What's the worst thing you have ever cooked or been served.

[JustOneLastThing]

I once made a beef pasta thing, it had 20 cloves of garlic! I followed the recipe to the letter, it took hours. I tended to it almost like I tend to the kids. It tasted like feet.

I think I can still taste it, and it was five years ago! There was so much of it, and we tried to eat it in vain. I eventually threw if away after it had festered in the freezer for a few months years.

I made a fish curry once - paleo version - absolutely disgusting in both looks and taste it went in the bin pronto!

Cooked: Kedgeree in the slow cooker. Was having a new kitchen so no appliances in, and thought it would be a good idea. It wasn't. Kedgeree when not in a slow cooker = fine.

Served: probably a slice of stuffed lamb that was more fat than meat, rolled up like a Danish pastry.

My son was once served a 'dairy free' meal on a flight. Boiled brown rice with stewed green veg ( looked like some dirt if cabbage). The flight attendant had tried to arrange it nicely on a plate, but she apologised profusely and offered DS her chicken

Seafood pasta in a restaurant that was off - it stank to high heaven, a combination of fish-food and vomit - I have no idea how they could have served it. It put me off eating anything else - fortunately I'd had a starter that was fine so I wasn't starving. I mentioned it when we came to pay and was given a voucher for a free bottle of wine, but since we never went back, it wasn't much use.

18 years old decide to try and impress my boyfriend and cooked Cornish pasties followed the recipe to the letter, didn't say to part cook the potatoes and veg first bullet raw veg and potatoes with lovely pastry never again I have bought pasties ever since

Pork in a cider sauce. I don't know what went wrong with it but I really do believe we could have soled our shoes with it and walked around quite happily for weeks!

Worst I've been served was my Sister, meatballs in a sauce made from oxo cubes, a bit of water, and soured cream. It was grim! Even worse as it cooled as it set like rubber, you could bounce your fork off of it

Oh god I made osso bucco once....never again...
I actually fancy myself as a very decent cook but this was just a absolute disaster.... sinewy and gross after 4 hours plus cooking.... never even going to attempt it again it's just burned in my brain as a hard no

Cooked - too many to mention.

Served - a meal my husband’s elderly granny cooked us. It was supposed to have been fried but she didn’t have the heat high enough so it was effectively bacon and cabbage poached in luke warm fat. She was a lovely woman and I didn’t want to offend her so I forced it down. She only had an outhouse at the time, no inside plumbing, so I spent most of the night being sick in a wooden hut whilst strange creatures rustled outside. My husband and his granny and grandad were absolutely fine.

Blimey that should worst I've been served was FROM my sister, we didn't eat her

Campfire stew 🤢

Served to me by a neighbour - Previously steamed but cold, slimy mashed potato dumplings.

Served to me in a restaurant - Supposed fillet steak that actually had so much gristle in it, I haven't eaten any beef in any restaurant since!

I'm not a great cook but one of my few inedible dinners was a frittata that was like a sheet of bland greasy rubber.

Cooked: a dish from a student cookbook for my then boyfriend, now DH.
Baked beans flamenco.

2 cans beans in an oven dish and put in the oven to cook for 10 mins. Make 2 wells in the beans, crack an egg in each well and bake for a further 10 minutes.
15 years on it's still our benchmark for bad food I.e. 'is it as bad as the baked beans flamenco was'

Slimming world chocolate cake in a mug is also equally revolting. Or not if you ever want to find out what a chocolate flavour omelette tastes like.

Me ad DH went to a local pub and ordered a sharing platter , breaded mushrooms, onion rings , and chicken strips . The chicken was still frozen so I complained they took it away , I expected a freshly cooked batch , nope we got the same ones back including the ones we bit in half .

Cooked would be some sort of paprika chicken dish not long after I first left home.

I couldn't get the consistency right, so would add more water, then more paprika.

The end result was similar to what you'd get if you dumped a full jar of paprika in a pint of water.

Somehow spicy AND bland at the same time.

Served was in a local Indian restaurant. Tasted like gravy with a load of curry powder dumped in. I'd eaten that dish before at the same restaurant and it had been lovely.

Roast duck with the plastic bag full of giblets still in it.

Lobster Thermidor which took all afternoon- tasted ok , looked like vomit. Way too rich. I should have just had a bit of melted butter on the lobster.

“Don’t cook when you’re upset” is a phrase that’s true for me, unfortunately.
My timing goes out of the window, resulting in over- or under-cooking. Things burn or boil over and when I call in helpers they annoy me worse than if I’d carried on by myself.

So last time it was undercooked but dry roast chicken, defrosted bread that was spongy one side and rock hard the other, soggy vegetables from the pressure cooker and bread and butter pudding that could have been nice if I hadn’t used custard from a carton to save time.

Should have rung for a pizza (I’m low carb), gone to bed and left them to it.

I am a good cook, but I once made skate and will never do so again. It tasted strongly of ammonia put me off of the fish for life.

Served, a dish made of leftover pot au feu by my MIL. Apparently it is traditional in France, but it had a shiny, slimy sheen and looked worse than tinned dog food. I refused to eat it and I normally take at least a bite of anything put in front of me out of politeness.

I made a blue cheese (Roquefort) risotto and followed the recipe perfectly. I remember thinking this is an awful lot of cheese going in but trusted the recipe. It was inedible. It was so strong it was stinging my nose. DH, who was a fairly new boyfriend at the time was trying to be polite and was very relieved when I said I couldn’t eat it.

Served - I made a Jamie Oliver lemon pasta thing that was completely inedible once. I don’t know what inspired me as it sounds fucking disgusting now 😂

Been served - a lamb shank in a restaurant that had only been cooked for about 1/3 of the required time. It had seams of fat running through it and kind of slid about in my mouth 🤢

I've said this before on here, but my MIL does not use any seasoning at all, not even salt & pepper. Maybe a bit of lemon on fish & under the (dry) turkey skin at Christmas. Anyway, DH & I hadn't been going out that long, I went to theirs and she was making chilli con carne for dinner. I was so excited as it's one of my favourites. She proudly brought the plates through and on them was watery mince and a few anameic onions and kidney beans stirred through it. No tomato, no spice, no seasoning. I could have cried.

Cooked - did a slow cooker risotto that you could have served in slices and used as house bricks.

Served - battered deep fried Chinese ribs. It hadn't mentioned they were battered on the menu. Somehow a thick layer of cooking fat - which probably hadn't been changed in months - got between the batter and the rib itself and congealed. And the ribs were barely cooked.

I was also seven dauphinois potatoes that were frozen in the middle. I put my fork in and the stack shot across the plate and over the table. The owner was mortified but it was a genuine plating error in the kitchen. She gave us free brandies to make up for it. We'll definitely go back after all this because the rest of the meal was gorgeous.

I once ventured into a Five guys and asked if they do a veggie burger. Yes, they said. They served me the most miserable soggy version of a burger I'd ever seen in my life. It was a basically a burger bun with some damp lettuce, a few sliced gherkins, some soggy tomato and canned cucumbers. You couldn't even see the veggies with the burger closed and they were just a sorry mess of a few limp veggies passed off as a burger.

Tried to make veggie burgers the other week using chickpeas, sweet corn, coriander and various spices. Sounded great on paper but they ended up in the bin. Literally the worst thing I’ve ever tasted.

Oh, my people are on this thread!

I've posted about this before but I once attempted (and only once!) a lamb biryani. I followed the precise instructions, just like your description of tending children, OP. Took 24 hours with the marinade. Carefully fried the onions and arranged them on the perfectly seasoned rice. Cooked it with growing anticipation, exactly to instructions and voila...

The most incredible, inedible mess ever to be created that never should have been. I took all the onions out and get it to the dogs. Even they turned up their noses at it. One of them deigned to eat the lamp chunks once I'd washed and reboiled them in clean water.

Never, ever again. Now, it's a Schwartz packet mix of spices and done in 30 minutes. Delicious!