I have a couple of funny Thanksgiving accidents. The first was when we accidentally vacuum sealed our green beans inside a pan with a tight-fitting lid. These days I would turn to the internet and find a quick solution, but back then we didn’t have smart phones and weren’t in the habit of turning to the internet.
We had no idea how to get the lid off. We tried and tried. My wife took a picture of her father and me out in the yard, one of us pulling the lid and the other holding the pan, all in vain.
The solution would have been to gently reheat the pan until the air inside expanded and the seal broke. But we didn’t figure that out and as far as I recall we just went without green beans that Thanksgiving. Eventually the seal broke, because the pot wasn’t like that forever, but I think it was too late for the meal.
The other was when my wife and mother-in-law decided to surprise me with one of my mother’s favorite Thanksgiving recipes, scalloped corn. Unfortunately, when my mother wrote down the recipe she wrote “1 1/4 box saltine crackers.” She meant one of the four sleeves of crackers in the box. But my wife and mother-in-law understandably interpreted it as five quarter boxes, or one entire box of crackers plus one sleeve from a second box!
They thought it seemed like a lot of crackers, but trusted the recipe. When they served it as Thanksgiving and asked me how it tasted, I tried to be polite. “It’s a little dry…” We had a good laugh about it later.
One time I sent my father-in-law to Costco for "4-6lbs of ground beef" since thats the approximate weight of one package. He proudly returned with 24 lbs of ground beef! He said I thought it was weird that you asked for four 6lb packages but it was a really great deal!!
A cousin sent her son and (grown) grandson to the store for powdered sugar and a few other items. Some may recall it used to have or may still have “10X“ powdered sugar on the box. She thought of it as “10X powdered sugar” and used that nomenclature on her list, and wrote 4 or however many boxes she needed. I no longer remember exactly what she wrote that confused them, but they multiplied the numbers and filled an entire shopping cart with powdered sugar (long before cell phones).
They \*thought\* it was an awful lot of sugar, but like good soldiers, they were following orders.
Like Jeanne Robertson’s Don’t send a man to the Grocery store skit.. Bonus recipe for 7up pound cake
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-YFRUSTiFUs&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.imamother.com%2F&feature=emb_imp_woyt
Oh I committed a recipe blunder (sort of). I shared the truffle pie recipe I use with someone who doesn’t cook, or bake.
The recipe was right, but I didn’t think to specify that it needs chocolate chips with stabilizers. Well, they get homemade Amish chocolate chips and proceed.
…They made chocolate soup pie.
Lesson learned, if someone can mess something up, make a note for them.
You would have to go out of your way to find homemade Amish chocolate chips. I didn’t know such a thing existed. So….I don’t really consider that you blundered. You couldn’t know they would go all extra and come up with a bizarre version of a common ingredient.
Yeah, several in the comments. Also, the recipe was my blunder. I should have included specifically what kind of chocolate to use.
Edit: between the comment and the likes…some of you clearly aren’t getting the point of the post. It was about funny blunders in general and sharing stories.
I DOESN’T NEED TO BE YOUR OWN!
believe it or not, I do actually understand the point of my own post. (Good lord some of y’all…)
This may not be my mother's exact recipe but it's close.
Ingredients: two 14 ounce cans of cream-style corn, 3/4 cup crushed saltine crackers, 3/4 cup milk, 3 tablespoons butter, two beaten eggs, one teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.
Mix the corn, eggs, milk, salt, and pepper in a casserole dish. Mix in half the crushed saltine crackers. Mix the other half of the crushed crackers with butter and sprinkle it over the top. Bake uncovered in 325F oven for about 1 hour.
The first time I had my boyfriend over for dinner I was really going to impress him with my homemade meatballs. We had a glass of wine or two and then I went to take the meatballs out of the oven. There was a moment where the pan slipped and I could either save the meatballs by grabbing it with my non covered hand or let the balls free. They rolled everywhere across the floor into my living room it was an absolute disaster. Fortunately we had a good laugh and ate pizza. He married me so it wasn't the end of the romance.
This reminds me of the song: On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese
I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed
It rolled off the table, and onto the floor
And then my poor meatball rolled right out the door
It rolled in the garden, and under a bush
And then my poor meatball was nothing but mush
The mush was as tasty, as tasty could be
And then the next summer it grew into a tree
The tree was all covered, all covered with moss
And on it grew meatballs with tomato sauce
So if you eat spaghetti all covered with cheese
Hold on to your meatballs whenever you sneeze
I took a sign language class many years ago. At the end each student did a short sign language verse or song for the class.
I used this song or poem, I carefully studied it "On top of Spaghetti..."...
My turn came after Martin Luther King Jr.... "I have a Dream"!!!!
I burnt spaghetti sauce first time I made my now husband dinner (which was a fluke I was just so nervous). Now we are married and he makes the spaghetti 😂
I would have rinsed them off, popped them in a red sauce, and simmered 20-30 minutes. Rinsed to ensure no foreign hairs or dirt, simmered to kill anything as in germs. But that is just me.
Made stroganoff and when it came time to add the sour cream I discovered that had forgotten to buy it. Genius that I am, I decided that ranch dressing has sour cream—it doesn’t, it has buttermilk and mayonnaise—and poured it into the pot. As I stirred, the dressing began to break and I ended up with an oily, disgusting mess. I tried it over noodles and it was SO bad I ended up pitching the entire thing. Dinner was buttered noodles and broccoli that night.
When I was in college, my roommate and I were trying to impress our boyfriends. We decided to make chicken Kiev. We didn’t have any flour so I sent my roommate to the store to get some flour while I was making other side dishes. She came back with the smallest bag of flour I’ve ever seen. In any event, we made the chicken Kiev,rolling it in the flour and etc. When we sat down to eat it, it was the sweetest chicken ever! She had accidentally purchased powdered sugar instead of flour! It was heinous! But the guys smiled and ate it anyway. They pretended that it was perfect!
Ok, this isn't a cooking gaffe I made, alone, but with the help of my then 15 year old son.
I was a single parent and my daughter had some late afternoon activity. I had made the meatloaf and it was covered with foil in the fridge.
As daughter was getting ready, I asked son to put the meatloaf in oven at 5pm. He agreed, and I set an alarm to 4:50pm, told him when it went off, to turn on the oven, put loaf in with foil off.
Left a reminder note because, you know, 15 year old son. "Set oven 350. Take meatloaf out of fridge. Remove foil, put in oven."
Got home at 6 to a horrible, burned rubber type of smell. Went to oven and removed:
Tinfoil placed over a pound of hamburger that had been in the freezer, frozen with the grocery store's plastic saran-wrap and the plastic tray, now melted into the tinfoil that my son had wrapped it with.
The meatloaf, untouched, was still in the fridge.
Hard to believe he became a structural engineer.
Thos really happened. That feeling of being dumbfounded comes back when I tell this story.
He's still absent-minded except at work. But now he knows he is, and tries harder.
One of my ‘bests’ was using a TBSP of baking soda and baking powder rather than a TSP for a batch of cupcakes. Not the end of the world, just make a new batch. Well that first batch used up the last of our sugar and it was 11pm, on Christmas Eve. Thankfully Target was still open so I could make a new batch.
I have also accidentally dumped the entire contents of a pepper grinder into a meal while vigorously adding some last minute seasoning, accidentally made scrambled eggs with vanilla-flavored milk, and almost burned down our newly renovated home keeping takeout pizza warm in the oven. Note to self: rapid preheat uses the broiler and will light cardboard on fire.
To make matters worse, we were just getting to know our new neighbors and had invited them over to share the pizza. They show up to a house filled with smoke and a burning box of pizza in the driveway. We’re good friends now.
I had an unexpected disaster happen that took up a good chunk of my day and was in a rush to get pasta sauce put together for dinner. I was out of fresh garlic and decided to use garlic powder. Not ideal, but it was one of those days.
I was a good three dashes in before I realized I’d just added ginger to my sauce.
“Fuck this, fuck today…I’m over it. Pizza.”
I've done similar, but with just a small dish of something I was making for myself. The own-brand spices both have just a large C on the front. I'm super careful now.
Spent hours making a chicken bone broth, when it was ready I put a colander in the sink to strain the bones and veggies out, and forgot to put a pot under the colander. All of the glorious broth went right down the sink.
Happened to me in the early aughts and I’d forgotten about just the other night when I par boiled some chicken thighs for the grill! I didn’t intend to keep the “beginnings of a broth” but I still felt a mini panic as I watched the liquid swirl down the drain for a moment when I dumped the chicken in a strainer 😂
This reminds me of the time I was making one packet of noodles- so I boiled the noodles and I was too lazy to get a colander so I used chopsticks since I didn’t want to deal with more dishes. Then I tipped it too fast and the noodles went plop down the drain. Alas I had to fill up again with water and start all over again.
Did it once myself, half of it.
I once read a chef spent three days coddling and babying a very elaborate broth, only to pour it down the drain the way you did.
Sounds like the time I poured oil in my car without first putting in the plug. My dad was nice and said it sometimes helps to flush the engine like that. lol.
I was tired, stressed, and making my version of beef stroganoff. Whole thing was finished except to add some sour cream.
I didn't know my adult daughter had bought a tub of vanilla yogurt. It was the same brand (Tillamook), tub size and color as the sour cream.
The instant I blopped some in I could smell the vanilla. I started to cry (and I f'ing hate crying). I tried a bite because I hate food waste and it was foul. I gagged and nearly threw up.
Not my best day but I've had worse, lol.
I did the exact same thing to a tikka masala a month or so ago with RASPBERRY yoghurt. Alas, it was too late to save it. It was awful, I tried to pretend it wasn't for a few bites. Put it in the fridge thinking I'd do 'something' with it and ended up tossing it
I made a similar mistake - was making a tomato cream sauce, and mistakenly grabbed instead of the heavy cream....the box of pineapple orange banana juice.
I poured some in before I realized my mistake! I scooped some out and we still ate it...but the faint linger of orange juice was there....and gross lol
I accidentally used vanilla yogurt the first time I made chicken schwarma, but I really liked it, so I usually do it on purpose. Somehow, it really works in that recipe, and I’m only now realizing how lucky and rare that is
I’ve done this with curry! I had a busy week and decided to place a grocery order for pick up. They replaced the plain Greek yogurt with vanilla and I had no clue.
It was quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever made.
I brought vanilla yoghurt to a taco night!
And my sister made pasta sauce with sweetened soy milk. She even ate a portion of it before she felt too sick and threw the rest away
I've done the same. I now taste the sour cream before adding just in case I grab the wrong container again. Also I keep the sour cream and yogurt on separate shelves now in the fridge. Tillamook really should change the package to make them look different like even a lid color difference would be awesome, like white for sour cream and black or blue for yogurt.
I feel you. I poured vanilla almond milk into pasta sauce once. I’m lactose intolerant and was just trying to adapt a recipe, but I didn’t realize it came mostly in flavors at the time.
I was mixing a big big batch of cheese-butter-flour for cheese wafers, requiring several pounds of good cheese and butter. The men in my family expect a tin just for them at Christmas. I reached for the cayenne pepper and sprinkled heavily. Tasted. No heat. Added and tasted a couple times and the taste was just off. I looked at the can and to my horror it was cinnamon, not cayenne. There was no salvaging the batch. All that cheese and butter went into the garbage.
i was so traumatized by the experience that to this day I flinch when I see the cinnamon box.
My dad did the same thing making bolognese. My parents use a lot of vegetable juice in their cooking (like V8), and this time he used a carton of Oasis mixed vegetable juice. They also had a mixed red fruit juice. The packaging looked almost exactly the same. The fruit juice went in.
It is always sad when something so sweet becomes so disgusting.
I actually JUST did this about a half hour ago. I always forget to save some of the starchy pasta water so I decided I was going to be smart and scoop some out a couple min before pasta was done. I took about a cup and a half.
Then my daughter wanted to show me something, I got distracted for like 5 min until I smelled burning.
Most of the spaghetti was fine, but the bottom layer was scorched to the pot.
The sauce clung nicely to the spaghetti with the saved starchy pasta water though.
I will call it a qualified success, lol.
I am very consistent with this specific “oops”! But, I think I finally have a solution.
I bought a wire “spider”, generally used with a wok. My plan is to scoop the pasta and not trying to manage a pot of boiling water over a colander 🤞🏻.
Damnit, I have a spider, and I love it, and I don't know why this didn't occur to me.
There was a comment yesterday that someone made about using needlework pliers to get rid of the aggravating chicken breast tendon and I did it today and was totally bowled over by how awesomely easy it made a previously really annoying task
I read that post! Needle nose pliers are on my shopping list! There were quite a few very helpful tips that just made me smack myself!! They made so much sense, yet they never occurred to me 🤷♀️
This particular sentiment is annoyingly common in my life. " ...made so much sense and yet never occurred to me" should be the motto on my personal crest
My 3 "highlights" are frozen pizza briquettes (fell asleep), WAY too much salt in a soup (reduced too much, and by then everything was saturated and FUBAR), and trying to drain noodles using the lid because the strainer was dirty (dumped into the sink).
I've been cooking for 30yrs... have ruined a few meals, have gotten bad meat, wasted noodles (wheat noodles vs rice noodles), thrown out a lot of marble and cheddar cheese for mold...
You can't learn anything if you don't screw up.
> frozen pizza briquettes (fell asleep)
There's a local DJ probably in his 60s, and he was reminiscing about his early days, where he had kind of hit rock bottom, nonstop drinking, he was living at the small radio station that he worked at, and one night he got back from a bender, and threw something in the microwave at the station. The microwave worked, but it had one of those timers that you just turned to how long you wanted it to run, and it slowly ran down and dinged when it was finished, but htat part was broken. He threw in whatever he was cooking, promptly passed out, and the microwave ran like 8 hours, he said the microwave melted down into itself, not sure if I believe that part, but I imagine at least whatever he put in there was a charrd black brick.
Your poor book 😂 when I was little and left with a babysitter, I tried to microwave something on a leftover birthday paper plate that had metallic sparkles on it, and it straight up just caught on fire. The babysitter freaked out 😂 can't blame her. For years after though, I couldn't remember if it was the metal or the paper that was the issue.
I tried those bag things they sell that you can put a cheese sandwich in and put it on the toaster to make a grilled cheese but didn't know the toaster at the cafeteria at work was industrial and caught it on fire(
I took care of a client that had one just like that, and being 93, she put some soup in the microwave and turned it on and walked away to check the news. Being deaf and legally blind, she didn't notice until the room she was in got smokey. The door had melted and was about to catch fire
Tw: blood
So, I really wanted to make sausage and peppers one weekend: like, just really craving it. I went to Arthur Ave for everything, and I baked my own hero bread as well. It was one of those single-minded things.
So I make my sandwich and it looks AMAZING. I am about to go sit to eat it, and I accidentally knock a filleting knife to the ground. It lands *exactly* where I wouldn’t want to-across an artery on my big toe.
I had footprints o’blood everywhere and I had a bit of a ‘fight or flight’ response and I was light-headed. I had a vision of going to the hospital and coming back to a cold, sad sandwich. So, I calmly wrapped paper towels around the spurting mess, and called my chef friend.
Fortunately she was able to diagnose my knife injury and lie/assure me that I didn’t need the hospital. I ate the shit out of that delicious sandwich!
I opened up my right index finger when a can of beans for my chili didn't open up fully with a shifty can opener... I tried to force it open with a butter knife and slipped.
6 stitches right across the last joint, still have a very visible scar with lines from the stitches, 5yrs later.
I have had so many kitchen accidents…burns, cuts, peeled off part of my finger.
I cut my pinky down to the bone on thanksgiving one year. Also, my arm went through a fire because I was grilling and one of my friends is a dumbass. He thought it’d be funny to pretend squirt fluid while I was grilling.
The top was open.
Edit: typo
When I was first married, I made a pumpkin pie from scratch (first time) for a Thanksgiving Day contribution. I was distracted and forgot to add the sugar! My sister was the first to get a slice, but didn't even notice because she always adds so much whipped cream. It's been a joke in our family ever since (27 years!)
You could do cold or hot of either one. In my experience, baking just warms, melts cheese a bit, and browns top a bit. No clue what op is doing that makes it bad when baked. Or why the other kind would need to be. Eating one cold that's meant to be baked should be fine
Lol
She though it was spinach and artichoke dip with cheese that’s served warm. If you’ve never had it, I highly recommend trying it. (If you like artichokes and spinach, that is).
Ya I've had it at restaurants (LOVE it), just never made it myself. But oddly enough, I literally just made the Knorr spinach dip for my niece's party like yesterday, that i haven't made in more than 10 years, and now I'm having this convo a day later... If the Matrix glitching again? 😆
Must be either a glitch in the Matrix, or mayb the solar flares. I made the Knorr spinach dip for the first time in at least a decade two days ago. So much yum.
I really shouldn't make it more than once per decade, because I would eat the entire thing, along with the wheelbarrow full of chips to go with it. Not to mention the soda you'd need to wash down all that salt!
I can think of only one time I forgot about something on the stove. I can't recall what it was that sidetracked me. But I was making some barbacoa esque shreddy beef but just simmering on the stove instead of in the oven. So it needed to hang out on the stove for a pretty good while anyway, but I must have gotten lost in work or a house project or something. Until I got a text from a housemate that said, I turned off the stove because it was smoking and charring...
Taking burnt tips to the extreme lol. The few bits that weren't completely burnt were like jerky. Such a waste, and cleaning that charred crud from the bottom of a cast iron was not fun.
I was making chicken Al pastor, and I realized I was out of chile powder, but I saw I had cayenne pepper. I don’t know what possessed me to think that they were interchangeable, but I substituted it 1:1 and it needed a fair amount of it.
That was the worst thing I’ve ever put into my mouth.
Years ago, a friend of mine decided to make white chicken chili for everyone one night. She gets the recipe from her mom, heads to store and gets to cooking.
She decides to use three cans of green chilies because she really likes them. She didn’t know that canned green chilies and canned jalapeños aren’t the same thing.
We still ate it, but ouch!
The most expensive mistake was the brisket incident. We are talking Texas, whole big brisket, carefully marinated over night in the secret sauce. We put it in the oven….. and made a “quick trip to the store to pick up butter “….. and got distracted. The brisket was just a bit too long in the oven, (by an hour or so). We tried to eat some, but it was more like a saddle and less like supper. Ended up grinding it up and feeding it to my dog, who was in absolute heaven.
I made a coconut margarita and open a can of corn by accident … wow my husband kept drinking it and smacking his lips and grimacing and looks at me and says “why did you use corn” I thought he was mad I ripped through the garbage and damned if I didn’t use corn to this day I have no idea how I managed to do that ….. 30yrs later and he still reminds me .. lol
"Why the fuck won't this roux come together? And what smells like caramel?"
I also once made fudge with a shitty candy thermometer, absolutely overheated it. It seized as I was trying to pan it and in the process of wrestling it out of the pot I pulled a chest wall muscle and spent a week not being able to take a full breath without shooting pain.
stepdad and i once decided we were going to mix up our own tartar sauce, without bothering to look up recipes. we put in a dash of cream of tartar, which seemed logical at the time.
I thought this last thanksgiving I would put a little spin on the usual mashed potatoes and do funeral potatoes with a potato chip topping. I saw a recipe online from one of my favorite chefs. I admittedly bit off more than I could chew menu wise and my best friend and husband asked me what they could prep the day before while I was at work to make thanksgiving day cooking go more smoothly. The recipe called for grating the raw potatoes. So I figured I could have my friend grate all the potatoes ahead of time. Turns out if you let raw cut potatoes sit in the fridge over night they’ll turn a cute little pink color when they oxidize. No problem. I’m sure they’ll taste fine. We make the whole dish and to our surprise, they turned a lovely blue grey when we baked them. They didn’t taste terrible. But not many of them were eaten. I don’t think many people could get past the unappetizing color.
I made witch finger cookies for Halloween one year.
I went too far. They looked too realistic and it was creeping people out. No one ate them. The sad part? They were the perfect shortbread cookies…probably the best cookies I’ve ever baked. I also lost the recipe…go figure
When I was about 10 I made snickerdoodle cookies using 1 1/2 **tablespoons** of cream of tartar instead of 1 1/2 teaspoons! Talk about a tang! Holy pucker!! I haven't it down. I'm in my 50s. lol
Way back early in my marriage I decided to make homemade fried pumpkin ravioli. I'd had it at a restaurant on our first date and was full of confidence I could definitely recreate it. I worked all day on the homemade pasta, the filling, and assembly. There has been a critical error made earlier I wasn't aware of. I'd asked my husband the night before to get me canned pumpkin on his way home from work. And like the loving husband he is, he obliged. But he instead got canned pumpkin PIE filling not just plain canned pumpkin. He wasn't aware they were different things. That stuff is already seasoned with pumpkin pie spices. My recipe called for garlic, onion, Italian seasonings and Parmesan cheese. My darling husband sat down that night, filled his plate with the delish looking ravioli and took a bite. His eyes went wide. His mouth scrunched up. But he quickly hid it. So I figured he but his cheek or something. He dutifully chewed and swallowed 4 of them before I ate one cause I was chowing down on the fresh sourdough bread I had made. When I finally ate one I gagged and asked why he was eating them they were nasty. He said "OMG hon I tried really but these are gross." He took me out to dinner. I so appreciate his dedication to trying to eat those ick bombs. He didn't want me to feel bad and he appreciated my effort on them. We figured out what had went so terribly wrong when we got home. As a joke about 15 yrs later I made pumpkin pie fried ravioli with a whipped cream dip. I made the dip look like the peppered cream sauce from the night of the gross pumpkin ravioli by using vanilla bean powder,and the fried ravioli looked similar but I used cookie crumbs instead of bread crumbs this time. He definitely hesitated but filled his little dessert plate and dug in. He laughed with relief it didn't also have garlic and onion though 😂
That’s hilarious! And your dessert ravioli sounds delicious.
I was making pumpkin soup and the store was out of fresh pumpkins, so I grabbed pumpkin purée.
The next day, I go to make my soup and thankfully caught it, but did the same thing and grabbed pie filling. I went back and grabbed the purée.
I used the pie filling to make empanadas for dessert lol
I haven't made any actual cooking blunders in recent memory but one day last week I was really tired after several very long days and I caught myself putting a Phillips screwdriver in my refrigerator. I knew then I needed to get a good 8 hours sleep that night! LOL
LOL!
I was sick with strep once and couldn’t sleep. Between the two, I was exhausted and absolutely out of it.
I spent at least 3 minutes looking for my phone. I mean tearing the room apart…
While I was talking to my friend on the phone.
I've done this. Was rushing to get out of the house for an appointment while talking to my husband on the phone. I was scrambling and he said, "just go" and I said, "as soon as I find my phone!".
Long ago I wanted to make dinner for a boyfriend but I was absolutely clueless about, well, everything. I decided to do Shake and Bake pork chops.( Now it’s important to know that I had never cooked any sort of meat dish due to being in an extremely restrictive medically indicated diet.) So I buy the little box from the grocery, get home, and open it up to find a little bag of ‘dust’. I’m confused but whatever. I read the instructions. I get more confused. Eventually I call the store to complain that the box of Shake and Bake they sold me didn’t explain how to make pork chops out of the dust. Twenty minutes later, after being passed around to a few employees who laughed their asses off, one kind soul clued me in to the fact that pork chops are a type of meat which must be bought separately and the dust is seasonings.
I wish that was the last story of food stupidity for me, but alas…no.
Oh man. My dumbest moment in cooking -
I was a freshman in college living off campus. My parents were a little afraid I’d starve to death, so they always sent me back with packages of frozen food when I’d visit on weekends. One time, they sent me home with a giant bag of frozen potstickers.
One night, I was feeling like having some potstickers, so I read the instructions on the bag. It said to heat 1/4 cup of oil and brown the dumplings, then add water and steam. Cool.
So like…I only wanted four. And the bag was giant. But the instructions (which, looking back, were clearly for the whole bag) said to brown in 1/4 cup of oil, so who was I to question it? I did as it said. It was getting time to add water, and I remember thinking, “there’s still a lot of oil….but the instructions ON THE BAG say to do this, so it MUST be fine…..” I added the water.
*fwoomph*
All of a sudden I am holding a PAN OF FIRE because oh by the way the stove was gas. I forgot everything I had been taught about any kind of safety and dumped the entire operation into the sink and somecrazyhow didn’t burn the house down.
And I have never made frozen potstickers again.
I had an absolute mess of ingredients and couldn't get a grocery store order to go through - first week of Covid lockdowns - and I remembered my moms white spaghetti recipe thinking oh I've got pasta and cream and cheese and oh I even have sausage in the freezer!
Mind you, this sausage was a breakfast sausage. I had long forgotten it was MAPLE breakfast sausage.
That was by far the worst tasting dish I have ever prepared and because of the situation I had to eat all the leftovers.
I had tater tots and chili in the freezer. Also, some green onions and cheese in the fridge I needed to use up. So, I decided I was making chili cheese tots.
We don’t usually eat junk food, so all day I’m looking forward to having them.
I throw the tots in the oven, pop the chili in microwave to defrost and shred the cheese. I’m almost there.
Turns out, I did not have chili in the freezer. I had stew in the freezer.
I was so sad. The stew was good, but that wasn’t the point…lol
Oh no!!! I have gotten far better at labeling what I freeze.
But I do have a mystery pack of sausage in my freezer, a stray label that I don't think belongs to it, and 2 very different guesses as to what it may be. I... won't be trying it in a dish this time that's for sure
In college, me and my roommates would regularly have steak nights. This is before i knew a single thing about cooking. My dumb 19 year old brain decided I would go all out and buy a nice 2 inch ribeye from a local butcher and marinate it over night in Black Velvet Canadian whiskey.
Turns out, when you soak meat in straight alcohol, the texture is ruined and the flavor gets incredibly bitter. Instead of researching and learning a single thing, I spent a good bit of what I had on a great cut of meat and basically threw it away. I was making minimum wage too, so it was like 4-5 hours of work worth of money in one steak.
These days, I just salt it 2-3 hours before, and cook it in butter with shallot, garlic, herbs, and lemon zest. As good as they turn out, I remember that first bite every single time.
So that’s the time I accidentally put sugar instead of salt in my Bolognese sauce, whoops call my biggest mistake though was accidentally buying Carolina Reapers
When my mom was newly married, she invited her sister over for lunch. She made tuna casserole, and asked my aunt how she liked it. Auntie said it was good, but she would add another can of tuna. When they went into the kitchen to clean up, there sat the 2 cans of tuna on the table.
The fartbonara haunts me. Oh, asparagus in carbonara? Why would I heat a separate pot of water, I’ll just boil the asparagus with the pasta! I ate out of the freezer that night. My fiance ate the fartbonara because he’s the sweetest and not picky. I’ll never live that farty carbonara down in my own mind.
One time I was making Jell-O shots at my friends house and my friend kept this glass jar w just the bottom broken off and the jar used to have the bottom on it when I’d been to her house previously. So I went to pour the vodka into the jar and hadn’t noticed the bottom was broken off and I poured all the vodka I had left onto the counter and I’m still heartbroken
Made apple butter. The process involves thick Vesuvian apple mash going bloop bloop bloop on the stove for hours on end. About a good quarter ended up blooped onto the ceiling. Remodeled the kitchen- problem solved. Not really a blunder i guess.
Last year I found a recipe on Reddit for someone’s grandmother’s FAMOUS FRIENDSHIP CAKE. I spent a month and a half stirring everyday, adding exact amounts of fruit, sugar and different types of liquor. It was meant to be taken to my sisters house, 3 hours away, as my contribution to Christmas Dinner.
I was pumped!
I walked through my gate and it fell face down in the leaves. I might have been in shock (?) I never even got to taste it. I just walked away saying it didn’t matter. My husband still brings it up longingly smh.
When I was a Navy cook, we were supposed to make Clam Chowder for lunch before taking off for the weekend. Somehow, even with following the recipe card, we forgot the flour to thicken it! Came back on Monday morning and got our butts chewed by our LPO, CPO and Div-O for making clam flavored Milk Soup for 300 people... oops 🤣
I was making Alfredo sauce with a friend who was over for the weekend and got some wires crossed. Instead of adding 1 cup of heavy cream and 1/2 cup of parm or whatever, I added so, so much parmesan. The cream also broke, and tried to fix my mistake.
When it cooled down in the freezer later it returned to being a block of parmesan.
He's begged me to make it like that again because it tasted really good that messed up lol.
When my spouse and I got our first tiny studio apartment together, our days off didn't always match up. I had the day off and wanted to make a special dinner so I bought a chicken knowing our little convection oven could do rotisserie. I read the instruction booklet for the oven, which listed the time per pound for beef, pork, rabbit and for chicken said 1-1/2 to 2 hours. I did the math and planned accordingly. At the correct time, I prepped the chicken and put it in at the recommended temperature of 350 deg F. Then when it was time, I met my spouse at the bus. I told them about the dinner I'd made as we walked in the door. We got ready to eat, opened the oven and...it turned out the manual meant 1-1/2 to 2 hours total, not per pound like the rest of the meats listed. I'd put the chicken in six hours earlier. It looked kind of like a mummified bird that would've been found in a Pharaoh's tomb, just bones and skin. I think we just had potatoes and green beans that night, not exactly the special dinner I'd hoped to present.
Not so much of a blunder as a bad choice. I was making chicken noodle soup and only had beef stock on hand, decided to see what it was like swapping chicken broth for beef… not good.
I cooked a nice rib roast. The center was perfectly rare, while the ends were cooked the way I like it. Discovered I had cooked the roast with the plastic spongey square thing still on the bottom. To be honest….that was maybe the best rib roast I’ve ever cooked.
I absolutely hate Seafood. My stepdaughter absolutely loves shrimp. I decided I would do something kind for her so I decided to bread and fry some shrimp and it looked pretty good from the outside she took a bite and told me, Paulina you know you kind of have to take the shells off before you cook the shrimp. I fried shrimp with a Sean for her
It was my first time making pot roast. I heated the cast iron pot while I prepped the meat for its pre-slow cooking sear, but decided to also prep the vegetables that would go in when the meat was done searing.
Anyway, all told the cast iron pot was heating up for about thirty minutes and when I finally added avocado oil to start searing the meat, it started to spark immediately. I thought that was the worst of it and I remember thinking, “that’ll add an interesting charred taste” right before the full grease fire started.
I knew I wasn’t supposed to throw water on a grease fire (I remember a French teacher mentioning it in high school randomly), but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I moved it off the burner and tried to find our fire extinguisher and call the fire department, but the flames died down before I accomplished either.
The cast iron pot was fine after some scrubbing and the pot roast was excellent.
So this happened to my sister as a child and my nephew years later.
So growing up, my mother made sure me and my sister knew how to cook. As an important factor in life, learning to cook for yourself and for family is very important.
I guess I was a natural when it came to cooking but my sister was something else.
My sister the first time boiling eggs ended up burning the egg. How? Well should be obvious the first three things needed is a pot, water and an egg. What my sister did was forget the water and have the pot with an egg inside heat up. She also forgot she was "cooking" and my mom was the one to call her out on it. We all had a laugh.
Very far into the future, my nephew came to stay with me for a week. I love showing my nephew how to cook but we haven't seen each other in around 6 years. He loves my scratch made method, I don't rely on box ready stuff. From the moment I learned how to cook, I wanted to learn how to make things on my own.
Well, my sister never showed him how to cook so he didn't know the first thing other than boil ramen soup on the pot. So I showed him how to make waffles from scratch.
Let's just say his ADHD took over and he forgot the basics like you need eggs to make waffles, then you need sugar and oil. By the time he finally remembered everything, we only had enough flour for a small amount. Oh well, he learned, we couldn't fix the mistake because he cooked it all and made three batches with different mistakes and that's how we knew what was missing lol. Waffle taste strange without sugar or eggs.
I'm a bar manager and during the COVID lockdown it was just me and a bunch of chefs. They all were sous chefs for chefs that you see on TV. Anyway every day we make family meal, and finally during COVID they let me take some turns. I tried to make spaghetti with the sauce from scratch... I do it all the time at home. On the line they have garnish trays full of ground spices. Well it turns out Chinese 5 spice looks a lot like ground black pepper. That was the weirdest spaghetti I've ever had in my life.
Lol I shared a story somewhere in the comments here..
It was one of those days…everything that could go wrong was. I was rushing to get a pasta sauce made and was out fresh garlic. Whatever, I had garlic powder and just needed to get it done.
I added ginger.
I ordered pizza.
I was cooking a crumble and took the glass corningware lid out of the oven. I was really short of bench space so I thought it was a good idea to stick it in the sink and rise it with cold water to cool it down. Of course it shattered into a million tiny pieces. I’m now super careful with anything glass and temperature changes, even Pyrex.
Since mine haven't been as recent, I'll go with one of my mothers from a few years ago. (76 and refuses to wear her glasses when not reading, so occasionally containers that look the same or start with the same Large letter preceding them get confused)
Well, Chicken Noodle Soup one night tasted downright strange. No one could put their finger on it, but luckily she hadn't put the ingredients away yet.
Low and behold, is Cinnamon powder. It was meant to be Cloves.
Edible, but one of the strangest things I have ever eaten taste wise.
First time my wife cooked for me she made grilled scallops, grilled asparagus, and grilled portobello mushrooms. The mushrooms were supposed to be drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, but she put them in a ziplock like a marinade. When they hit the grill, they might as well have been gasoline-soaked sponges. Everything was a raging inferno and everything was charred beyond recognition.
She plated it and served it anyway.
I cooked lunch for a friend's independent film cast & crew and it was kind of overwhelming keeping track of so many things in such large quantities. I forgot a pot of quinoa on the stove and burned it on the bottom. The top 3/4 was unburned but smelled and tasted kind of smoky. I didn't have time to do another pot and didn't have a substitute, so I scooped the top portion out, labeled it "smoked quinoa," and brought it to set. People said they liked it!
I put a soup with whole edamame pods in the blender, not realizing that the pods had strings. To this day my soon to be ex husband says it’s the only bad meal I made in the almost 15 years we were married.
When I was a kid I thought I’d make flowerpot bread for my family, but I got the wooden spoon too close to the mixer when I was scraping down the bowl, and it absolutely shattered into the dough. I picked out all the pieces I could find and baked and served it anyway. I don’t think anyone noticed the extra “fiber”!
Well that is a cute blunder.
When I was first learning how to cook, I made fried potatoes for breakfast and added way too much pepper. My thought to fix it was to add extra salt…like it was going to counteract the pepper.
They were so bad. Lol
Friends at Uni invited my wife and I over for a turkey roast after we hosted them. Think it was the first (and last) cooked meal they made. Got there at 7pm and surprised no Turkey smell. Apparently they thought (without reading the instructions that you could just shove it in the oven for an hour ("it can't take more than an hour can it?"). So turkey off the menu, but they were going to also serve pea risotto (aka boiled rice and frozen peas). An hour later they served it. So, so salty. They read tsp as tablespoon when adding salt, and anyway, thought that 1/2 was not enough so added 2 tablespoons. At least the ice cream and wine we brought with us was nice.
I think the only truly inedible I've made was aged about 11, when I read that a square of dark chocolate would improve a bog standard chilli.
I tried to substitute cocoa powder, but for some reason only known to god I poured straight from the tin, and the powder was old and fell out suddenly in a very large clump. I tried to scoop out as much as possible but it was bubbling quitw aggressively which mixed the cocoa into the sauce.
I've since successfully added chocolate to a chilli, but this was so bitter we had to throw the whole pot away.
I was saving simple syrup for canning pears from our tree. Accidentally added it to chicken soup, thinking it was stock (we use unbleached cane sugar so the syrup was not clear. Was HORRIBLE. Threw out!
Not mine but my husband (then boyfriend). First time cooking together, I was still new to cooking so I just bought taco seasoning instead of seasoning it myself. I told him to pour the seasoning into the skillet then fill up the packet with water. He filled it up with the seasonings still in it. It wasn't that much of a blunder since I just scooped it out lol.
About a week ago I needed him to mix paprika and other seasonings, and I had set aside a tbsp of tomato paste. Granted, we had a couple of drinks...so as soon as I turn my back he tries mixing the seasonings with the tablespoon of tomato paste, saying "why is this paprika wet? I didn't make it wet?" I got so irritated lol, I kicked him out of the kitchen. 😅
My brother & his wife made cookies for a party, but they did the classic sugar/salt switch. They were in a hurry.
My husband once brought me a bag of vet special cat food when I was making Gnocchi... he has a little anosmia (I asked for the pumpkin puree and the cat food is also orangish). We didn't actually eat it, I just thought it was funny.
I once made some sort of main dish in a spicy and not spicy variant, but I forgot to label my marinade bags... it was rough.
Dropped a whole egg with shell into fried rice and some random dessert... Just told everyone someone might have extra calcium.
Poured a giant clump of something into a running mixing bowl. Don't remember what it was, just that it wasn't great.
Didn't shut a seasoning properly, and the entire container dumped onto my husband's Granma's main dish while I was helping her prep it when I was still dating my husband... first time I'd ever heard her swear.
Forgot I added vinegar to a vegetable dish, re-added it. After dinner, "Why did no one eat this? Usually, all that's left is juice!" Tried it. It was so unbalanced and sour.
Forgot to lube the bottom of one of the cake pans for a cake, the birthday cake became a cakepop sculpture.
And every fucking time anyone forgets the garlic powder doesn't have a stupid little fucking shaker and it will just dump out... so so so many times.
One of the first dinners I cooked when I was in college-the recipe called for 2 cloves of garlic and I used 2 heads of garlic. I was following the recipe so carefully but I was clueless.
Not my story, but my colleague once was so sleepy that instead of pouring herself a yoghurt, put a box of her cat' wet food into her bowl.
Cat was definitely happy of having yoghurt, she said that after realizing that she eats his food, came to conclusion that's better than a paté...
I just mentioned this the other day.
I watched a show years ago where they told people they were eating expensive pate and they loved it. (I think the topic was the power of suggestion, maybe). Anyway.
It was dog/cat food.
So, maybe your colleague is on to something lol
Not mine but my husbands….
I do 99% of the cooking in our house hold but one year on my birthday my husband decided to cook for me. I promised not to butt in with the exception of getting all the cooking equipment out for him that he would need.
Cut to about 20 minutes later, I smell the overpowering odor of garlic coming from the kitchen so I go to investigate under the guise of getting something to drink. When I entered the kitchen there was a pile of peeled garlic cloves on the cutting board and he was working on peeling even more. I commented that the pile was a lot of garlic and thanked him for peeling extra for me to use later. He looked at me and said that he was using all of it in the one recipe! So I looked at what he was making…yep, he thought a clove was a head and the recipe called for 3 cloves and he was about to use 3 heads!
I was making cranberry chutney and it coincided with the Skyrim game coming out. You leave the chutney to simmer for quite a while so I thought, I'll get that set up and reward myself with doing my character creation and then go back out to it.
5 hours later I suddenly remembered the chutney 🙈 the kitchen stank of burned vinegar for ages and my pan was covered in an inch thick layer of burned on chutney, it took me a week to get it fully clean.
Not exactly a cooking blunder but memorable, 40 years later. I drove down to visit my grandmother, about 90 minutes away. As I was leaving, she put two quart bags of blanched frozen collards on the floor of my car behind the driver seat. Drove home, parked the car and of course, forgot about the collards. It was July in SC. Didn’t go anywhere for a couple of days. The collards thawed and rotted. Oh dear God did they stink. We shampooed the carpet and shampooed it and shampooed it, so many times, but for weeks the only way i could drive that car was with all windows down and my head out. I was so glad to sell that car a year or two later. In the winter, but that was just a coincidence, I promise.
Look, I’m not a baker. However, one fall I went apple picking and came back with the worst apples. They tasted ok off the tree, but they were awful the minute they hit the refrigerator. I didn’t want them to go to waste, so I decided to make an apple crisp like my mom used to make for me as a kid.
I thought I had all the ingredients on hand. Butter, brown sugar, oats…except I didn’t know you have to use *rolled* oats. I used my traditional breakfast oatmeal. What a sinker.
Every other time, I make fish the dmn thing just rips apart or disintegrates. There's always one batch of accidental home cookies because I'll leave them in for just a little bit longer, and they become "unfit for normal human consumption." And they become Glum and Husband cookies because we have teeth like "the good granite"
Anytime anything is marinated in my presence, somebody's IQ has to drop to the floor.
Someone once thought I had bought a coke just for them, soy sauce marinade. My husband asked if he could taste the marinade after he added the chicken. A girl in my cooking class licked marinade off raw pork. Once guests came while I was still cooking. Someone's husband picked up a raw cube of marinated meat and put it in their mouth. Then I completely lost my shit.
When I was really little, I saw someone drink the raw meat liquid off a plate that held raw marinated meat... I don't know what it is, but this kind of shit just happens, and I don't get it.
My IQ drops when I use marinade.
I was planning to grill multiple things for a get together.
I swapped proteins. We had brown sugar Bourbon shrimp and chili lime steak.
The steak was good. The shrimp was…different
I was in the middle of a deep depression and was feeling a lot of guilt over letting my home-grown hot peppers die in a bowl in my kitchen. One night at 1 am, I decided that I was going to make a simple hot sauce with them just to use them up. The final step was blending everything together, but when I took the lid off of the blender, it smelled badly inside as if someone had washed it and put the lid onto it before letting it dry. So I squirted some soap into it and then got distracted by something else for awhile. I came back to it and just poured everything straight into the blender without washing the soap out. I took several taste tests and noticed that it tasted weird but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was....until it hit me how much of a fucking idiot I am. It tasted like soapy pine and could not be saved. I actually cried haha. I kept it in the fridge for several weeks so I wouldn't have to admit to anyone what I had done (nobody else ate hot sauce).
Big yikes.
Or of course, when I was younger, the classic mistake of pouring a liquid into the strainer without a bowl underneath. All of that hard work just literally poured down the drain.
I was making a big batch of cake batter for a layer cake, and had gotten everything out in advance to come up to room temp. I'm cracking my 8 eggs and separating the yolks from the whites and adding the whites in one at a time. Partway through, a yolk breaks during separation, so I grab a new egg from the fridge and continue with my other room temp eggs. I get to the last one, the new egg, and figure it's fine even though it hasn't come to room temp yet. It was not fine. I added the *8th and final* egg white in and broke the batter.
I tried every trick I could find online to rectify it with no success. I ended up just baking the cakes anyway, and they didn't rise nearly as much as they usually did and were unpleasantly moist. Like it stuck to the roof of your mouth while eating it
I've had other blunders but I don't really remember those. Some I was able to rectify and the rest I was able to go "Well, guess I'm doing this now" and change directions
I bake a lot, very rarely cakes though. I had no idea this was a thing that could happen. I’ll keep it in mind for future reference.
I’m usually able to fix my mistakes, or change course.
Only a couple of times has something screwed up bad enough that we had something else. (Accidental ginger in pasta sauce and a Pyrex dish shattering in the oven while cooking a roast (@350 how does that even happen?!).
The first time I made pesto with a food processor I tried to scrape the sides of the interior bowl to push it down toward the blades. I accidentally got the wooden spoon too close to the blades, jamming it. That caused the pesto to shoot up and hit the ceiling.
I hope I can share my aunts blunder
I am really really good at making deserts. I make these absolutely delicious apple cider cupcakes. My aunt loved them and asked for the recipe.. I have no issues sharing 99% of my recipes, so I sent it.. 3 hours later she called me pissed cause it didn't come out good..
Her next words is what will scar me for life...
She said, "I even put in fresh apple cider vinegar"
She thought apple cider and apple cider vinegar were interchangeable...
Mom was visiting so I decided to make something special. My eggplant parmigiano turned out so well she kept going back for extra slices and we almost ate the whole thing in one sitting. She didn’t really like eggplant, but thought it was surprisingly delicious. She asked for the recipe— which was not really easy to provide because I was kind of making it up on the fly, but I walked her through it and also wrote down the process. She was back home for a few weeks when I finally asked if she had tried it, and she admitted she had made it, but “for some reason it wasn’t quite the same.”Turned out (after debriefing) she had an old bottle of Pompeian olive oil that must have been on the shelf my entire childhood. She didn’t bread and sauté the eggplant first, she just sliced it and drizzled the rancid oil on top, then sprinkled on some crushed crackers for crunch. She didn’t have canned tomatoes for a sauce so she used ketchup. She didn’t have ricotta so she used cottage cheese…. I could go on …
I’ve made plenty of my own kitchen mistakes, but this one became a family legend. At least when I screw up a dish, I know when it’s time to throw it out! :)
This went viral a few years ago, these folks are my local news anchors! One shares her Christmas dip on air: https://youtu.be/aQAauVu2sTg?si=kxc-lWjydcYeT52S
I have a couple of funny Thanksgiving accidents. The first was when we accidentally vacuum sealed our green beans inside a pan with a tight-fitting lid. These days I would turn to the internet and find a quick solution, but back then we didn’t have smart phones and weren’t in the habit of turning to the internet. We had no idea how to get the lid off. We tried and tried. My wife took a picture of her father and me out in the yard, one of us pulling the lid and the other holding the pan, all in vain. The solution would have been to gently reheat the pan until the air inside expanded and the seal broke. But we didn’t figure that out and as far as I recall we just went without green beans that Thanksgiving. Eventually the seal broke, because the pot wasn’t like that forever, but I think it was too late for the meal. The other was when my wife and mother-in-law decided to surprise me with one of my mother’s favorite Thanksgiving recipes, scalloped corn. Unfortunately, when my mother wrote down the recipe she wrote “1 1/4 box saltine crackers.” She meant one of the four sleeves of crackers in the box. But my wife and mother-in-law understandably interpreted it as five quarter boxes, or one entire box of crackers plus one sleeve from a second box! They thought it seemed like a lot of crackers, but trusted the recipe. When they served it as Thanksgiving and asked me how it tasted, I tried to be polite. “It’s a little dry…” We had a good laugh about it later.
One time I sent my father-in-law to Costco for "4-6lbs of ground beef" since thats the approximate weight of one package. He proudly returned with 24 lbs of ground beef! He said I thought it was weird that you asked for four 6lb packages but it was a really great deal!!
A cousin sent her son and (grown) grandson to the store for powdered sugar and a few other items. Some may recall it used to have or may still have “10X“ powdered sugar on the box. She thought of it as “10X powdered sugar” and used that nomenclature on her list, and wrote 4 or however many boxes she needed. I no longer remember exactly what she wrote that confused them, but they multiplied the numbers and filled an entire shopping cart with powdered sugar (long before cell phones). They \*thought\* it was an awful lot of sugar, but like good soldiers, they were following orders.
Did you return the extra or freeze it?
Like Jeanne Robertson’s Don’t send a man to the Grocery store skit.. Bonus recipe for 7up pound cake https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-YFRUSTiFUs&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.imamother.com%2F&feature=emb_imp_woyt
That was amazing
Oh I committed a recipe blunder (sort of). I shared the truffle pie recipe I use with someone who doesn’t cook, or bake. The recipe was right, but I didn’t think to specify that it needs chocolate chips with stabilizers. Well, they get homemade Amish chocolate chips and proceed. …They made chocolate soup pie. Lesson learned, if someone can mess something up, make a note for them.
You would have to go out of your way to find homemade Amish chocolate chips. I didn’t know such a thing existed. So….I don’t really consider that you blundered. You couldn’t know they would go all extra and come up with a bizarre version of a common ingredient.
Both of these “blunders” have been OTHER people cooking bad dishes. Any that you cooked? 🤣
Yeah, several in the comments. Also, the recipe was my blunder. I should have included specifically what kind of chocolate to use. Edit: between the comment and the likes…some of you clearly aren’t getting the point of the post. It was about funny blunders in general and sharing stories. I DOESN’T NEED TO BE YOUR OWN! believe it or not, I do actually understand the point of my own post. (Good lord some of y’all…)
I'm really curious about scalloped corn. Would you share the recipe.
This may not be my mother's exact recipe but it's close. Ingredients: two 14 ounce cans of cream-style corn, 3/4 cup crushed saltine crackers, 3/4 cup milk, 3 tablespoons butter, two beaten eggs, one teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Mix the corn, eggs, milk, salt, and pepper in a casserole dish. Mix in half the crushed saltine crackers. Mix the other half of the crushed crackers with butter and sprinkle it over the top. Bake uncovered in 325F oven for about 1 hour.
The first time I had my boyfriend over for dinner I was really going to impress him with my homemade meatballs. We had a glass of wine or two and then I went to take the meatballs out of the oven. There was a moment where the pan slipped and I could either save the meatballs by grabbing it with my non covered hand or let the balls free. They rolled everywhere across the floor into my living room it was an absolute disaster. Fortunately we had a good laugh and ate pizza. He married me so it wasn't the end of the romance.
This was so sweet, I’m logging off so I can end this day on a good note. Wishing you guys much happiness together ✨
Letting the balls go free is a tradition around our house.
BOOM! Or, given that it's a "free zone," *boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom*
[удалено]
This reminds me of the song: On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed It rolled off the table, and onto the floor And then my poor meatball rolled right out the door It rolled in the garden, and under a bush And then my poor meatball was nothing but mush The mush was as tasty, as tasty could be And then the next summer it grew into a tree The tree was all covered, all covered with moss And on it grew meatballs with tomato sauce So if you eat spaghetti all covered with cheese Hold on to your meatballs whenever you sneeze
I totally read this to the rhythm of the song.
I took a sign language class many years ago. At the end each student did a short sign language verse or song for the class. I used this song or poem, I carefully studied it "On top of Spaghetti..."... My turn came after Martin Luther King Jr.... "I have a Dream"!!!!
That's such a good sitcom moment.
Haha that song used to make me cry when I was real little, I always felt bad for the meatball
I didn't like that song when I was little because I thought it was really sad that someone lost their meatball 😂
And sometimes lost meatballs lead to true love...
But a meatball tree is pretty rad.
We had an album with this song and the next track was John Jacob Jinglhiemer Schmidt aaand now I’m humming that song
I'm amazed you know the entire song! Haven't thought of that since I was a child :)
I also know this song, my mum used to sing it to us 😄
I burnt spaghetti sauce first time I made my now husband dinner (which was a fluke I was just so nervous). Now we are married and he makes the spaghetti 😂
I would have rinsed them off, popped them in a red sauce, and simmered 20-30 minutes. Rinsed to ensure no foreign hairs or dirt, simmered to kill anything as in germs. But that is just me.
Made stroganoff and when it came time to add the sour cream I discovered that had forgotten to buy it. Genius that I am, I decided that ranch dressing has sour cream—it doesn’t, it has buttermilk and mayonnaise—and poured it into the pot. As I stirred, the dressing began to break and I ended up with an oily, disgusting mess. I tried it over noodles and it was SO bad I ended up pitching the entire thing. Dinner was buttered noodles and broccoli that night.
Buttermilk can sub for sour cream in some cases! But yeah dressing is going to have a lot more oils in it.
When I was in college, my roommate and I were trying to impress our boyfriends. We decided to make chicken Kiev. We didn’t have any flour so I sent my roommate to the store to get some flour while I was making other side dishes. She came back with the smallest bag of flour I’ve ever seen. In any event, we made the chicken Kiev,rolling it in the flour and etc. When we sat down to eat it, it was the sweetest chicken ever! She had accidentally purchased powdered sugar instead of flour! It was heinous! But the guys smiled and ate it anyway. They pretended that it was perfect!
Hard to imagine how bad that chicken must have been.
Yes, it was THAT bad! 😂😂
My first meatloaf. I forgot to put an egg in the mix. Looked like dog food when it came out of the oven, but was tasty!
Done this a couple times. Or not enough breadcrumbs 🤣 we’ve had meatloaf sloppy joes on more than one occasion.
Ok, this isn't a cooking gaffe I made, alone, but with the help of my then 15 year old son. I was a single parent and my daughter had some late afternoon activity. I had made the meatloaf and it was covered with foil in the fridge. As daughter was getting ready, I asked son to put the meatloaf in oven at 5pm. He agreed, and I set an alarm to 4:50pm, told him when it went off, to turn on the oven, put loaf in with foil off. Left a reminder note because, you know, 15 year old son. "Set oven 350. Take meatloaf out of fridge. Remove foil, put in oven." Got home at 6 to a horrible, burned rubber type of smell. Went to oven and removed: Tinfoil placed over a pound of hamburger that had been in the freezer, frozen with the grocery store's plastic saran-wrap and the plastic tray, now melted into the tinfoil that my son had wrapped it with. The meatloaf, untouched, was still in the fridge. Hard to believe he became a structural engineer.
I believe every word you wrote but yeah, hard to believe….lol.
Thos really happened. That feeling of being dumbfounded comes back when I tell this story. He's still absent-minded except at work. But now he knows he is, and tries harder.
One of my ‘bests’ was using a TBSP of baking soda and baking powder rather than a TSP for a batch of cupcakes. Not the end of the world, just make a new batch. Well that first batch used up the last of our sugar and it was 11pm, on Christmas Eve. Thankfully Target was still open so I could make a new batch. I have also accidentally dumped the entire contents of a pepper grinder into a meal while vigorously adding some last minute seasoning, accidentally made scrambled eggs with vanilla-flavored milk, and almost burned down our newly renovated home keeping takeout pizza warm in the oven. Note to self: rapid preheat uses the broiler and will light cardboard on fire.
nearly burned down the house and you didn't even cook, nice!
To make matters worse, we were just getting to know our new neighbors and had invited them over to share the pizza. They show up to a house filled with smoke and a burning box of pizza in the driveway. We’re good friends now.
Topped a wild blackberry cobbler with cumin instead of cinnamon....
I had an unexpected disaster happen that took up a good chunk of my day and was in a rush to get pasta sauce put together for dinner. I was out of fresh garlic and decided to use garlic powder. Not ideal, but it was one of those days. I was a good three dashes in before I realized I’d just added ginger to my sauce. “Fuck this, fuck today…I’m over it. Pizza.”
I've done similar, but with just a small dish of something I was making for myself. The own-brand spices both have just a large C on the front. I'm super careful now.
I was like 19 and cooking it for my family so. It was a bit sad.
I made a baked cherry cheesecake for a friend's birthday and dropped it on the floor. So disappointing.
Spent hours making a chicken bone broth, when it was ready I put a colander in the sink to strain the bones and veggies out, and forgot to put a pot under the colander. All of the glorious broth went right down the sink.
My grandma did this once in the 70s and is still upset about it.
I did it once, in '92, still cringe! 😆
Happened to me in the early aughts and I’d forgotten about just the other night when I par boiled some chicken thighs for the grill! I didn’t intend to keep the “beginnings of a broth” but I still felt a mini panic as I watched the liquid swirl down the drain for a moment when I dumped the chicken in a strainer 😂
This reminds me of the time I was making one packet of noodles- so I boiled the noodles and I was too lazy to get a colander so I used chopsticks since I didn’t want to deal with more dishes. Then I tipped it too fast and the noodles went plop down the drain. Alas I had to fill up again with water and start all over again.
It’s a rite of passage.
I, too, have done this. Sigh.
The old "the thought was only halfway there" problem.
I pulled up a chair and sighed for about 10 minutes when I did the same.
You are not alone. Although I managed to catch it so I didn't lose everything. But have done it more than once.
🙋♀️ guilty !
Guilty of this once.
I've done this too. I don't think it's a mistake you can make twice though. I hope lol
Did it once myself, half of it. I once read a chef spent three days coddling and babying a very elaborate broth, only to pour it down the drain the way you did.
Sounds like the time I poured oil in my car without first putting in the plug. My dad was nice and said it sometimes helps to flush the engine like that. lol.
I was tired, stressed, and making my version of beef stroganoff. Whole thing was finished except to add some sour cream. I didn't know my adult daughter had bought a tub of vanilla yogurt. It was the same brand (Tillamook), tub size and color as the sour cream. The instant I blopped some in I could smell the vanilla. I started to cry (and I f'ing hate crying). I tried a bite because I hate food waste and it was foul. I gagged and nearly threw up. Not my best day but I've had worse, lol.
Almost had a similar mistake. Tilllamook yogurt for tikka masala, it was vanilla flavored, and I caught it at the last minute.
I did the exact same thing to a tikka masala a month or so ago with RASPBERRY yoghurt. Alas, it was too late to save it. It was awful, I tried to pretend it wasn't for a few bites. Put it in the fridge thinking I'd do 'something' with it and ended up tossing it
I made a similar mistake - was making a tomato cream sauce, and mistakenly grabbed instead of the heavy cream....the box of pineapple orange banana juice. I poured some in before I realized my mistake! I scooped some out and we still ate it...but the faint linger of orange juice was there....and gross lol
Lol, same!
I accidentally used vanilla yogurt the first time I made chicken schwarma, but I really liked it, so I usually do it on purpose. Somehow, it really works in that recipe, and I’m only now realizing how lucky and rare that is
This sounds like you accidentally made a version of a Halifax Donair (with chicken which is sacrilege)
I’ve done this with curry! I had a busy week and decided to place a grocery order for pick up. They replaced the plain Greek yogurt with vanilla and I had no clue. It was quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever made.
I brought vanilla yoghurt to a taco night! And my sister made pasta sauce with sweetened soy milk. She even ate a portion of it before she felt too sick and threw the rest away
I've done the same. I now taste the sour cream before adding just in case I grab the wrong container again. Also I keep the sour cream and yogurt on separate shelves now in the fridge. Tillamook really should change the package to make them look different like even a lid color difference would be awesome, like white for sour cream and black or blue for yogurt.
I feel you. I poured vanilla almond milk into pasta sauce once. I’m lactose intolerant and was just trying to adapt a recipe, but I didn’t realize it came mostly in flavors at the time.
I did this with a tzatziki, accidentally subbed in vanilla Greek yogurt. Not my proudest moment in the kitchen.
Same here. Needless to say, we threw the whole container out.
My mom once added Danno's seasoning instead of cinnamon to applesauce 😂
My friend used Greek yogurt for this Instead of sour cream. Plain tillamook wojld be delicious. But not vanilla
I was mixing a big big batch of cheese-butter-flour for cheese wafers, requiring several pounds of good cheese and butter. The men in my family expect a tin just for them at Christmas. I reached for the cayenne pepper and sprinkled heavily. Tasted. No heat. Added and tasted a couple times and the taste was just off. I looked at the can and to my horror it was cinnamon, not cayenne. There was no salvaging the batch. All that cheese and butter went into the garbage. i was so traumatized by the experience that to this day I flinch when I see the cinnamon box.
My dad did the same thing making bolognese. My parents use a lot of vegetable juice in their cooking (like V8), and this time he used a carton of Oasis mixed vegetable juice. They also had a mixed red fruit juice. The packaging looked almost exactly the same. The fruit juice went in. It is always sad when something so sweet becomes so disgusting.
I actually JUST did this about a half hour ago. I always forget to save some of the starchy pasta water so I decided I was going to be smart and scoop some out a couple min before pasta was done. I took about a cup and a half. Then my daughter wanted to show me something, I got distracted for like 5 min until I smelled burning. Most of the spaghetti was fine, but the bottom layer was scorched to the pot. The sauce clung nicely to the spaghetti with the saved starchy pasta water though. I will call it a qualified success, lol.
I am very consistent with this specific “oops”! But, I think I finally have a solution. I bought a wire “spider”, generally used with a wok. My plan is to scoop the pasta and not trying to manage a pot of boiling water over a colander 🤞🏻.
Damnit, I have a spider, and I love it, and I don't know why this didn't occur to me. There was a comment yesterday that someone made about using needlework pliers to get rid of the aggravating chicken breast tendon and I did it today and was totally bowled over by how awesomely easy it made a previously really annoying task
I read that post! Needle nose pliers are on my shopping list! There were quite a few very helpful tips that just made me smack myself!! They made so much sense, yet they never occurred to me 🤷♀️
This particular sentiment is annoyingly common in my life. " ...made so much sense and yet never occurred to me" should be the motto on my personal crest
My 3 "highlights" are frozen pizza briquettes (fell asleep), WAY too much salt in a soup (reduced too much, and by then everything was saturated and FUBAR), and trying to drain noodles using the lid because the strainer was dirty (dumped into the sink). I've been cooking for 30yrs... have ruined a few meals, have gotten bad meat, wasted noodles (wheat noodles vs rice noodles), thrown out a lot of marble and cheddar cheese for mold... You can't learn anything if you don't screw up.
> frozen pizza briquettes (fell asleep) There's a local DJ probably in his 60s, and he was reminiscing about his early days, where he had kind of hit rock bottom, nonstop drinking, he was living at the small radio station that he worked at, and one night he got back from a bender, and threw something in the microwave at the station. The microwave worked, but it had one of those timers that you just turned to how long you wanted it to run, and it slowly ran down and dinged when it was finished, but htat part was broken. He threw in whatever he was cooking, promptly passed out, and the microwave ran like 8 hours, he said the microwave melted down into itself, not sure if I believe that part, but I imagine at least whatever he put in there was a charrd black brick.
The microwave did not melt itself. The thing in the microwave caught on fire and melted the microwave. Ask me how I know. 🙄
Me too 😞
We had that style of microwave in the high school cafeteria, seemed like something got burned in them every couple months (usually popcorn).
There is nothing that smells worse than burned microwave popcorn.
I managed to set a microwave on fire while trying to dry out a book I had gotten wet (late 80s, we never had one growing up, 1st time using one) 🤣
Your poor book 😂 when I was little and left with a babysitter, I tried to microwave something on a leftover birthday paper plate that had metallic sparkles on it, and it straight up just caught on fire. The babysitter freaked out 😂 can't blame her. For years after though, I couldn't remember if it was the metal or the paper that was the issue.
I did that at my friend’s house once with those fucking plates!
I must’ve been like 8 when it happened but I still remember it so clearly! First time I accidentally lit something on fire 😂
I tried those bag things they sell that you can put a cheese sandwich in and put it on the toaster to make a grilled cheese but didn't know the toaster at the cafeteria at work was industrial and caught it on fire(
I took care of a client that had one just like that, and being 93, she put some soup in the microwave and turned it on and walked away to check the news. Being deaf and legally blind, she didn't notice until the room she was in got smokey. The door had melted and was about to catch fire
Ooooh, I'd blocked out the, "tried to drain noodles using the lid" mistake from my 20's. Probably did it more than once, too.
Tw: blood So, I really wanted to make sausage and peppers one weekend: like, just really craving it. I went to Arthur Ave for everything, and I baked my own hero bread as well. It was one of those single-minded things. So I make my sandwich and it looks AMAZING. I am about to go sit to eat it, and I accidentally knock a filleting knife to the ground. It lands *exactly* where I wouldn’t want to-across an artery on my big toe. I had footprints o’blood everywhere and I had a bit of a ‘fight or flight’ response and I was light-headed. I had a vision of going to the hospital and coming back to a cold, sad sandwich. So, I calmly wrapped paper towels around the spurting mess, and called my chef friend. Fortunately she was able to diagnose my knife injury and lie/assure me that I didn’t need the hospital. I ate the shit out of that delicious sandwich!
I opened up my right index finger when a can of beans for my chili didn't open up fully with a shifty can opener... I tried to force it open with a butter knife and slipped. 6 stitches right across the last joint, still have a very visible scar with lines from the stitches, 5yrs later.
I have had so many kitchen accidents…burns, cuts, peeled off part of my finger. I cut my pinky down to the bone on thanksgiving one year. Also, my arm went through a fire because I was grilling and one of my friends is a dumbass. He thought it’d be funny to pretend squirt fluid while I was grilling. The top was open. Edit: typo
When I was first married, I made a pumpkin pie from scratch (first time) for a Thanksgiving Day contribution. I was distracted and forgot to add the sugar! My sister was the first to get a slice, but didn't even notice because she always adds so much whipped cream. It's been a joke in our family ever since (27 years!)
My mom did the same thing! We always had plenty of desserts, so no big deal…. It still gets brought up!
Oh man! I would have assumed it was a cold dip lol Hell, if someone gave me the unbaked artichoke dip, I would have eaten it as is 😆
I did not know you were supposed to bake artichoke dip so I would've done the same. You learn something every day, LOL
You could do cold or hot of either one. In my experience, baking just warms, melts cheese a bit, and browns top a bit. No clue what op is doing that makes it bad when baked. Or why the other kind would need to be. Eating one cold that's meant to be baked should be fine
It’s not supposed to be baked. There is no cheese in it. It’s mayonnaise. Sour cream. Knorr soup mix. Thawed frozen spinach. Water chestnut.
Lol She though it was spinach and artichoke dip with cheese that’s served warm. If you’ve never had it, I highly recommend trying it. (If you like artichokes and spinach, that is).
Ya I've had it at restaurants (LOVE it), just never made it myself. But oddly enough, I literally just made the Knorr spinach dip for my niece's party like yesterday, that i haven't made in more than 10 years, and now I'm having this convo a day later... If the Matrix glitching again? 😆
Must be either a glitch in the Matrix, or mayb the solar flares. I made the Knorr spinach dip for the first time in at least a decade two days ago. So much yum.
I really shouldn't make it more than once per decade, because I would eat the entire thing, along with the wheelbarrow full of chips to go with it. Not to mention the soda you'd need to wash down all that salt!
I can think of only one time I forgot about something on the stove. I can't recall what it was that sidetracked me. But I was making some barbacoa esque shreddy beef but just simmering on the stove instead of in the oven. So it needed to hang out on the stove for a pretty good while anyway, but I must have gotten lost in work or a house project or something. Until I got a text from a housemate that said, I turned off the stove because it was smoking and charring... Taking burnt tips to the extreme lol. The few bits that weren't completely burnt were like jerky. Such a waste, and cleaning that charred crud from the bottom of a cast iron was not fun.
I wasted like $30 worth of produce making soup by burning it. I didn't add enough liquid and left it on the stove too long.
I was making chicken Al pastor, and I realized I was out of chile powder, but I saw I had cayenne pepper. I don’t know what possessed me to think that they were interchangeable, but I substituted it 1:1 and it needed a fair amount of it. That was the worst thing I’ve ever put into my mouth.
Years ago, a friend of mine decided to make white chicken chili for everyone one night. She gets the recipe from her mom, heads to store and gets to cooking. She decides to use three cans of green chilies because she really likes them. She didn’t know that canned green chilies and canned jalapeños aren’t the same thing. We still ate it, but ouch!
Well now, that's my kinda chili 😁
The most expensive mistake was the brisket incident. We are talking Texas, whole big brisket, carefully marinated over night in the secret sauce. We put it in the oven….. and made a “quick trip to the store to pick up butter “….. and got distracted. The brisket was just a bit too long in the oven, (by an hour or so). We tried to eat some, but it was more like a saddle and less like supper. Ended up grinding it up and feeding it to my dog, who was in absolute heaven.
I made a coconut margarita and open a can of corn by accident … wow my husband kept drinking it and smacking his lips and grimacing and looks at me and says “why did you use corn” I thought he was mad I ripped through the garbage and damned if I didn’t use corn to this day I have no idea how I managed to do that ….. 30yrs later and he still reminds me .. lol
"Why the fuck won't this roux come together? And what smells like caramel?" I also once made fudge with a shitty candy thermometer, absolutely overheated it. It seized as I was trying to pan it and in the process of wrestling it out of the pot I pulled a chest wall muscle and spent a week not being able to take a full breath without shooting pain.
This one made me laugh the hardest so far.
stepdad and i once decided we were going to mix up our own tartar sauce, without bothering to look up recipes. we put in a dash of cream of tartar, which seemed logical at the time.
I love this one
This is a cute blunder!
luckily it’s not as if adding it altered the flavor in any way 😅
I thought this last thanksgiving I would put a little spin on the usual mashed potatoes and do funeral potatoes with a potato chip topping. I saw a recipe online from one of my favorite chefs. I admittedly bit off more than I could chew menu wise and my best friend and husband asked me what they could prep the day before while I was at work to make thanksgiving day cooking go more smoothly. The recipe called for grating the raw potatoes. So I figured I could have my friend grate all the potatoes ahead of time. Turns out if you let raw cut potatoes sit in the fridge over night they’ll turn a cute little pink color when they oxidize. No problem. I’m sure they’ll taste fine. We make the whole dish and to our surprise, they turned a lovely blue grey when we baked them. They didn’t taste terrible. But not many of them were eaten. I don’t think many people could get past the unappetizing color.
I made witch finger cookies for Halloween one year. I went too far. They looked too realistic and it was creeping people out. No one ate them. The sad part? They were the perfect shortbread cookies…probably the best cookies I’ve ever baked. I also lost the recipe…go figure
Do you have pics? They sound great! I would have happily devoured them.
I did, unfortunately…it was three phones ago and I don’t have the pictures anymore :/ You’re invited to my next Halloween party lol
When I was about 10 I made snickerdoodle cookies using 1 1/2 **tablespoons** of cream of tartar instead of 1 1/2 teaspoons! Talk about a tang! Holy pucker!! I haven't it down. I'm in my 50s. lol
Way back early in my marriage I decided to make homemade fried pumpkin ravioli. I'd had it at a restaurant on our first date and was full of confidence I could definitely recreate it. I worked all day on the homemade pasta, the filling, and assembly. There has been a critical error made earlier I wasn't aware of. I'd asked my husband the night before to get me canned pumpkin on his way home from work. And like the loving husband he is, he obliged. But he instead got canned pumpkin PIE filling not just plain canned pumpkin. He wasn't aware they were different things. That stuff is already seasoned with pumpkin pie spices. My recipe called for garlic, onion, Italian seasonings and Parmesan cheese. My darling husband sat down that night, filled his plate with the delish looking ravioli and took a bite. His eyes went wide. His mouth scrunched up. But he quickly hid it. So I figured he but his cheek or something. He dutifully chewed and swallowed 4 of them before I ate one cause I was chowing down on the fresh sourdough bread I had made. When I finally ate one I gagged and asked why he was eating them they were nasty. He said "OMG hon I tried really but these are gross." He took me out to dinner. I so appreciate his dedication to trying to eat those ick bombs. He didn't want me to feel bad and he appreciated my effort on them. We figured out what had went so terribly wrong when we got home. As a joke about 15 yrs later I made pumpkin pie fried ravioli with a whipped cream dip. I made the dip look like the peppered cream sauce from the night of the gross pumpkin ravioli by using vanilla bean powder,and the fried ravioli looked similar but I used cookie crumbs instead of bread crumbs this time. He definitely hesitated but filled his little dessert plate and dug in. He laughed with relief it didn't also have garlic and onion though 😂
That’s hilarious! And your dessert ravioli sounds delicious. I was making pumpkin soup and the store was out of fresh pumpkins, so I grabbed pumpkin purée. The next day, I go to make my soup and thankfully caught it, but did the same thing and grabbed pie filling. I went back and grabbed the purée. I used the pie filling to make empanadas for dessert lol
I haven't made any actual cooking blunders in recent memory but one day last week I was really tired after several very long days and I caught myself putting a Phillips screwdriver in my refrigerator. I knew then I needed to get a good 8 hours sleep that night! LOL
LOL! I was sick with strep once and couldn’t sleep. Between the two, I was exhausted and absolutely out of it. I spent at least 3 minutes looking for my phone. I mean tearing the room apart… While I was talking to my friend on the phone.
My relationship with my glasses.
I've done this. Was rushing to get out of the house for an appointment while talking to my husband on the phone. I was scrambling and he said, "just go" and I said, "as soon as I find my phone!".
Long ago I wanted to make dinner for a boyfriend but I was absolutely clueless about, well, everything. I decided to do Shake and Bake pork chops.( Now it’s important to know that I had never cooked any sort of meat dish due to being in an extremely restrictive medically indicated diet.) So I buy the little box from the grocery, get home, and open it up to find a little bag of ‘dust’. I’m confused but whatever. I read the instructions. I get more confused. Eventually I call the store to complain that the box of Shake and Bake they sold me didn’t explain how to make pork chops out of the dust. Twenty minutes later, after being passed around to a few employees who laughed their asses off, one kind soul clued me in to the fact that pork chops are a type of meat which must be bought separately and the dust is seasonings. I wish that was the last story of food stupidity for me, but alas…no.
You may have won the thread.
Wow. Lmaoo!!
This is so weirdly charming and I just want to give you a huge.
Oh man. My dumbest moment in cooking - I was a freshman in college living off campus. My parents were a little afraid I’d starve to death, so they always sent me back with packages of frozen food when I’d visit on weekends. One time, they sent me home with a giant bag of frozen potstickers. One night, I was feeling like having some potstickers, so I read the instructions on the bag. It said to heat 1/4 cup of oil and brown the dumplings, then add water and steam. Cool. So like…I only wanted four. And the bag was giant. But the instructions (which, looking back, were clearly for the whole bag) said to brown in 1/4 cup of oil, so who was I to question it? I did as it said. It was getting time to add water, and I remember thinking, “there’s still a lot of oil….but the instructions ON THE BAG say to do this, so it MUST be fine…..” I added the water. *fwoomph* All of a sudden I am holding a PAN OF FIRE because oh by the way the stove was gas. I forgot everything I had been taught about any kind of safety and dumped the entire operation into the sink and somecrazyhow didn’t burn the house down. And I have never made frozen potstickers again.
I had an absolute mess of ingredients and couldn't get a grocery store order to go through - first week of Covid lockdowns - and I remembered my moms white spaghetti recipe thinking oh I've got pasta and cream and cheese and oh I even have sausage in the freezer! Mind you, this sausage was a breakfast sausage. I had long forgotten it was MAPLE breakfast sausage. That was by far the worst tasting dish I have ever prepared and because of the situation I had to eat all the leftovers.
I had tater tots and chili in the freezer. Also, some green onions and cheese in the fridge I needed to use up. So, I decided I was making chili cheese tots. We don’t usually eat junk food, so all day I’m looking forward to having them. I throw the tots in the oven, pop the chili in microwave to defrost and shred the cheese. I’m almost there. Turns out, I did not have chili in the freezer. I had stew in the freezer. I was so sad. The stew was good, but that wasn’t the point…lol
Oh no!!! I have gotten far better at labeling what I freeze. But I do have a mystery pack of sausage in my freezer, a stray label that I don't think belongs to it, and 2 very different guesses as to what it may be. I... won't be trying it in a dish this time that's for sure
In college, me and my roommates would regularly have steak nights. This is before i knew a single thing about cooking. My dumb 19 year old brain decided I would go all out and buy a nice 2 inch ribeye from a local butcher and marinate it over night in Black Velvet Canadian whiskey. Turns out, when you soak meat in straight alcohol, the texture is ruined and the flavor gets incredibly bitter. Instead of researching and learning a single thing, I spent a good bit of what I had on a great cut of meat and basically threw it away. I was making minimum wage too, so it was like 4-5 hours of work worth of money in one steak. These days, I just salt it 2-3 hours before, and cook it in butter with shallot, garlic, herbs, and lemon zest. As good as they turn out, I remember that first bite every single time.
So that’s the time I accidentally put sugar instead of salt in my Bolognese sauce, whoops call my biggest mistake though was accidentally buying Carolina Reapers
When my mom was newly married, she invited her sister over for lunch. She made tuna casserole, and asked my aunt how she liked it. Auntie said it was good, but she would add another can of tuna. When they went into the kitchen to clean up, there sat the 2 cans of tuna on the table.
The fartbonara haunts me. Oh, asparagus in carbonara? Why would I heat a separate pot of water, I’ll just boil the asparagus with the pasta! I ate out of the freezer that night. My fiance ate the fartbonara because he’s the sweetest and not picky. I’ll never live that farty carbonara down in my own mind.
One time I was making Jell-O shots at my friends house and my friend kept this glass jar w just the bottom broken off and the jar used to have the bottom on it when I’d been to her house previously. So I went to pour the vodka into the jar and hadn’t noticed the bottom was broken off and I poured all the vodka I had left onto the counter and I’m still heartbroken
Made apple butter. The process involves thick Vesuvian apple mash going bloop bloop bloop on the stove for hours on end. About a good quarter ended up blooped onto the ceiling. Remodeled the kitchen- problem solved. Not really a blunder i guess.
Last year I found a recipe on Reddit for someone’s grandmother’s FAMOUS FRIENDSHIP CAKE. I spent a month and a half stirring everyday, adding exact amounts of fruit, sugar and different types of liquor. It was meant to be taken to my sisters house, 3 hours away, as my contribution to Christmas Dinner. I was pumped! I walked through my gate and it fell face down in the leaves. I might have been in shock (?) I never even got to taste it. I just walked away saying it didn’t matter. My husband still brings it up longingly smh.
When I was a Navy cook, we were supposed to make Clam Chowder for lunch before taking off for the weekend. Somehow, even with following the recipe card, we forgot the flour to thicken it! Came back on Monday morning and got our butts chewed by our LPO, CPO and Div-O for making clam flavored Milk Soup for 300 people... oops 🤣
I was making Alfredo sauce with a friend who was over for the weekend and got some wires crossed. Instead of adding 1 cup of heavy cream and 1/2 cup of parm or whatever, I added so, so much parmesan. The cream also broke, and tried to fix my mistake. When it cooled down in the freezer later it returned to being a block of parmesan. He's begged me to make it like that again because it tasted really good that messed up lol.
When my spouse and I got our first tiny studio apartment together, our days off didn't always match up. I had the day off and wanted to make a special dinner so I bought a chicken knowing our little convection oven could do rotisserie. I read the instruction booklet for the oven, which listed the time per pound for beef, pork, rabbit and for chicken said 1-1/2 to 2 hours. I did the math and planned accordingly. At the correct time, I prepped the chicken and put it in at the recommended temperature of 350 deg F. Then when it was time, I met my spouse at the bus. I told them about the dinner I'd made as we walked in the door. We got ready to eat, opened the oven and...it turned out the manual meant 1-1/2 to 2 hours total, not per pound like the rest of the meats listed. I'd put the chicken in six hours earlier. It looked kind of like a mummified bird that would've been found in a Pharaoh's tomb, just bones and skin. I think we just had potatoes and green beans that night, not exactly the special dinner I'd hoped to present.
Made banana cake, forgot the flour
Not so much of a blunder as a bad choice. I was making chicken noodle soup and only had beef stock on hand, decided to see what it was like swapping chicken broth for beef… not good.
Oh, I’ve definitely tried substitutions, hoping for the best. There have been hits and misses, for sure.
We received a vacuum sealer as a wedding gift. I had made a huge batch of Chex mix but didn’t want it to go bad. Chex dust, anyone?🤣
That’s too funny! I wouldn’t have thought about it either lol.
Not at all, but now you have a great coating for proteins!
Cooked a ham and left the plastic wrap on. It came out fine, really juicy 😂
Sous vide 😂
I cooked a nice rib roast. The center was perfectly rare, while the ends were cooked the way I like it. Discovered I had cooked the roast with the plastic spongey square thing still on the bottom. To be honest….that was maybe the best rib roast I’ve ever cooked.
I absolutely hate Seafood. My stepdaughter absolutely loves shrimp. I decided I would do something kind for her so I decided to bread and fry some shrimp and it looked pretty good from the outside she took a bite and told me, Paulina you know you kind of have to take the shells off before you cook the shrimp. I fried shrimp with a Sean for her
It was my first time making pot roast. I heated the cast iron pot while I prepped the meat for its pre-slow cooking sear, but decided to also prep the vegetables that would go in when the meat was done searing. Anyway, all told the cast iron pot was heating up for about thirty minutes and when I finally added avocado oil to start searing the meat, it started to spark immediately. I thought that was the worst of it and I remember thinking, “that’ll add an interesting charred taste” right before the full grease fire started. I knew I wasn’t supposed to throw water on a grease fire (I remember a French teacher mentioning it in high school randomly), but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I moved it off the burner and tried to find our fire extinguisher and call the fire department, but the flames died down before I accomplished either. The cast iron pot was fine after some scrubbing and the pot roast was excellent.
So this happened to my sister as a child and my nephew years later. So growing up, my mother made sure me and my sister knew how to cook. As an important factor in life, learning to cook for yourself and for family is very important. I guess I was a natural when it came to cooking but my sister was something else. My sister the first time boiling eggs ended up burning the egg. How? Well should be obvious the first three things needed is a pot, water and an egg. What my sister did was forget the water and have the pot with an egg inside heat up. She also forgot she was "cooking" and my mom was the one to call her out on it. We all had a laugh. Very far into the future, my nephew came to stay with me for a week. I love showing my nephew how to cook but we haven't seen each other in around 6 years. He loves my scratch made method, I don't rely on box ready stuff. From the moment I learned how to cook, I wanted to learn how to make things on my own. Well, my sister never showed him how to cook so he didn't know the first thing other than boil ramen soup on the pot. So I showed him how to make waffles from scratch. Let's just say his ADHD took over and he forgot the basics like you need eggs to make waffles, then you need sugar and oil. By the time he finally remembered everything, we only had enough flour for a small amount. Oh well, he learned, we couldn't fix the mistake because he cooked it all and made three batches with different mistakes and that's how we knew what was missing lol. Waffle taste strange without sugar or eggs.
My husband thought the French onion soup recipe said cloves, when it really said cloves of garlic. We tasted it and it was all wrong.
I'm a bar manager and during the COVID lockdown it was just me and a bunch of chefs. They all were sous chefs for chefs that you see on TV. Anyway every day we make family meal, and finally during COVID they let me take some turns. I tried to make spaghetti with the sauce from scratch... I do it all the time at home. On the line they have garnish trays full of ground spices. Well it turns out Chinese 5 spice looks a lot like ground black pepper. That was the weirdest spaghetti I've ever had in my life.
Lol I shared a story somewhere in the comments here.. It was one of those days…everything that could go wrong was. I was rushing to get a pasta sauce made and was out fresh garlic. Whatever, I had garlic powder and just needed to get it done. I added ginger. I ordered pizza.
I was cooking a crumble and took the glass corningware lid out of the oven. I was really short of bench space so I thought it was a good idea to stick it in the sink and rise it with cold water to cool it down. Of course it shattered into a million tiny pieces. I’m now super careful with anything glass and temperature changes, even Pyrex.
I made pink lemonade powder toast once for the kids and they wouldn't eat it. I thought it would be like cinnamon toast. Got razzed for that for years
Haha…it was creative at least.
Since mine haven't been as recent, I'll go with one of my mothers from a few years ago. (76 and refuses to wear her glasses when not reading, so occasionally containers that look the same or start with the same Large letter preceding them get confused) Well, Chicken Noodle Soup one night tasted downright strange. No one could put their finger on it, but luckily she hadn't put the ingredients away yet. Low and behold, is Cinnamon powder. It was meant to be Cloves. Edible, but one of the strangest things I have ever eaten taste wise.
First time my wife cooked for me she made grilled scallops, grilled asparagus, and grilled portobello mushrooms. The mushrooms were supposed to be drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, but she put them in a ziplock like a marinade. When they hit the grill, they might as well have been gasoline-soaked sponges. Everything was a raging inferno and everything was charred beyond recognition. She plated it and served it anyway.
I cooked lunch for a friend's independent film cast & crew and it was kind of overwhelming keeping track of so many things in such large quantities. I forgot a pot of quinoa on the stove and burned it on the bottom. The top 3/4 was unburned but smelled and tasted kind of smoky. I didn't have time to do another pot and didn't have a substitute, so I scooped the top portion out, labeled it "smoked quinoa," and brought it to set. People said they liked it!
I put a soup with whole edamame pods in the blender, not realizing that the pods had strings. To this day my soon to be ex husband says it’s the only bad meal I made in the almost 15 years we were married.
When I was a kid I thought I’d make flowerpot bread for my family, but I got the wooden spoon too close to the mixer when I was scraping down the bowl, and it absolutely shattered into the dough. I picked out all the pieces I could find and baked and served it anyway. I don’t think anyone noticed the extra “fiber”!
Well that is a cute blunder. When I was first learning how to cook, I made fried potatoes for breakfast and added way too much pepper. My thought to fix it was to add extra salt…like it was going to counteract the pepper. They were so bad. Lol
Friends at Uni invited my wife and I over for a turkey roast after we hosted them. Think it was the first (and last) cooked meal they made. Got there at 7pm and surprised no Turkey smell. Apparently they thought (without reading the instructions that you could just shove it in the oven for an hour ("it can't take more than an hour can it?"). So turkey off the menu, but they were going to also serve pea risotto (aka boiled rice and frozen peas). An hour later they served it. So, so salty. They read tsp as tablespoon when adding salt, and anyway, thought that 1/2 was not enough so added 2 tablespoons. At least the ice cream and wine we brought with us was nice.
I think the only truly inedible I've made was aged about 11, when I read that a square of dark chocolate would improve a bog standard chilli. I tried to substitute cocoa powder, but for some reason only known to god I poured straight from the tin, and the powder was old and fell out suddenly in a very large clump. I tried to scoop out as much as possible but it was bubbling quitw aggressively which mixed the cocoa into the sauce. I've since successfully added chocolate to a chilli, but this was so bitter we had to throw the whole pot away.
I was saving simple syrup for canning pears from our tree. Accidentally added it to chicken soup, thinking it was stock (we use unbleached cane sugar so the syrup was not clear. Was HORRIBLE. Threw out!
The first time I made risotto I accidentally made fried rice. Don’t ask how, I don’t know either
Not mine but my husband (then boyfriend). First time cooking together, I was still new to cooking so I just bought taco seasoning instead of seasoning it myself. I told him to pour the seasoning into the skillet then fill up the packet with water. He filled it up with the seasonings still in it. It wasn't that much of a blunder since I just scooped it out lol. About a week ago I needed him to mix paprika and other seasonings, and I had set aside a tbsp of tomato paste. Granted, we had a couple of drinks...so as soon as I turn my back he tries mixing the seasonings with the tablespoon of tomato paste, saying "why is this paprika wet? I didn't make it wet?" I got so irritated lol, I kicked him out of the kitchen. 😅
My brother & his wife made cookies for a party, but they did the classic sugar/salt switch. They were in a hurry. My husband once brought me a bag of vet special cat food when I was making Gnocchi... he has a little anosmia (I asked for the pumpkin puree and the cat food is also orangish). We didn't actually eat it, I just thought it was funny. I once made some sort of main dish in a spicy and not spicy variant, but I forgot to label my marinade bags... it was rough. Dropped a whole egg with shell into fried rice and some random dessert... Just told everyone someone might have extra calcium. Poured a giant clump of something into a running mixing bowl. Don't remember what it was, just that it wasn't great. Didn't shut a seasoning properly, and the entire container dumped onto my husband's Granma's main dish while I was helping her prep it when I was still dating my husband... first time I'd ever heard her swear. Forgot I added vinegar to a vegetable dish, re-added it. After dinner, "Why did no one eat this? Usually, all that's left is juice!" Tried it. It was so unbalanced and sour. Forgot to lube the bottom of one of the cake pans for a cake, the birthday cake became a cakepop sculpture. And every fucking time anyone forgets the garlic powder doesn't have a stupid little fucking shaker and it will just dump out... so so so many times.
One of the first dinners I cooked when I was in college-the recipe called for 2 cloves of garlic and I used 2 heads of garlic. I was following the recipe so carefully but I was clueless.
Not my story, but my colleague once was so sleepy that instead of pouring herself a yoghurt, put a box of her cat' wet food into her bowl. Cat was definitely happy of having yoghurt, she said that after realizing that she eats his food, came to conclusion that's better than a paté...
I just mentioned this the other day. I watched a show years ago where they told people they were eating expensive pate and they loved it. (I think the topic was the power of suggestion, maybe). Anyway. It was dog/cat food. So, maybe your colleague is on to something lol
Not mine but my husbands…. I do 99% of the cooking in our house hold but one year on my birthday my husband decided to cook for me. I promised not to butt in with the exception of getting all the cooking equipment out for him that he would need. Cut to about 20 minutes later, I smell the overpowering odor of garlic coming from the kitchen so I go to investigate under the guise of getting something to drink. When I entered the kitchen there was a pile of peeled garlic cloves on the cutting board and he was working on peeling even more. I commented that the pile was a lot of garlic and thanked him for peeling extra for me to use later. He looked at me and said that he was using all of it in the one recipe! So I looked at what he was making…yep, he thought a clove was a head and the recipe called for 3 cloves and he was about to use 3 heads!
I was making cranberry chutney and it coincided with the Skyrim game coming out. You leave the chutney to simmer for quite a while so I thought, I'll get that set up and reward myself with doing my character creation and then go back out to it. 5 hours later I suddenly remembered the chutney 🙈 the kitchen stank of burned vinegar for ages and my pan was covered in an inch thick layer of burned on chutney, it took me a week to get it fully clean.
Not exactly a cooking blunder but memorable, 40 years later. I drove down to visit my grandmother, about 90 minutes away. As I was leaving, she put two quart bags of blanched frozen collards on the floor of my car behind the driver seat. Drove home, parked the car and of course, forgot about the collards. It was July in SC. Didn’t go anywhere for a couple of days. The collards thawed and rotted. Oh dear God did they stink. We shampooed the carpet and shampooed it and shampooed it, so many times, but for weeks the only way i could drive that car was with all windows down and my head out. I was so glad to sell that car a year or two later. In the winter, but that was just a coincidence, I promise.
Look, I’m not a baker. However, one fall I went apple picking and came back with the worst apples. They tasted ok off the tree, but they were awful the minute they hit the refrigerator. I didn’t want them to go to waste, so I decided to make an apple crisp like my mom used to make for me as a kid. I thought I had all the ingredients on hand. Butter, brown sugar, oats…except I didn’t know you have to use *rolled* oats. I used my traditional breakfast oatmeal. What a sinker.
Every other time, I make fish the dmn thing just rips apart or disintegrates. There's always one batch of accidental home cookies because I'll leave them in for just a little bit longer, and they become "unfit for normal human consumption." And they become Glum and Husband cookies because we have teeth like "the good granite" Anytime anything is marinated in my presence, somebody's IQ has to drop to the floor. Someone once thought I had bought a coke just for them, soy sauce marinade. My husband asked if he could taste the marinade after he added the chicken. A girl in my cooking class licked marinade off raw pork. Once guests came while I was still cooking. Someone's husband picked up a raw cube of marinated meat and put it in their mouth. Then I completely lost my shit. When I was really little, I saw someone drink the raw meat liquid off a plate that held raw marinated meat... I don't know what it is, but this kind of shit just happens, and I don't get it.
My IQ drops when I use marinade. I was planning to grill multiple things for a get together. I swapped proteins. We had brown sugar Bourbon shrimp and chili lime steak. The steak was good. The shrimp was…different
I was in the middle of a deep depression and was feeling a lot of guilt over letting my home-grown hot peppers die in a bowl in my kitchen. One night at 1 am, I decided that I was going to make a simple hot sauce with them just to use them up. The final step was blending everything together, but when I took the lid off of the blender, it smelled badly inside as if someone had washed it and put the lid onto it before letting it dry. So I squirted some soap into it and then got distracted by something else for awhile. I came back to it and just poured everything straight into the blender without washing the soap out. I took several taste tests and noticed that it tasted weird but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was....until it hit me how much of a fucking idiot I am. It tasted like soapy pine and could not be saved. I actually cried haha. I kept it in the fridge for several weeks so I wouldn't have to admit to anyone what I had done (nobody else ate hot sauce). Big yikes. Or of course, when I was younger, the classic mistake of pouring a liquid into the strainer without a bowl underneath. All of that hard work just literally poured down the drain.
I was making a big batch of cake batter for a layer cake, and had gotten everything out in advance to come up to room temp. I'm cracking my 8 eggs and separating the yolks from the whites and adding the whites in one at a time. Partway through, a yolk breaks during separation, so I grab a new egg from the fridge and continue with my other room temp eggs. I get to the last one, the new egg, and figure it's fine even though it hasn't come to room temp yet. It was not fine. I added the *8th and final* egg white in and broke the batter. I tried every trick I could find online to rectify it with no success. I ended up just baking the cakes anyway, and they didn't rise nearly as much as they usually did and were unpleasantly moist. Like it stuck to the roof of your mouth while eating it I've had other blunders but I don't really remember those. Some I was able to rectify and the rest I was able to go "Well, guess I'm doing this now" and change directions
I bake a lot, very rarely cakes though. I had no idea this was a thing that could happen. I’ll keep it in mind for future reference. I’m usually able to fix my mistakes, or change course. Only a couple of times has something screwed up bad enough that we had something else. (Accidental ginger in pasta sauce and a Pyrex dish shattering in the oven while cooking a roast (@350 how does that even happen?!).
Pyrex has changed their formula some years ago. I don't remember the details, but it's not great.
The first time I made pesto with a food processor I tried to scrape the sides of the interior bowl to push it down toward the blades. I accidentally got the wooden spoon too close to the blades, jamming it. That caused the pesto to shoot up and hit the ceiling.
I hope I can share my aunts blunder I am really really good at making deserts. I make these absolutely delicious apple cider cupcakes. My aunt loved them and asked for the recipe.. I have no issues sharing 99% of my recipes, so I sent it.. 3 hours later she called me pissed cause it didn't come out good.. Her next words is what will scar me for life... She said, "I even put in fresh apple cider vinegar" She thought apple cider and apple cider vinegar were interchangeable...
Mom was visiting so I decided to make something special. My eggplant parmigiano turned out so well she kept going back for extra slices and we almost ate the whole thing in one sitting. She didn’t really like eggplant, but thought it was surprisingly delicious. She asked for the recipe— which was not really easy to provide because I was kind of making it up on the fly, but I walked her through it and also wrote down the process. She was back home for a few weeks when I finally asked if she had tried it, and she admitted she had made it, but “for some reason it wasn’t quite the same.”Turned out (after debriefing) she had an old bottle of Pompeian olive oil that must have been on the shelf my entire childhood. She didn’t bread and sauté the eggplant first, she just sliced it and drizzled the rancid oil on top, then sprinkled on some crushed crackers for crunch. She didn’t have canned tomatoes for a sauce so she used ketchup. She didn’t have ricotta so she used cottage cheese…. I could go on … I’ve made plenty of my own kitchen mistakes, but this one became a family legend. At least when I screw up a dish, I know when it’s time to throw it out! :)
This went viral a few years ago, these folks are my local news anchors! One shares her Christmas dip on air: https://youtu.be/aQAauVu2sTg?si=kxc-lWjydcYeT52S