What are your worst cooking disasters?

[Onlooker]

I have two.

- In the first, someone told me that cooking bacon in the oven leaves the bacon flat and crunchy. So, I tried it, and I put strips of bacon neatly on a piece of tin foil, and set the oven to broil--That was my mistake. Pretty soon, I could see huge flames through the glass door of the oven. Not knowing what else to do, I opened oven, threw in water, and closed the oven, creating an incredible cloud of smoke that set off my smoke alarm and my lover, who was disgusted with the affects of my experiment. I was lucky I didn't start a fire.

- In the second, I lived in an old wood two family house. My landlord lived upstairs. A friend and I decided to cook a leg of lamb on the grill on our back porch. Little did we know that we should remove the fat first. Pretty soon, we had huge flames and smoke so thick that my friend and I couldn't see each other on opposite sides of the grill. Other friends rushed out with a bucket of water, fearing we would set the old house on fire. My landlord (a really cool guy, who was a Playgirl model in the 1970s) was livid.

Then of course, there's beer soup, a recipe I found that used beer, milk, and pepper, and tastes as good as it sounds. But, that wasn't really a disaster, because it was so bad that my friends laughed themselves into tears.

[Gormy Cuss]

1. Twice, when cutting radishes

with a cheap, not terribly sharp knife, I sliced my finger open and had to go to the emergency room for butterflies (AND a tetanus shot the first time I did it.) I'm a slow learner, but I figured out that the price of one good knife was probably a good investment. That and learning to curl my finger tips so that they're less likely to find their way under the blade.

M

[Nickster]

2. My first attempt at BBQ Ribs......

I had forgotten that ribs should be indirect heated on the grill. Well......lots of fire and smoke later......I had very black, very papery crumbly strips of charcoal. Argh.LoL

[eleny]

3. I almost just ruined a giant fry pan of red peppers

I was frying about 10 giant red peppers in a big chicken frying pan. And hanging out here reading DU articles. I kept the timer going every 5 or 10 minutes. But then there was the one time it rang and I blew it off figuring I'll just read a minute or two more. Then hubby calls out - "Is something burning????"

I ran in and only blackened a few pieces. I put all the peppers into another big fry pan and fried them on a low flame for 10 minutes and have now shut them off. They were $1.00 a pound. It would have been a big loss to me.

[KyndCulture]

4. Salmon croquettes

I didn't have any Vigo bread crumbs to coat them with before fryin, so I decided, wtf, crunch some saltines in a baggy with a rolling pin and I'll have bread crumbs.. OHHHHH but no....

Threw them in the hot oil to fry them and in 5 minutes I had completely disintegrated salmon stuck to the bottom of the pot and burnt crackers...

It was a pizza night.

[Tab]

5. My favorite

actually happened to my aunt, who was making Thanksgiving dinner.

It was a big dinner, and I think this may have been her first turkey. She got the oven preheated, stuffed the bird, sewed it up tight.

Cooked it for whatever time, went to check on it.

She had sewed it up tight. So tight, in fact, that the gasses had nowhere to go, and moving the bird caused it to blow, sending turkey parts all over the kitchen ceiling (and counter, and appliances and everything else, including my aunt).

I don't know what they ended up eating for dinner, but it certainly wasn't the turkey.

[eleny]

7. Then there was the Xmas that the chestnuts exploded

We put them in the oven without cutting little Xs in the soft spots. Ka-pop! One after another.

[Warpy]

6. Home made soy nuts

only I'd run out of soybeans, so I soaked and then tried oven roasting chickpeas. Well, I got involved in a project and OVER dried the chickpeas and discovered the recipe for Depression Coffee entirely by accident.

That's how I used 'em up, too. My ex said the "coffee" made from those things tasted one hell of a lot better than the coffee substitutes the health food store had been providing.

[bearfan454]

8. I've ruined several dishes

by adding too much salt. I hardly use it at all any more. I had a baked potato explode in the oven. I've burned rice on the bottom of a pan of arroz con pollo. That sucked. I think everybody has f*cked up something sometime while cooking.

[Warpy]

9. My favorite was not my own

although it was spectacular enough that I wish I could claim it.

A good friend decided to have a dinner party featuring clam chowder. She went to the market and got quahogs instead of the pricey littlenecks. She used them whole.

It was just like chewing on old bicycle tires in hot milk.

A good time and a great laugh was had by all.

(Note: the only way to make a quahog edible is to grind the flesh and mix it with stuffing, pack it back into the shell, and bake it.

[Gormy Cuss]

11. Oh my. Whole quahog chowder.

That's a once only mistake. One can make an edible chowder with them but only if they've been cut to a small dice size. My father used to pickle chopped quahogs for snack food. The vinegar does lessen the chew somewhat.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

10. If ..........

you're going to warm up a slice of pizza in the microwave, make sure you're not distracted by a phone conversation with a client while you do it.

Forty-five minutes is not the same as forty-five seconds.

[kestrel91316]

12. Oh, dear..........

[eyesroll]

16. I did that with a 1980s Sam's Club equivalent of a Hot Pocket.

My dad said put it on high for 40 seconds. 4 minutes later, it was on fire.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. When I was young and stupid .....

... as opposed to old and stupid as I am now, I went camping with the Boy Scouts. I had a can of Dinty Moore beef stew, the go-to chow for young campers. I put it in the campire, unopened.

Do you know that you can aim the blast from a heated can of anything by aiming the can's seams in the direction you want the contents to fly?

[Dora]

17. My husband's Scouting story....

I love camping stories.

All the boys had been given strict instructions: Do Not Carry Opened Food in Your Backpack.

One boy just couldn't help it - he opened his foil packet of blueberry syrup and kept sneaking sips and snacks at it all day long.

That night, after everyone had bedded down in their tents and was sleeping soundly, the boys in the Blueberry Kid's tent were rudely wakened by a bear licking the devil out of their tent trying to get at the syrup that had leaked onto it.

No injuries to the Scouts, but there were a few sleeping bags that needed a long airing out in the morning.

[SoCalDem]

14. Two come to mind.. "crunchy lasagna" and "Clean" tupperware

My Italian friend gave me her recipe for lasagna, and NEVER .....ANYWHERE in that recipe did it say to COOK the lasagna noodles before assembling the dish..:rofl:.. How on earth would a girl from Kansas who had never had Italian food know that? She kidded me for YEARS!!!

Disaster # 2..

We were spiffing up our rented house before moving (gotta get that damage deposit back...all of it)

while we were painting the living room, I decided to set the over to "Clean".... we started smellling something odd.. It was the GIGANTIC yellow tupperware mixing bowl ..INSIDE THE TIMELOCKED oven..

what a mess:)

[KyndCulture]

15. Crunchy lasagne noodles wins!!!

that was too funny!!!

[mike_c]

18. the time the food processor lid broke comes to mind....

I was puree'ing soaked red peppers for a big batch of mole poblano and a crack in the lid-- which had been there for months without ill effect-- failed catastrophically. The wall behind the counter was white. I had to repaint it, and the ceiling as well.

[babylonsister]

19. Preheated the oven to bake, not checking for the green plastic colander

that Mom stashed in there. It's lots of fun to chip melted plastic off the bottom of the oven. :eyes:

[midnight armadillo]

20. I'll list 3

In high school I decided to make a pot of water for tea. I then drove to a friend's house...and forgot to turn off the burner. An hour later when I returned the house was filled with smoke and the enameled pot was scorched and melted to the burner. That was a close one!

Several years ago my then fiance (now wife!) requested lemon pepper chicken, and handed me a bottle of lemon pepper seasoning she had picked up. I did not notice that this was lemon pepper SALT. You can see where this story is going. That was a pizza night...

My freshman year in college we lost a tightly sealed apple pie in a tupperware container in our common room for 4 months. It got buried under some newspapers and forgotten about. Upon discovery, it was a massive mold colony - my roommate threw it, tupperware and all, into the back alley. It was safest that way.

[Dora]

21. I walked away from a pot of rice.

Walked right out of my apartment, went down the stairs, and went out for the evening... not to return home for several hours.

Fortunately - the burner flame was on the lowest setting, and the pot had a very heavy bottom. The lid to the pot had cooked on tight, and after it cooled and the lid finally popped it off... I found that all the rice had turned to carbon dust and the interior of the pot looked like it had been very badly powder-coated. No amount of scrubbing, oven cleaner, or prayer would make that pot come clean.

I loved that little one-quart pot. It was the best. :cry:

[murphymom]

22. The great Xmas tamale disaster of 2005

My husband's mom always made tamales around the holidays, so I've learned to make them too. They aren't hard to make, but they are very time consuming so one tends to make them infrequently, but in big batches. When I lived in California I was able to buy fresh masa dough for tamales from a tortilleria/market near my office.

Where I am now is not exactly a hotbed of hispanic culture and the one source I had found for masa went out of business, so I was happy to find a Mexican market that carried 2 kinds of fresh masa, one for tamales and one for tortillas. Bought a few pounds of the dough, made a big batch of filling, soaked my corn husks and spent an afternoon rolling tamales, with the idea that we would have them for Christmas dinner.

When I took them out of the steamer it was a complete disaster. First of all, I don't know what the heck they put in that masa, but it had a very strong unpleasant taste that made me think something had gone really rancid. Second, the masa didn't cook up right, but stuck in a big crumbly mess to the cornhusks. I wound up having to throw the whole batch out.

All my poor sweetie got for Christmas dinner last year was a bowl of frijoles and a salad!

[NMDemDist2]

23. well, other than the numerous Bread making learning curves

there was last week when I was making white gravy to go with the Fried Chicken and the lid of the salt shaker came off into the gravy (the mashed taters had to settle for butter as a sauce)

and the time I made potato soup and the Pepper lid came off into the soup

I have lots of different sets of S&P shakers but I still seem to get these "failures" all to frequently :cry: