them in a separate bowl. We then melted what was left.

First Christmas in my own house, my whole family coming to me for the first time and I put the Christmas puddings in a pan of boiling water the wrong way up so obviously the water leaked in and ruined them 😱

No one cared, we had a lovely day and mince pies and cream for pudding

Poured an entire lovingly made pot full of chicken stock into the colander to get the bones and veg out. No bowl under the colander. The whole lot disappeared down the sink.

Set my son and daughter-in-law's table alight trying to impress everyone on Christmas Day by lighting the Christmas pudding with brandy like my Dad used to. It was years ago and I still haven't lived it down.

I've snorted at loads of these.

Great thread!

Particularly liked @claptomania Never had to make a spit vs swallow decision with dinner before Good line!

Mine are:

Once tried to steam cauliflower for cauliflower cheese (had veggie friends over for lunch). Got distracted chatting and let the water boil away. Cauliflower was both burnt and raw. Several levels of disgusting!

Hard boiled eggs. Got distracted (again) and let the all the water boil away. Had to bin.

My worst was trying to make my mum a birthday cake when DD was 4 months old. It was a Nigella recipe. I'm not much of a sweet person/baker (prefer savoury). But wanted to do something nice for my mum who'd been a massive support since I'd had the baby. The recipe said (and I quote) "Be bold... Caramel is supposed to burn". So, it was February. DD was strapped into some sort of baby chair and screaming to be picked up. Cancerogenic smoke (which will probably kill her early) was curling around her. Back door was open (February) and she was in the draft. I kept re-reading the line "BE BOLD... It's supposed to burn"
DH came home to a sobbing wife and a crap cake. He kindly explained the difference between "burning" and "incineration". I think he remade it for me. Or maybe I brought a Colin. Can't remember. But "Be Bold" when cooking is a catchphrase we use now.
DD is nearly 18 and hasn't (yet) developed the cancer I was sure I'd given her.

Stewed rhubarb on pasta. It looked like tomato sauce in the freezer.

Making chilli con carne for the umpteenth time. I always put in a teaspoon of coco powder in the pot as many recipes suggest. One night, had a brain fart, put in a teaspoon of hot chocolate powder. Yes it did taste like it.

Made toast and realised had only frozen butter. Sliced off some and thought ‘I know I’ll put the toaster back on and just put the toast resting on the top with the frozen slab of butter on it and the gentle warmth will soften it’.

Spectacularly went off to do something and completely forgot. Returned to kitchen to smoke stench as butter had melted through bread and burned the toaster causing it to cut out etc.

Every now and then I turn grill on rather than oven and end up with very browned top with uncooked bottom of whatever.

One bread making incident where I must have totally mis weighed the yeast. It went absolutely crazy doubling in size over and over beyond the bowl on the worktop etc. Frantic trying to contain it. Took forever to clean up. Kitchen smelled of yeast for days. I tend to find baking bread relaxing - not that day !

First time I made toad in the hole I forgot to fry the sausages first. I also used a deep dish. The result was pink sausages floating in a slushy goo.

EX-dh never let me forget it and it became a staple funny story for his whole family.

Making soup, I LOVE pearl barley and so stupidly thought I could ignore mums cautions on not using too much and merrily added a heap to the recipe - could have X cemented bricks with this stuff! So thick, so gluey!

"Cooking a pizza with the Styrofoam "plate" still attached." Done that more than once!

I CANNOT poach eggs no matter what I do - but I do excellent fried and boiled eggs, I manage to cook the whites and leave the yolks perfectly runny every time.

I'm a pretty good baker if i say so myself - but I'm dreadful at decorating! Cannot do all that wonderful delicate icing work so many seem to find easy, it looks like a toddlers been let loose! So I stick to simple glazes or quick swirl of buttercream.

Most painful -

Showing off to dd on shrove Tuesday a few years ago, had too much oil in the pan and when I flipped the pancake when it landed back in the pan the oil splashed out and I got a VERY nasty burn on my hand and forearm - a few very painful hours spent in a&e popping into the loos every so often to get more paper towels dampened in cold water to hold on it until I got seen to, still got marks to prove what an idiot I was!

Also a lovely scar from when I instinctively went to "catch" a falling bread knife and caught it blade down between thumb and forefinger!

Quite often on mn we get comments on cookery threads "everyone can learn to cook"

I actually know someone who genuinely can barely be trusted to do a ready meal in the microwave!

She is a lovely, sensible, professional woman - with a brother that is a chef! She has "burnt water" (leaving a pan to boil dry), blown up boiled eggs, eaten many undercooked or curdled dishes and yet somehow escaped serious food poisoning, but the point at which her family "banned" her from cooking again was when she blew up the entire cooker and wrecked much of her new kitchen by trying to cook dry pasta in the oven without sufficient liquid ingredients whilst also simmering some kind of fish broth on the hob, no idea what exactly happened but the cooker was a write off and it took months until she had a normal kitchen again.

She now sticks to takeaways, aforementioned ready meals and VERY simple things like beans on toast.

Witchend - I'm genuinely wondering if you're my above mentioned friend, altitude she has no DC is only thing.

Ex did the whole bulb of garlic thing cooking for the first time after we met, he also once did a tablespoon rather than a teaspoon of curry powder - I didn't have to suffer that one though as I don't eat spicy food as doesn't agree with me - the friends he did serve it to though looked rather like this 😡 very soon after first mouthful! 😂😂

He also once (and only once unsurprisingly) made the mistake of preparing chilli peppers...and then going to the loo without washing hands in between! I could hear the scream halfway down the street!

"Never had to make a spit vs swallow decision with dinner before." 😂😂😂😂😂

"Cottage cheese instead of cream cheese in carrot cake icing....." 😂😂😂

"served up very Al Dente broccoli." 😂😂😂 I actually like raw broccoli but I know not many do.

This thread is comedy gold!

Mine - forgetting cheese sauce needs flour or cornflour to work. I got a milky cheesy soup. Forgetting that lasagne has cheese sauce over the top. That was - interesting.
Forgetting to put yeast in the bread maker. Even the ducks didn't want it.
My bil has the best one though.
Made a recipe involving peas. Cookbook said to shell the peas. He'd only ever had frozen peas and didn't know how peas grew.
So he defrosted the peas and carefully de-skinned each pea. Took him ages.
Everyone loved the meal and he made it again sometime later, commenting that it was a right old faff having to shell the peas first. Cue puzzled looks from his family. The biology of pea plants was duly explained.

I've now thought of one I did.

Making ginger beer as a student. That's alcoholic ginger beer. It keeps on fermenting after you've bottled it.
Don't bottle still fermenting fizzy in plastic bottles and seal the lid. It won't blow the lid out... it blows the bottom out. And ginger beer all over the floor makes slurping noises when you walk on it for most of a term, even when you have a lovely cleaner who washes it every day.
Dh (then bf) kindly took a bottle in his bag on the bus when we were going out for a picnic. There was a sound like an explosion and his bag started pouring.

Making royal icing. I put a tablespoon of glycerine in the mix rather than a teaspoon.

The second mistake was thinking I could rectify it by adding more icing sugar. I had to go out for more and I could have iced enough cakes for the whole city

@Witchend I remember reading about someone who made elderflower "champagne" with similar consequences. They were too scared to go into the shed where they were fermenting/exploding and resorted to shooting the the bottles with an air rifle.

I accidentally made scrambled eggs using apple juice instead of milk and was too embarrassed to admit it so I ate it still

I made a Victoria sponge cake a few years ago and forgot to put the sugar in. It did not taste very nice.

When I was low carbing we had a favourite dish of butternut squash, goat's cheese and parmesan. It required 1oz of butter.

Partner unfortunately read that as 10oz.

We thought it was a bit greasy... didn't work out why until after we'd eaten it :p

Not me, the woman in the flat next door, She put a potato in the microwave for an hour and went shopping. The hallway was full of thick black smoke, all the fire alarms went off and the fire brigade arrived just before she came home.

I spent all day making amazing stock out of bones of chicken with vegetables and herbs.

At the end of the day, I thought about how I needed to strain all the bones and skin out. So poured it through a sieve and was left with the bones and skin while the beautiful stock went straight down the sink