To ask you to share your cooking disasters?

[user1480334601]

The past fortnight I've decided to do more good cooking instead of freezer stuff, takeaways etc. for me and DP

So far I've had a steak pie that was dry as dust inside. A surf and turf that, due to turning the hob on instead of the oven, resulted in frozen (unserved) scampi and a melted bowl.

Tonight I tried homemade burger with homemade chips. I "parboiled" the chips first, which turned to mush. So after watching Masterchef last week decided to rustle up a hash brown.

Me and DP are currently sitting eating burgers that are overpowered with the taste of Cumin. And a pile of sad bland potato with oniony bits in it. Its horrible. DP has finished his bless him I'm struggling.

Can you share your cooking horror stories to cheer me up?

I once strained pasta - but actually dumped a whole pan of pasta into the dishwashing bowl (full of soapy suds). I rinsed it off and served it anyway. I was seriously sleep deprived at the time.

Never drink whilst cooking - you get into a lot of trouble that way.

Good for you for trying though! It's often just trial and error. Try to pin down a few simpler recipes then work from there.

A while ago I was making bacon in an electric grill oven. I put some baking paper underneath the bacon as I always do to stop it from sticking, but I didn't tear it very neatly so there were bits of the paper hanging over the edge. These unfortunately came into contact with the element at the top of the oven and the whole sheet of paper caught fire.

Not me but my husband when we first got together, decided he would cook for me, decided on sweet and sour chicken, fab, I was really looking forward to it, when he dished out was basically a plate of rice with chicken and a pink hot water sauce, he had never used a jar of sauce before so poured in the sweet and sour sauce then filled the jar with water and emptied that in

I couldn't fry an egg for ages
(Rubbish pan)
If it helps I've burnt and melted loads of cooking apparatus!
At least your trying! Fair play to you!

Made brownies from an American recipe. I converted the recipe in lb's to grams. It called for 0.5lbs of butter. I got all my calculations correct but had a brain fart and decided that 0.5lbs MUST be 500g...wrong, it's about 225g. The brownies were dripping with butter. Totally inedible.

Tonight I tried to make wedges without turning the oven on. I'm not usually that bad! Honest

I got one!

I melted the hobs on my cooker
It was a one door oven and decided to grill burgers.
The grill tray was too high and the fat set alight, started a small fire and the hobs handles melted.
I had that cooker for years after I'd ruined it :(

Also, today I dropped a frying pan onto my induction hob (from a roughly 5cm height) so now it (the hob) has a 10cm long crack in the glass.

Jamie's "no you don't have to soak the chickpeas" Moroccan lamb shoulder.
Yes, Jamie, you do have to soak them or use tinned ones. It was like eating nice lamb with crunchy pebbles.

Well there was the chocolate cake that I thought was cooked in the middle…
Bloody skewer came out clean. I released the clip on the tin and the counter was immediately covered in a wave of warm brown sludge.
The lovely roast chicken that I stuffed with home made stuffing. Thought I'd added on enough extra time. I hadn't. Raw in the middle.
And the lemon cake I made as a student, one of my first forays into baking. It sank in the middle and tasted of washing up liquid.

Thank you copy! I was going up try that - good to know...

I was 14 and had won a slow cooker in a cookery competion. Parents out for the day (my gran was home) and I decided to make one of the recepies in the slow cooker book. I followed the recepie carefully and left it to cook - it didn't smell great and my gran who hated anything "foreign" kept pulling faces.
I couldn't work out what had gone wrong - untill my parents returned and commented that they could smell the garlic from the road. Turns out I had used two bulbs of garlic rather than two cloves!!!! Who knew??? It was inedible, stank the house out for days and I've never lived it down!!!

When making a roast I once sieved the gravy down the sink and kept the lumps

I've discovered that pasta cooks better - more evenly anyway - if you put water in the pan.

Some time ago, a friend's mother was going away for the weekend. She left a homemade trifle for friend's father and grandfather (this is before friend was born). They got it out of the fridge, and discussed whether or not trifle needed cooking, coming to the conclusion that it did. So they put it in the oven. It was in a plastic bowl. Friend's mother came home to find the oven full of melted plastic, which had a distinctive smell, especially when mixed with burnt trifle...

I set fire to my spaghetti. Had the flame too high and the ends caught fire before it had softened enough to fit in the pan. A friend told me they had heard of it happening before though, so that made me feel better. I've also dropped my plate when serving up so many times. Few things more heartbreaking than spending an hour cooking to just throw it straight on the floor.
I'm actually not a bad cook now though, so do persevere.

Spent hours boiling bones for stock then strained it ... straight down the sink. I actually sat on the kitchen floor and howled when I realised what I'd done.

Shut a tea towel in the oven door and set all the smoke alarms in house off.

Lid came off the cayenne pepper as i was shaking a little into a sauce. Half the jar fell in.

Burnt one half of a Victoria sponge. Told husband I'd just ice the other half and he could throw the burnt one away. He threw the wrong one in the bin. Some expletives were emitted.

Made a time saving potato salad with cooked new potatoes I'd frozen. Omg absolutely spewgusting!!! We had bread and butter instead.

Put cheesecake ingredients in blender to mix. Didn't put lid on properly. Decorated the kitchen and my freshly washed hair! There are more.

One of my son's stock phrases is "well that's it, dinners ruined" whenever it's my turn to cook and he hears a crash/ cursing/ smoke alarm.

My first attempt at spaghetti in Uni I thought that ketchup will be the same as tomato sauce made enough for the week
I rationalised that if babies can have puréed meals so can I, and batch puréed various raw veg with boiled rice, the worst one was rice and raw sprouts

I once tried a strawberry jam recipe shown on MN. I never knew how so little fruit could create so much sticky goo that exploded in the microwave and stuck fast to EVERYTHING.

My cooking disasters :

Breakfast (actually breakfast is ok, I can do scrambled or poached eggs, plus bacon - fried eggs are beyond me), lunch and dinner.

Remember Wendy Craig's Ria in "Butterflies"? The only reason I'm not that bad is because I gave up even trying decades ago.

We did a potato bake thing once that was in the oven for ages but was still pretty raw. In hindsight should have parboiled the potatoes.

DH (before he was DH) cooked me paprika chicken but insisted tsp meant tablespoon not teaspoon, then decided to chuck in even more paprika as it didn't match the colour in the picture. Never again!

He also got muddled as to whether his DMs dessert recipe needed condensed or evaporated milk. He went for condensed. Dessert instead of being mousse-like had the consistency of rubber and the staying power of cement.

I "created" a dish that my family and I love. It's a pasta dish with prawns, bacon, spinach, etc in a light cream sauce. I make homemade pasta for this, so when I make it, it's quite a bit of effort. But I love to cook, so it's fun. Anyway, as you're probably aware, if a dish has bacon in it, you don't need to add much salt. Well, a couple of glasses of wine later and being distracted with a phone call from my mum, I had added salt. Twice. I tried the potato trick to absorb the salt but it didn't work. It was fucking ruined and I actually cried just a bit because I was so mad at myself.

I made a fancy first date dish
Bought a new blender to make the filling for a pork loin.
Left the plastic safety bits on it!
Date (now exdp) had to pick out bits of plastic from dinner! I had told him I was a good cook.

I had a tin of sun-dried tomato flavoured tuna with a broccoli salad the other day.

It was totally disgusting.

I frequently slice spring onions and freeze, then grab a big handful to throw in when cooking.

Turns out chopped lemongrass looks a lot like spring onion. Does not taste the same.

Although I say so myself, I'm usually a pretty good cook. Must have been distracted the day I baked these at 200c for 30 mins.