S/O Proud kitchen moments -- Kitchen disasters

[QueenofAllThings]

Well, there's the classic, which I've done once - forgetting to remove the bag of giblets from the chicken. 

[Amara]

It happened to my newlywed mother. She had Dad's mom over and was going to cook a lovely Sunday roast to impress her new MIL. She fixed it, put it in the oven, then suggested they all go for a relaxing Sunday drive. (This is in a new Los Angeles family-oriented suburb, and traffic was unknown at the time.) They came home to a roast the size of a golf ball. My mom cried.

[Specky]

While in college.  My roomie and I set up a crockpot so our dinner would be ready when we got back from class.  She ran back in the house at the last minute, so I didn't get to see what she had done.  As we were on our way home, she told me she had added rice (uncooked) to our dinner.  "Do you think 5 cups will do it?"   

 Rice E-X-P-A-N-D-S and a crockpot lid will ride up on a column of cooked rice.

[Lynnv]

I have so many, but a few of the more memorable ones:

I had leftover turkey so I decided to make a turkey casserole (like tuna casserole, but with turkey instead).  To this day, I can't figure out what went wrong.  But the dog wouldn't even eat it.  And he ate anything.  It was a gluey, pastey, horrible mess.  With turkey and green peas studded into the awfulness.  We had pizza for dinner.

The first time I ever tried to cook lamb chops.  It did not end well.  I forgot to set the timer on the oven after I pan seared them.  And I got caught up in a phone call with my mom.  Which ended when the smoke alarm went off.   

Baking, in general, is not my best thing.  I am a decent cook, but a generally bad baker.  I have tried again and again and again to make pie crust, and seem to finally have it down so that it comes out a good percentage of the time.  But the failures still stick in my mind.  Dry, overworked, overwetted, soggy, horrible messes that ruined perfectly good pie fillings for a long time.  And we won't even talk about my attempts at biscuits-it is a series of painful memories that I am working hard to repress.

And one from my sister:
She used a very thin (cheap) aluminum pan to make poached eggs.  She boiled off the water and melted the pan and burned the eggs.  A smell I assure you I never want to smell again.   

[marcel]

I love cooking and baking, so off course things have gone wrong. However, there is nothing memorable enough to mention here (or I have repressed the memories.)

The last time though is when I had made my favourite cake, and took it to work. When i cut it, I found out the center wasn't cooked at all. I still don't understand how that happend.

I had to call my mom to ask how to hard boiled eggs. (Swear this is true!! I didn't know if you started with cold water, or boiled the water and then put the eggs in)

Did she tell you that it is both possible, mostly a matter of personal preference.

[faithlessone]

When my best friend and I were about 12, we decided to make a coffee cake for her Dad's birthday. He was at work, and her mum (who was looking after us), was upstairs doing something or other. To this day, I have no idea how he actually managed to eat any of it - it was horrific.

For starters, we didn't have a recipe, so we were working off what we could remember from baking with our mothers before. (Which turned out to be not a lot!)

Here's a list of things I can remember about it going wrong:

- We didn't realise you had to dissolve the coffee granules (instant) in water before you added it to the mix, so the cake were seriously grainy and bitter tasting. (We used way too much coffee, as well!)
- We used plain flour, and no baking powder, so the cake didn't rise. At all.
- Because the cake didn't rise, we turned the heat up, and left it in there longer - which just resulted in slightly burnt, almost rock solid, severely over-cooked cake.
- We couldn't find any jam or cream to put in the middle, so we used lime marmalade. Incredibly expensive lime marmalade, which just made the cake taste even worse.
- We did manage to find icing sugar, but we added far too much water to it. So we added loads of coffee granules. These ones did dissolve a little bit, but it did result in quite lumpy, runny icing. Which we slathered all over the cake.

So, we ended up with a practically solid, over-baked, grainy, bitter cake, filled with sour/sweet marmalade, covered in bitter, lumpy, runny, mud-coloured icing.

Her dad choked down a slice, but we got in serious trouble for wasting ingredients, using the expensive marmalade, and using the oven without supervision!

(You'll be pleased to learn that I'm quite good at baking cakes now! )

[CakeEater]

I made a ricotta cheesecake o take to a party, forgot to put the sugar in it, and have never tasted anything so awful. All the while people were valiently trying to choke down their slice, and I was begging them to stop.

My Mum and aunt were making several different types of soup for a winter party once, and my cousin and I drained all the stock from the ham pot down the sink in order to be helpful. I was 16 at the time, so I really didn't know that the stock is kind-of an imprtant part of the soup. I think they boiled it again, and it was fine, luckily!

[SDG31000]

I am generally considered a pretty good cook and am a whizz at baking, but I have had my share of disasters.

I tried making sugar free flapjacks (oat cookies) for my DFIL who loves them but is diabetic.  So I replaced the brown sugar and golden syrup with Splenda and black treacle.  They looked ok, they smelt ok and until you swallowed they tasted ok....and then came the aftertaste.  If evil had a taste then this was it.  My DH is well known for eating anything and everything and even he managed one bite.  Never, ever again.

I once tried making Ina Garten's roasted potato soup recipe.  I ended up with a very large pot containing what looked and tasted like a mix of wallpaper paste and hagfish mucus.  Another recipe that was never tried again.

[o_gal]

*snip*

So here are a few of my favorites...

I once blew up a pyrex pan while baking chicken.  And by "blow up" I mean 10 thousand little pieces that also managed to break the glass window in the oven.

That might not have been your doing. There are many reports of the newer Pyrex baking dishes exploding. Did you report that to the CPSC?

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/january/home-garden/glass-cookware/glass-cookware/index.htm

You can also blow up the old stuff, the stuff that's supposed to be indestructible. I had an old original type Pyrex glass 9x13 baking dish that I always made baklava in at Christmas time. One year, I made the sugar+honey syrup ahead of time so it would be ready - you bake the baklava for an hour at a low temp, then pour the syrup over it, then brown it at higher temp for just a few minutes. But after taking the syrup pan off the burner, I forgot to turn it off. I finished the browning, then set the pan to cool on top of the front and back burners, and the back one was still at the low temp for making the syrup. About 15 minutes later, we heard a massive explosion in the kitchen. I think it took us a couple of hours to clean up and find all of the glass.

[Thipu1]

Oh boy!  We've got a few.  I'll start with the attack of the anetto.

For some reason, I tried to make my own anetto oil.  I had no recipe but a Lady at work told me to just sauté the seeds in oil.  She didn't tell me that the seeds pop with some force.

I hadn't put a lid on the pan.

I was cutting an onion with my back to the stove when SPLAT!  Something orange went zipping onto the cabinet.  Before I realized what was happening, the whole kitchen was spattered.  It was like the Fourth of July!

So, dodging small, hot missiles, I had to get a lid out and use it as a shield while I slapped it on the pan and turned off the heat. 

[gramma dishes]

The last time though is when I had made my favourite cake, and took it to work. When i cut it, I found out the center wasn't cooked at all. I still don't understand how that happend.

When I was in elementary school and in 4H we baked this cake called "Busy Day Cake".   I had baked them before and they were delicious.  When time came for the County Fair where you had to submit a cake for judging, my cake turned out uncooked in the middle.  I tried again.  Same result. 

In desperation my Mom had me go to one of her friend's houses and "supervise" my technique to figure out what I was doing wrong.  Cake turned out perfect.

Went back home to bake one for the Fair and ... uncooked center.  I got a white ribbon (which means basically "Thanks for participating, but you are a total loser.") 

Eventually Mom called the stove guy for a different issue altogether and he determined that the thermostat for the oven was completely non functional.  Fixed it and from then on, perfect cakes every time.

Is it possible that your thermostat was just having a bad day?   

[RebeccainGA]

Oh, the soups that I've mangled! Made one with pork stock, homemade pork stock at that, that was supposed to be spicy and sort of thick - glue. Glue studded with pork slivers and veggies. No amount of cooking would salvage it - I've been told that when you get that gluey texture, add a lot of water and boil it to cook the starch down. Nope. Still glue.

Another lovely recipe for a chicken stew, with Mexican spices and corn, black beans, and tortilla slivers. Yum - until I put the tortillas in, when it turned into, you guessed it, glue. I can't win!

At least that one I was able to salvage by scooping out the top 1/3 and serving it with chips, on the side. It was tasty!

[Thipu1]

There was also the great barley inundation.

We were going to make a beef and barley soup.  I had to work and, since Mr. Thipu had the day off,  he said he'd make it.  We'd made soups together before and this recipe was quite similar. All seemed well.

There was one thing I hadn't counted on and that proved to be the problem. 

The soup we made together was a pea soup.  A batch used the entire pound bag of split peas.  For the barley soup, a third of a cup is usually enough. 

You guessed it.  Mr.Thipu used the entire pound bag of barley.  When I got home from work, the pot was absolutely choked with the stuff.  The lid was starting to pop up.  The dish wasn't soup anymore.  It was a beef and vegetable flavored barley. 

It wasn't bad but we were eating barley as a side dish and for breakfast for almost a week. 

[Shalamar]

Now I know the difference between a garlic clove and a garlic bulb.

I would have eaten that dinner happily, even if everyone could smell me for blocks.  I LOVE garlic.

Not mine, but my daughter's.  To be fair, she was only 14 at the time.  She planned to make mashed potatoes, so she peeled the spuds and got out the masher.  I said "Where's your pot of boiling water?  Haven't you started it yet?"  "Boiling water?  What do I need that for?"  "Um ... to cook the potatoes."  "I have to COOK them, TOO?"

[gramma dishes]

Now I know the difference between a garlic clove and a garlic bulb.

...   I would have eaten that dinner happily, even if everyone could smell me for blocks.  I LOVE garlic.  ...

We did eat it ... and survived!   

But we lived in an eight unit apartment building back then and the hallways reeked of garlic for days!!  Fortunately we had tolerant neighbors there with great senses of humor.