Share your cooking disasters

This idea was inspired by my mother. No, she doesn't have a plethora of cooking disasters. She wants to make one of those cookbook collections of recipes from each family member. I thought "Well, that's nice, only I know I won't use most of them." As the discussion continued it dissolved into cooking stories. Now that, I thought, would be a valuable collection to hand down the generations!

Unfortunately we haven't turned up lots of stories just yet. So I am turning to my Team Estrogen friends, whom I suspect will have more stories than I know what to do with. (I don't plan to do anything with these stories, I just think they'll be entertaining.)

To start off, I'll share my favorite story so far. This isn't mine but my cousin's. Her mom, who is an excellent cook, had had an unusual spell of bad luck with several batches of brownies. The final incident involved flames in the oven. They visited our uncle in Florida, who turned to the kids after hearing this story and said seriously, "Kids, your mom was confused in the 60's. She burnt the brownies and put marijuana in her bra."

I will also note that our supper tonight suffered slightly as a direct result of me writing this post instead of paying attention to what was happening on the stove!

Should it involve a fire extinguisher?

how about pea soup and a busted blender lid:eek:

or, the time my food processor bowl exploded while doing carrots?

:p:D

How about my dad's thanksgiving pie? When I first got an apartment, I decided I wanted to cook Thanksgiving. My dad was the only one who would come, and he wanted to bring a pie. I had a premonition and bought a back up pie:)

He decided he wanted to bring a sugar free pie, and put 2/3 cup of sweet-n-low in the pie instead of the equivalent of 2/3 cup of sugar. ICK! Was glad to have the back up pie:)

When I was little and learning to bake, I put baking soda instead of baking powder in a cake. Double ick.

I once caught the oven on fire making a peach cobbler.

Overall I'm a very good cook, so there aren't many disasters. And the few times I do ruin something I get so mad at myself that children and small animals flee in horror. ha ha ha

Let's just say that if you are using oats that have been around for awhile, it is best to check for little buggies before adding the oatmeal one cup at a time to the mixture as you sample the dough. I was making a HUGE batch of monster cookies - called for 18 cups of oats -and when I got to the bottom of the cannister - there was only about 2 cups of oats left in the bottom, I noticeD LOTS of bugs. LOTS. AND I HAD BEEN SAMPLING THE DOUGH AS I MIXED THE OATS IN. Now that I ride my bike so often, I look forward to swallowing the occasional bug - hack, hack!

Also, when the turkey instructions say "do not stuff the turkey the night before you put it in the oven", well, you should probably take their advice.

It is also best to remove the plastic wrap off of meat BEFORE you put it in the slow cooker.

And, you can't put a pyrex 13x9 baking dish directly on a burner without having it shatter into a bazillion pieces.

I.AM.A.GOOD.COOK.REALLY! :o:o:o

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Originally Posted by Flybye

And, you can't put a pyrex 13x9 baking dish directly on a burner without having it shatter into a bazillion pieces.

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Been there; done that. :eek:

Ditto the really-a-good-cook sentiment. :D

About a month after I moved to England I decided to make a turkey dinner to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with my housemates. Being a fairly typical student house we mostly cooked quick, one dish meals so no one had used the oven before. I checked on the turkey about an hour after putting it in, and discovered that it was merely enjoying a nice sauna. The oven got slightly warm, but I could still put my hand on the metal racks without being burnt. Fortunately one of my housemates had friends who lived down the street so we took the turkey there to cook.

Oh I have all sorts of minor disasters and many of them don't even involve the first aid kit! But my all-time favorite remains one of my mom's when I was 12 or 13.

She was in the middle of baking bread when we were called away on a minor emergency. She figured that the best thing to do would be to refrigerate the dough (to retard the yeast) and to put it in a tightly sealed container (so it wouldn't dry out). The best container she could come up with was the pressure cooker.

Can you see where this is going?

Three hours later when we returned home, the dough had risen enough to create pressure within the cooker and seal the gasket.

She had to pull four loaves' worth of bread dough out of the cooker through the 1/4" vent hole. I don't even remember how long it took!

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Originally Posted by kat_h

About a month after I moved to England I decided to make a turkey dinner to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with my housemates. Being a fairly typical student house we mostly cooked quick, one dish meals so no one had used the oven before. I checked on the turkey about an hour after putting it in, and discovered that it was merely enjoying a nice sauna. The oven got slightly warm, but I could still put my hand on the metal racks without being burnt. Fortunately one of my housemates had friends who lived down the street so we took the turkey there to cook.

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Similar story. I decided to host Thanksgiving at my apartment years ago and invited friends/coworkers who, for whatever reason, wouldn't be with family. Never mistaken for a cook/chef, I thought turkey cooked like chicken (instructions? what instructions?) After an hour it had barely taken on earth tone colors. :( To make matters worse, I had a Barbie-sized oven and a terradactyl sized bird. The heating elements in the oven (electric) were singeing a design into the bird's breast meat and, in the process, setting off the smoke alarm. Even with both racks out of the oven and the roasting pan placed oh-so-carefully on the bottom the heady scent of burning flesh wafted through the small apartment and eventually through the building. I think we finally were able to eat it around 10 p.m. It is still referred to as "The Torching of Birdzilla." :eek:

the disasters usually happen when my boyfriend tries to cook the things I cook...

Two I remember vividly --

One, I was working on a chili that had to simmer for something like 4 hours. We have a really dry climate, so I have to check it periodically to make sure there's enough moisture. While it was simmering, DH and I agreed to do a WoW (world of warcraft) instance. It shouldn't have taken all that long, but the people we were playing with were really awful. Long story short, I got distracted by the game, it took way longer than it should have, and when I finally got a chance to check on the chili, the bottom half was burnt into the bottom of the pan. A wonderful, delicious-smelling chili ruined in the 7th hour (it took me a while to get all the ingredients together, chopped, etc) of cooking. Much cursing and gnashing of teeth ensued.

Two, a simple crockpot meal. I'd found a recipe online for orange chicken. I put the ingredients in the crockpot and went to the work for the day. I didn't know at the time that this particular crockpot's lid doesn't form a good seal. That, combined with the dry climate and the thawed chicken (recipe didn't specify thawed or frozen) ... well, I got home, and DH met me in the garage. "Come on, let's go out to eat." I protested. I wanted to try the chicken. He didn't want to let me in the house. Finally, I insisted, and walked in. The whole house smelled like severely charred chicken. The chicken breasts were lumps of charcoal, although cutting into them, we found a few tiny strips of dried up meat that at least our cat was willing to eat.

My partner gets paranoid that I will accidentally burn some of the lovely made-in-France stainless steel pots. So I don't use some of them since some of these pots aren't cheap.

I'm not kiddin'.

Probably my problem is not babysitting the cooking process occasionally.

BTW if any of you visit, I promise...it is a good meal that I do prepare. :D

I don't really have my own story, since I tend to know my limits when it comes to cooking and baking, although I'm a pretty good baker if I do say so myself ;)

When I was a kid, my mom was making Thanksgiving dinner, and she kept commenting on what a "funny looking bird that is", well she put it in the oven to cook and hours ticked by and the same comment kept coming from the kitchen - well dinner time it was and my father went to carve the turkey, yup funny looking bird it was since it was upside down the whole time! LOL...poor mom, but it does make for a funny story. :)

Worst thing ever. Still a joke at the house. Know the dog toys called "Chew man?" They're that pale off white color. We call it "Chew Man Soup"

Exploding Pyrex is always dramatic.

Pureed squash popping the not quite seated lid off of the blender can make a pretty orangy stain on on the ceiling.

Oatmeal Flambe, created by boiling over and then catching fire from the gas flame can create an unusual and enduring pattern on the side of a 'stainless' steel pan.

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Originally Posted by milkbone

I don't really have my own story, since I tend to know my limits when it comes to cooking and baking, although I'm a pretty good baker if I do say so myself ;)

When I was a kid, my mom was making Thanksgiving dinner, and she kept commenting on what a "funny looking bird that is", well she put it in the oven to cook and hours ticked by and the same comment kept coming from the kitchen - well dinner time it was and my father went to carve the turkey, yup funny looking bird it was since it was upside down the whole time! LOL...poor mom, but it does make for a funny story. :)

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What makes this really funny is that upside down is an excellent way to cook turkey. I've been doing mine that way for about 20+years now. It guarantees that the breast won't dry out. I do have a funny, not disastrous story about it.
I was doing the usual, cooking the bird upside down, and my hubby's visiting aunt was having a veritable coniption about it. She has a PhD in home ec and just went ballistic about how I was going to ruin the bird. Right, and I mean RIGHT in the middle of her tirade I got a phone call from the previous years' Thanksgiving guests wanting to know how I made my delicious bird. I told him what was going on and he said, I bet you wish you had a speaker phone right now.

I was making this really yummy tropicl corn bread once. While I was making it I was talking to my sister on the phone. That night I had invited our newly seperated from he's wife neighbor over for dinner. We sat down and started eating. I took a bite of the corn bread and noticed a crunchy texture. I sat there trying to figure out what the crunch was. Then I figured it out. I must have cracked the eggs and then threw the shells in with the eggs! I went to look for the shells and couldn't find them in the trash.
I didn't want to say anything to my neighbor since he seemed to be enjoying he's meal so much. And he commented on yummy the corn bread was and how it had an unusal texture he really liked.
The moral of this story is don't talk on the phone when you are cooking.

We had an unexpected turkey flambe one Thanksgiving. The lower burner of the oven wasn't working, and daughter-in-law decided to try cooking the turkey by broiling it. Turkeys catch fire, who knew.

Once my sister somehow managed to take a pot only partway off the burner, part way on the counter, and left the burner on. The counter was on fire, and left this HUGE burned semi-circle.

I tend to use recipes only as rough guidelines, and to change a recipe slightly each time I make it. My husband does not appreciate the creative cooking process. Spoil sport.

I've only had a few real disasters, though.

Burnt cheese soup. It took three months of soaking and scrubbing to get the black off the bottom of the pot.

Baking-soda and salt cookie cake. I mixed up two batches of choc. chip cookie dough and made two large cookies for my birthday, in high school. In one, I added too much baking soda or something, and my grandma tried to "fix" it by adding loads of salt. It was famously disgusting.

Canned air on the edible car. Last month we (Society of Physics Students) hosted an edible car race. I worked for two days to develop my masterpiece of biscotti body, spaghetti bundle axles, and caramel wheels. Race day was HOT and I worried that it would melt before our run, so I used canned air (like for your computer) to chill the wheels right before. It helped, but when time came to eat it tasted horrible! All sugary goodness tasted horrible! I forgot that canned air has added bitterants, to discourage huffing. I was nauseas for several hours.

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Originally Posted by malkin

Exploding Pyrex is always dramatic.

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I knew a munitions guy when I was in the AF. He was cooking something in a pyrex dish and as moved it from oven to counter, he saw that a plastic spoon was about to fall onto the floor. He dropped the hot glass dish and went for (and missed) the spoon. It was quite an impressive shatter, and I never quite felt safe on base ever again, knowing this klutz was working with live munitions:eek:.

In my wayward youth I worked at Mesa Cafe' in Oakland. We were doing a Chinese 5 spice Duck Confit (sp) as one of the daily specials. Alison Negrin (chef) handed me her recipe and spices, off I went to grind the spices and prepare the duck fat. The spice mixture included kosher salt. I forget if that was one of the 5 :rolleyes: or it's really 6 ....

Then I started working on the duck breasts, bone and skin them. We were doing something else with the rest of the duck and of course rendering the duck fat.

Another cook had the task of seasoning the duck with the spice mixture, then putting the seasoned duck breast into the duck fat that's also seasoned with Chinese 5 spice. With the more or less traditional duck confit we often did he'd always added salt. Why should this one be different?

For one thing 'cause the chefs 5-spice mixture was already "kosher salted to perfection" :D I'd also told him all the spices including salt are in there.

Did he try it first? Noooooo. And we ended up with a professional size vat of salty brined inedible virtually pickled duck :(

i dont cook much - i eat very simply - veggies/fruits/chicken.

so my pantry is usually paltry.

my 20-something nephew lived with me for a while, he was a great cook. he did lemon meringue pie from scratch!! he decided to make these great cinnamon rolls to take on a trip with his buds. he used the crisco i had in the cupboard. unfortunately he didnt realize it had been in the cupboard for YEARS. he said they were the NASTIEST things he'd ever tasted.

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Originally Posted by OakLeaf;

She had to pull four loaves' worth of bread dough out of the cooker through the 1/4" vent hole.

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Ok, this thread is killing me, but this quote got me chortling LOUDLY at my desk.

Best I can come up with are the mundane exploding oatmeal all over the microwave/ added too much fresh chili/ served undercooked fish to guests kind of thing, nothing really tale-worthy.

But re turkey: my mother does have a long history of struggling with Christmas turkey. Being American-born and all, she really tried to keep up with serving turkey every Christmas Day when I was a child, even though in Norway we celebrate Christmas Eve. For many years we lived in a fairly remote place with no running water and mostly woodstove heating (read: chilly), and simple cooking to match. So every Christmas morning my mother would be going hysterical checking on the turkey (which was gigantic even though there were max 4 of us to eat it, cos she always waited til the last minute and got whatever they had left) defrosting in a bucket of water in front of the woodstove. Then she'd find out it didn't fit into our tiny, early 50's style oven, and then she'd have to start dismembering it. :rolleyes:

We always got turkey, but it took a while.

My mom used to have one cooking disaster episode per year. Only one. (She's a really good cook!) One lemon cookie "disaster" even turned out better than the original recipe, but then could never be reproduced. I think her greatest disaster ever was the year she put a rolled-up-and-tied beef roast on the automatic rotisserie spit in the oven, then left for some last minute shopping. We were having friends over who did not eat rare meat. Had to be well done. Our family, on the other hand, liked our roast beef red. So mom had put a thermometer in the roast to get it done just so, with the ends cooked through and the center medium rare. While mom was off shopping, we kids started hearing a tick tick tick sound from the oven. The ties on the roast had loosened and the thermometer was banging against the grill element as the spit turned. Before we could figure out what to do, the thermometer broke. It was a glass thermometer, mercury filled. We called and called all the stores where we thought mom was headed, and when we found one where she hadn't been yet we left a message. Mom got the message and called us back. Throw out the roast, she said, and get some ground chuck out of the freezer. We'll make hamburger patties instead. She got home, marinated the meat, had the patties on the grill ... but no guests. The meat was done. Still no guests. Now these were not folks to miss, or even arrive late for one of mom's meals (they actually had a knack for turning up just before dinner time on, say, Thanksgiving). So finally mom checked the calender. She was a day early. :rolleyes: The rest of us had a great hamburger meal, and the next day she served chicken.

Now my disasters, on the other hand, are numerous and repressed from my memory. Just the usual stuff -- burnt stews, runny pies, forgotten ingredients in this or that. Nothing memorable. Nothing to see here folks. Move along. Move along.

I seem to have the most problems making popcorn. We pop it in oil (I should probably switch to microwave . . .)

One night I was making popcorn and I was wearing an oversized sweatshirt. I grabbed the pot and shook it over the stovetop to evenly distribute the kernels. Next thing I knew, the sleeve of my sweatshirt had caught on fire! Fortunately, I kept my head and stopped-dropped-and rolled (yes, I really did that) and managed to put it out safely :) The sweatshirt did not make it. However, the popcorn was great!

Two weeks ago I was making a huge batch for DH and I. He was outside working at the time. I went out to ask him a question, we got to talking, I forgot about the popcorn. When I came back in I was knocked over by the scent of burnt popcorn, it was a mess. Don't leave popcorn unattended and definitely not for 30 minutes.

I had a tea kettle that even had a whistle...
Put the kettle on my electric stove to boil some water for tea, then went to the bedroom to do something, got side-tracked and didn't hear the whistle. I eventually realized I had totally forgotten the tea kettle. Ran to the kitchen where the kettle was becoming one with the stove, long boiled dry and beginning to melt. So I grabbed a wooden cooking spoon, slid under the kettle handle and made a mad dash for the nearest door. I was married at the time, to a fireman, and lived in Phoenix with desert landscaping out front (non-flamable). I chucked the semi-melted kettle to ground out the front door and hosed it down. Fortunately for me my husband was on-duty at the time, and I didn't have a kitchen fire. It is not good to have careless fires at a firefighter's house. Went out and bought myself a new kettle, and made sure it looked a lot like the melted one did in it's pre-melted state. Husband never noticed the difference.

I now make it a point to stay in the kitchen when I put a kettle on the stove. And a watched pot does actually boil, it just takes a long time. ;)

I use cast iron skillets, and I dry them the old fashioned way--turn the burner on under them. So one sunny day I cleaned up the eggs in the skillet and turned the burner on under it. Started wiping the counter, and then dear son called me outside to play whiffle ball.

We played whiffle ball for about 30 minutes. I kept hearing this faint whistle in the background over the noise of the windchimes outside. When I finally got tired of whiffle ball, I approached the door only to realize the SMOKE ALARM was singing at full tilt, and had been for about 25 minutes!

I, of course, had left the skillet on the burner and never turned it off. The skillet was almost red-hot. There was no smoke at all (my smoke alarm is a kitchen-version and very sensitive). Whew, that was scary.

Karen

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Nothing to see here folks. Move along. Move along.

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:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

Thanks!

Well, there was the time I made a double batch of cranberry muffins and forgot to double the sugar, and to make it worse I was going home for the weekend so brought some of the muffins for my family to try (not realizing my foul-up; I guess I hadn't had one yet)--my sisters gave me all sorts of grief for that one!! That's my biggest cooking fiasco. There was also the time I was making the cranberry salad for Thanksgiving and mixed the jello in cold instead of hot water so it didn't jell too well, but it still tasted fine. One year my mom forgot the sugar in the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, and didn't figure it out until we all took a bite and it was bad!! She couldn't believe she did that--oops!

You have fulfilled my expectations, gals. These are some funny stories.
In keeping with my aunt's brownies disasters, I myself am a bit notorious for chocolate mistakes.

There was the time we wanted a christmas cake, and discovered on Christmas Day that we didn't have enough flour. I assure you, corn meal is not an acceptable substitute. Only our daughter (4 yrs that year) ate the resulting chocolate corn bread.

I'd heard a spoonful of cocoal powder added to chili makes a great chili recipe. Perhaps a smaller spoonful...my ex-brother-in-law still remembers my chocolate chili.

I tried making a cake for the hubby years ago. I mixed the batter and poured it in to the pan. Yes, single pan. I didn't realized it needed to go in two (duh, it's a layer cake). So after the time was up I open the over and it's still not done. Then when I go to check it again it looks like a volcano...it rose in the center, cracked, and then the uncooked batter oozed out like lava. So, I left it in for a while longer, frosted it and voila! a really dense birthday cake. Hubby was nice enough to eat a whole slice. I have yet to redeem myself :eek:

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Originally Posted by Drtgirl

I tried making a cake for the hubby years ago. I mixed the batter and poured it in to the pan. Yes, single pan. I didn't realized it needed to go in two (duh, it's a layer cake). So after the time was up I open the over and it's still not done. Then when I go to check it again it looks like a volcano...it rose in the center, cracked, and then the uncooked batter oozed out like lava. So, I left it in for a while longer, frosted it and voila! a really dense birthday cake. Hubby was nice enough to eat a whole slice. I have yet to redeem myself :eek:

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That reminds me of last year's birthday cake for my daughter. The two layers looked more like domes. I should have cut off a bit on the bottom layer so the top layer would sit evenly. But I didn't. I got it all put together and frosted, and came back later to see the top layer perched on the dome of the bottom layer had broken into pieces.

I washed a ~5" plastic triceratops and stuck it in the middle, with squiggly candles all around. It looked like the dinosaur was erupting out of the cake. It also looked like I'd meant to do it that way. Of course, everyone knows me better than that!

1. Hard corn taco shells are flammable. Very flammable. One lost toaster oven and one drained fire extinguisher later....

2. Brownie mix is very difficult to get off of a ceiling.

3. It is possible to burn couscous.

4. The lever on the stove starts the cleaning process. Best not to engage that when cooking cupcakes.

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Originally Posted by berkeley

1. Hard corn taco shells are flammable. Very flammable. One lost toaster oven and one drained fire extinguisher later....

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LOL...my roommate has a similar story!! We still have a cookie sheet with burnt-taco-shell imprints on it.

I write a cooking and lifestyle column for our local newspaper. A couple of years ago at Christmas I decided to make a little gingerbread house for the boys. I had made one years ago. We went and picked out all of the candy they wanted to use. I baked the simple little house and began to assemble. The roof caved in and then the walls followed suit. My DH told the boys that as we live in Arkansas, it had been hit by a tornado. (funny man). The boys promptly went to school and told EVERYONE about it. Needless to say, this year I chickened out and bought the kit. They were just as happy!

We just had a cooking disaster!!!
I call it "Boiling oil and exploding glass"
The title sounds more exciting than the adventure was. No ambulence, no injuries, nothing ruined but 3 cups of oil and an old grease jar.

I should have known better because I saw hot grease break a jar when I was a kid. After that my parents always put a metal spoon against the jar when they poured the grease into it...now that I think about it I'm not sure what that was supposed to accomplish.

My husband was trying out a recipe from Cook's Illustrated--Orange Chicken. We don't have a deep fryer. We don't have a candy thermometer. We have an instant read meat thermometer. And a sauce pan. And a stove. He turned the burner on high and stood over the pan, putting the thermometer in periodically waiting for it to go up. Naturally it skyrocketed and he turned the stove down and waited for it to go down. And waited. And waited. The oil by this time was brown and smelled funny. I said "It's burnt. You need to start over."

He got out a jar. I said "Put it in the sink." Holding the pan as far away from me as I could, I started to pour the oil into the jar.

KABLAM

I stopped pouring the oil quick and backed away. Then I put the pan into the other sink and surveyed the mess. There was oil everywhere. There was broken glass but only in the sink. No one even got burnt.

Eventually the smoke cleared from the room. The sink and the oil and the glass cooled enough that we could pick the glass out of it. The wood cabinets looked better than ever after I wiped the oil off them. Apparently burnt peanut oil is good for wood cabinets. I highly recommend it. The floor hadn't been mopped in an embarrassingly long time so it was all the better for getting cleaned up too.

The Orange Chicken tasted awfully good. I suggested however that we not attempt that recipe again. At least not until we acquire a deep fryer, which I really don't want because we don't need to be eating deep fried food that often and we don't have room for yet another kitchen appliance.

My Sister-In-law, in spite of 15 years of marriage and 4 kids, only knew how to make hamburgers and pot roast, and she called to ask how to make a turkey dinner. I talked while she took notes...I thought. Thanksgiving day we went to her house for dinner. She was rightfully very proud of the beautiful brown bird in the oven. She had decided to cook the dressing in a crock pot so she dished that up while I cut up the turkey and made the gravy. As I lifted it out of the pan, two used bandaids (like they had been wrapped around somebody's fingers )fell out of the cavity. I asked, "Did you lose a couple bandaids when you washed the turkey?"
"Washed it?" she said...


I make what I call zuchinni pie, it has vegetables, cream, cheese, spices, and eggs. My sister in law, who doesn't cook, asked for the recipe, then got back to me and asked how I kept the filling from oozing out of the pan. (She even bought one of those special pans, what do they call them?) I thought, "Gee, maybe you rolled the crust too thin?"
"Crust?" she said...

Now one on me:
Before Memorial day one year I bought one of those giant bags of potato chips that are in the stores on special weekends. It was sitting on the counter too close to the stove and the very end of it caught fire. I grabbed it by the OTHER end and started through the kitchen and family room toward the back door, thinking I could get it outside before it got too bad. The faster I walked, the faster the bag burned, away from the chips, leaving them hanging in the air briefly before the fell to the floor leaving a trail of chips that I was running through on my way to the door. Because I was part way there and couldn't turn back, right? 10 or 15 steps that seemed to last half an hour. By the time I got to the back door and threw the remainder out, there wasn't much left to toss, and I'd walked through and crushed most of them on the way, and we didn't have chips with our Memorial Day picnic.

PS Potato Chips are mostly fat and some of them burned, too, so my boys were following me putting them out. And boy did Mr. Safety Nut chew on me when he got home from work and heard about it.