Meals that went utterly pete tong!

[Jewelledslice]

After a disastrous dinner tonight, i thought Id ask for your dinner cock ups to make me feel better!

Today instead of a roast, I got some salmon and decided to do it in pastry with pesto. I thought it would be a nice alternative!

The problem is - I'm gluten free and dairy free. I've been perfecting GF short crust pastry over the last year and can produce a passable pie, so I used the same recipe. I made the pastry yesterday and put in the fridge overnight as per usual.

When I got the pastry out it basically crumbled like the driest play dough 😔

However the salmon was defrosted so I tried, desperately, to form a ball. No luck!

What I made was salmon on a bed of GF breadcrumbs with a topping of pesto and GF breadcrumbs.

Oh my goodness it was foul 😂 Basically fish in dust. DH took one bite and then got up and started doing other stuff. He kindly said I could have the rest!

So help me feel better! Tell me your cooking disasters!

We do it with cuts of meat in freezer bags and then refer to it as "Mystery Meat" 😅

Loving these! The cakes particularly stand out! I can see one of our tubs of tarragon making a vanilla sponge extra special 😂

Spent ages making a pasta dish, it was really slippy/slidey on the plate and ended up half way up the wall when I spun round to close the kitchen door.

Decided to be all Christmasy with mulled wine and chestnuts… didn’t know you had to pierce the chestnuts… which exploded in oven- which I heard and opened oven and my entire kitchen was a mess of exploded chestnuts. Honestly inwas dancing round kitchen avoiding the next chestnut missile

thankfully the mulled wine was ok (M&S bottle in a pan) so I drank that whilst cleaning

😂😂😂

Dad made me something and mash for dinner when he was on chemo, I had to eat quickly as we were out at an event later that night and we were meeting mum there.

chemo brain made him mash the potatoes with water in the pan and then tried to save it by adding nearly an entire box of cornflour. Absolutely vile. It ran off the edge of the plate. I didn’t say anything until we came home with mum after the event and they were eating their tea.. ‘why did mine have to be liquid’ 😂

Gnocchi. Tasted exactly how you expect a pan of boiled mashed potato to taste. I could have papered the walls using it. It’s the only meal Mr Scarlett has ever looked upon kindly then gone to the chip shop.

Oh and @Lollypop701 an exploding festive chestnut got me right in the eye. I understand the dangers.

I once tripped over my own feet while carrying a large bowl of sieved icing sugar across the kitchen. I picked up my phone and tiptoed out of the kitchen, shutting the door on the snowscape disaster. Then, naturally, I Mumsnetted for a while. Avoidance or self-regulation? Both! Eventually I went out and bought a cheap vacuum cleaner. By the time I’d finished cleaning up the visible sugar, the vac was destroyed.

It took weeks until mopping the kitchen floor didn’t result in a floor that was stickier than before I had mopped it.

I made a Nigella polenta cake once, it had the texture of sand and was absolutely disgusting.

when was a teenager had to cook dinner one eve after school as mother was working. was told to put the spuds into the steamer pot and put in the hob. I dint realise was suppose to put water in the bottom part of the steamer..mother came home to a smell of burning and the bottom pot part actually split in half 🤣🙈 my mother was not impressed. I am still a shit cook 20 odd years later 😅

I don't know if I cook gnocchi wrong or If it's just horrible.
Every time I try it's just a lumpen tasteless mess.
I've given up now.

I had the in-laws round for Sunday lunch. Was going to cook roast venison..... turned out to be stewed plums!!!! I was cooking it for hours, couldn't figure out why it wasn't changing colour 😂😂😂😂 fil was not happy with just the vegetables 😂😂😂😂

My ex husband decided to cook dinner one night. Stuffed trout. The only problem was he left the bones in.....so every mouthful was crunchy 🤮🤮🤮

My dds then boyfriend made a lasagne

'My mums recipe' he proudly told me

Only he added the pasta sheets 'dry' and cooked it (he should have par-boiled them apparently,I wouldn't know,I've never made one)

I've never eaten something so hard and crunchy in my life

Bless him,he was so proud of himself

I cannot for the life of me make porridge

It always turns into thick lump/watery wallpaper paste

I've tried reading the instructions/the Internet,on the hob/microwave and still can't do it

Rice pudding-i love home made rice pudding so bought the rice

Made it all up,added my milk and butter-went to take it out of the oven and it had congealed into what looked like vomit with brown bits floating in it-it tasted rank (and I may have cried)

And the time I tried to make sausage casserole with some packet mix id picked up in Tesco-it was so bad,the kids refused to eat it (and they ate my mothers sprouts)

It tasted of acid and rubber and the sausages had the texture of a bath sponge (id bought them from the butcher so where good quality)

First time I made marmalade I was trying to test the set on a cold saucer, worried it wouldn’t set. Had to chisel the stuff out of the jar. I now use a sugar thermometer!
Other delights include apple cake with peppermint essence instead of vanilla (though my husband said it wasn’t too bad!), and the lentil bake that could have doubled for a house brick.

Jamie Oliver Comforting Sausage Bake https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pork/comforting-sausage-bake/

It is not comforting, it is minging.

Soggy foccacia in a thin soup of bean water with some sausage and tomatoes floating in it. Why on earth the recipe wants you to put the liquid from the can of beans in, I have no idea. I left it to cool, dismantled it, chucked the soggy bread, made soup with the beans, tomatoes and some other veg, and had the sausages for breakfasts.

Beef Bourguignon ..had friends round but I had slow cooked the beef on the hob instead of in the oven or in the slow cooker ! One friend asked “What did you do with the other boot?”

Still laughing about it three years later

We just celebrated Jewish new year and I made a prune & date cake, but I somehow messed up the baking time and it emerged as a vast inedible house brick of a thing. It was meant to be the crowning glory of the meal. People visibly recoiled as I was sawing through it.

In the early days of our relationship, dh had rarely cooked and had grown up in a very traditional household. He made us egg fried rice, but didn't realise that you should boil the rice first.

Mine was a birthday cake disaster that I rescued by creating a type of eton mess- i broke up the sponge (chocolate), added whipped cream, strawberries, raspberries and microwave meringue with some home made jam that hadn't set so was more like syrup.

The second set of sponges worked so we also had birthday cake.

Blue soup anyone? 😆

Reminds me of the time I spent ages making 'proper' chicken stock, then carefully strained it all down the sink. I nearly cried at my own stupidity.

This could well be a separate thread in itself, but most things I made in home economics at school were disastrous.
I once forgot to add sugar to shortbread (although that wasn't too bad). Once we had to make something suitable for a baby, I did stewed apple and yogurt. Was daydreaming in class, and the teacher shrieked at me because the apple was burning and stuck to the pan. Luckily no baby was forced to eat it, it went straight in the bin when I got home.
DD and DS continued this tradition when they did school cookery. DD made some disgusting claggy cheesy pasta thing. I tried to redeem it by adding mustard, but again, it was destined for the bin.
DS was supposed to make mini quiches but lost the egg he had taken in (!?) so his friend gave him half of his egg (!) I think you can imagine how that turned out...

I made a cottage pie. It was heavenly, crispy topped perfection. I removed it from the oven on its baking tray, turned round too quickly and it slid off the tray, flew across the kitchen and smashed into a cupboard door. Mince and mash everywhere, lost my favourite dish into a thousand pieces, and damaged the door.

The beef wellington my husband lovingly made then the oven wouldn’t switch on… we had to deconstruct it and slice it into steaks to cook on the bbq. Gutted!

Gnocchi is the devil's spawn. I doubt even Raymond Blanc could make it taste nice. It's also the texture.