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Lol wow. Its good that you caught it in time tho. I remember when I was maybe 16 or so, we were having a little get together at my house and we wanted pizza..So of course my mom always bought the ones in the box lol. Sooo silly me, and this is before I actually started cooking real meals, I put the entire box in the oven lol. I didn't unwrap it or anything..Minutes go by, and we start smelling something funny from the kitchen, and of course it was the box of the pizza lol. To this day my cousin still says she'll never eat my food because I cooked pizza in the box lol
Oh my gosh, that is crazy! Yikes...flaming potatoes...that does sound dangerous.
I love to cook but I admit that I'm a bit of an improviser. With experience I've gotten much better at eyeballing amounts, but last year I got a little too experimental on a curry recipe. I was thinking it wasn't flavorful enough, so I kept dousing it with spices.
It tasted great at first, but after a few bites, DH and I were both scrambling for glasses of water--I don't know what I did, but our mouths were on fire! It was pretty awful. Plus I'd bought a ton of spices specifically for this recipe...what a waste!
@NDBee: This happened to a friend of mine too!! She has a picture of her DH holding the bag with this hilarious look on his face.
I really like cooking, but it is almost impossible for me to cook without a recipe.
So, I was making chili (something I've made many times before and something that has been good many times before) and I was trying a new recipe.
So, the recipe calls for brown sugar... I only have splenda brown sugar for baking. So... I see on the package it says 2x as sweet as regular brown sugar so I cut the amount in half.
Apparently it is WELL more than 2x as sweet as regular brown sugar. The chili was SO sickeningly sweet. And of course I was cooking for DH and 2 of his best guy friends.
DH ate two bites and gave up as did one of his friends. His other friend was so sweet and ate TWO BOWLS of this awful dessert chili.
It's been 3 years since then and anytime I cook these guys ask if it's going to be dessert chili again. I don't know how many delicious recipes I have to cook before I live that down!
Oh my these are some horror stories!
I cooked a chicken dinner, complete with the chicken head. Yes, inside the chicken was the head which we found AFTER we ate. We called the company and they said everything is mechanized and processed separately, so the only way a chicken head would get inside the chicken was because someone deliberately put it there.
@MaraBeth: OH I have a bad curry story too!
I got an indian cookbook for Christmas one year. The recipe required me to "toast" a bunch of whole spices to get the flavors out.
Well, little did I know that "toasting" these spices gave off the most noxious smoke. My throat was burning, my eyes were watering, my nose was burning. DH came home and started coughing right away.
The poor cat was blinking constantly and his eyes were watering.
The smell did not leave our apartment for a good week!
DH said the food turned out really good. I couldn't even eat it because I was so sickened by all the smoke.
Next time I cook indian, all windows will be open and I will wear a gas mask.
@KatNYC2011: that's a great story! my friend's mom toasts all her cooking spices in the backyard on a portable gas stove and then moves it in to finish the dishes.
Mexican beans are dangerous. The best way to cook them in in a pressured pot. These pots are 100% safe most of the time, you just need to make sure it's properly sealed.
My FI's grandma once failed to seal the pot properly, it exploded sending the lid and beans all over the kitchen. You can still see the dent the lid made on the ceiling.
@vickyness: Yeah... I think I might wait until I have an outdoor cooking space before attempting indian food again.
I love indian food, but you can get amazing Indian here in London so I don't have to cook it. I'll stick to dishes that don't require spice toasting for now.
I have a baking disaster story
years ago I decided to make a layer cake from scratch for Thanksgiving. I was new to baking. I did not let the layers cool enough before I frosted the cake. As I went to put it in the fridge the top layer slid off and hit the floor.
No Thanksgiving Layer Cake
My worst cooking disaster was leaving a pot boiling of chinese beef noodle soup boiling during college and leaving the apt to go to class. My apt mate woke up to smoke and a really realy badly burned stockpot.
Last year I volunteered myself to make my MIL's birthday cake. I'm not a super baker by any means, but I'm handy enough in the kitchen that I can usually get by.
I decided to challenge myself and make an upside down pineapple cake. ...in fact, I made two, the second one for "just in case".
I definetly waited too long to start baking because I was pulling the cakes out of the oven and we were already 10 minutes late. I didn't let them cool and when I flipped the pans over the cake half got stuck, tore and became a mess. Proceeded to do this AGAIN with cake #2.
FI at the time tried to help by stacking the cakes onto of each other. His reasoning was that we could quickly put icing on it and hide it. lol... of course we couldn't find any icing so we had to take the cake as it was which was basically a pile of broken cake with mushy pineapple on top. Got an A+ for taste but an F for presentation...it literally looked like it had been run over. hahaha...happy birthday MIL! ps...her birthday is this coming weekend and I volunteered again. Maybe I'll stick to cake from a box :)
I once fried a turkey on my stove top (I ran out of propane for the turkey fryer on Thanksgiving) and the oil boiled ALL over my stove, counters, floor. It was the worst mess.....
@KatNYC2011: I'm so jealous!!! I want to visit London (totally off topic!) I heard British Indian food is amazing. I live in a tech area with a healthy Indian population so we have some pretty good ethnic restaurants here but I'd love to try out what you guys have across the pond. :)
@Nicoso: That's awesome! I love these stories... I just made German Tree cake this past weekend and it was failproof!
http://globaltableadventure.com/2011/04/28/recipe-german-tree-cake-baumtorte/
I'd probably cut the sugar by a quarter cup to half a cup since the almond paste I got was super sweet already....
@KatNYC2011: Oh good, I'm glad I'm not the only one! Since then, I've managed to successfully make some pretty good Indian dishes, but I've never revisited that particular recipe. Our apartment also smelled like curry for almost a week!
@vickyness: OMG it is so good here. I lived in NYC before and there was a great street full of amazing Indian places but nowhere near as good as here.
I've also spent time in India and the food here comes very close to true, authentic Indian food (which I also love).
I never thought I could be a vegetarian until I spent 3 weeks in India. The closest take-away was vegetarian only and I had delivery from there almost every night. I never got bored and I never missed the meat at all.
@KatNYC2011: Okay... being that total foodie, I'm putting London down on my must go list for this year. DH and I are putting together our travel wishes and I was looking at flying to London (cause I get a discount) and then going to Paris (my destination.) I should schedule in a few days in London instead of doing a layover...
I don't have any cooking disasters of my own, but DH's and my families have had some doozies!
1. FIL was doing a butternut squash side for dinner once, and to save time he decided to make it in the microwave. So he put the squash and some brown sugar and maple syrup in a microwaveable plastic container, and heated the whole thing up.
Well apparently just because something is microwave-proof, it doesn't mean it's hot molten sugar-proof. When he pulled the container out, the bottom fell out and hot brown sugar and maple syrup ran down his legs like Napalm. Ouch.
2. MIL wanted to make lasagna, but the only meat she had in the house was bologna. So she thought, "Well, my husband really likes bologna, maybe I'll try making my lasagna with it."
FIL did his best, but he couldn't eat more than a few bites. He told her he was really sorry, but he just couldn't eat it. MIL burst into tears but said she understood. They put the lasagna on the floor for the dog to eat. The dog went over, sniffed it...and then peed on it. Needless to say, MIL cried harder.
3. My father put some potatoes in the microwave without poking holes in them. KA-BOOM.
And finally, this monstrosity doesn't belong to anyone I know, but DAMN:
I was making a stir fry once, and was heating oil in my brand new wok, and turned around to finish chopping vegetables. Mistake #1! Smelled smoke, turned around and the pan was on fire! I decided the best plan of action would be to get the pan to the sink (Mistake #2) and sloshed flaming oil onto my foot and floor. Set the pan back down, realized water was a bad idea, and finally found a big pot lid to cover it with. Luckily the fire alarm didn't go off (or unluckily? what if it had gotten worse?!?) my foot wasn't that badly burnt, and the floor just had a couple darker oilier spots, but I am no longer allowed to cook with oil. And I had to trash the wok, it was ruined!
I have a potato experience, too. I was cooking dinner for my aunt's family once, and she told me to just throw potatoes right into the oven to bake them.
When I bake potatoes, I usually poke them, wrap them in foil, and then put them in the oven, so because she does them differently, I took her very literally.
Turns out she thought the poking part was a given while I didn't, and all 5 potatoes exploded in the oven. She got home, took a look, turned to me, and said "did you poke the potatoes?" Every time I've made dinner since then, she makes sure to teasingly tell me like a child "Now, make sure to poke the potatoes."
"Poke the potatoes" should be made into a t-shirt. It's pretty catchy.
@vickyness: Yeah... London isn't the biggest "foodie" town but if you find a good indian place and a good gastro pub (we have an organic gastro pub near us that is SO good) you can get really good food here.
And then paris of course has wonderful food. I LOVE foie gras.
OK, threadjack over.
Not so much of a fail, but I just tried to make roasted garlic in the oven (to add to mashed potatoes) and more than half the cloves in one of the heads were completely burnt and black. Guess that's what I get for trying to improvise.
@KatNYC2011: I know it's not funny, but I lol'd at BOTH your stories!!!!
I am a pro at mashed potatoes. In fact, friends ask me to make them for dinner parties. It's a recipe my mom's made for ages and I have acquired the nack for making them as well!
Anyway, I went and made mashed potatoes one night and accidentally undercooked them. I was so sad. Instead of cooking them more, I thought "they'll be fine" added all the ingredients and mashed away. Well.... they were awful. They were a mix of raw potato and gluey potato... DH ate a bunch of them because he's amazing and even told me they weren't that bad. I knew otherwise. I CRIED about it.
@reginaphalange: That's really funny. I never knew the reason behind poking the potatoes, I just knew you were supposed to do it so I always have!
Glad to know now WHY they have to be poked so I can save myself from exploding potatoes.
@.twist.: Oh, both those stories are really funny now. The dessert chili was even hillarious at the time because I KNEW how bad it was. The curry was less funny while we were smelling it for a week.
That is pretty funny about the mashed potatoes. I've undercooked them before too and there really is no saving them aside from cooking more.
@KatNYC2011: at least you could laugh about it. I won't lie, I'm a pretty sore loser when it comes to failed cooking. I think I try to pick recipes that are way beyond my skill level and then once I've failed I feel like I put in so much damn effort that it should have worked. So, sometimes I do laugh, but there are usually tears mixed in there! hahahaha.
the other day I made brownies with olive oil, without thinking. I forgot we had vegetable oil (we almost never use it). they turned out weird, but ok.
the raw batter was super gross, you could really taste the olive oil. yuck. but for some reason, after baking you could hardly tell. go figure.
This thread is on fire (like my potato...lol)! Hehe. Glad to see that I'm not the only one with HILARIOUS cooking fails. Keep 'em coming.
And I don't mind the threadjack, I loved the Indian food in London. Mmmm.
Glad to report that all is well on the home front(yard). ;-) Potato has given up the battle, and I've only lost some grass, a potato bag, and some good brain cells from the fumes.
I don't really have any disasters, but I was making buffalo chicken pizza one night and thought I grabbed the ground red pepper. It happened to be cinnamon and it poured onto the one side of the pizza. I, thankfully, realized and saved most of the pizza. Unfortunately, the one side tasted like cinnamon though I scraped it all off. They shouldn't have spices in the same colored bottles!
This wasn't a total disaster, but instead of putting an onion in the food processor (I HATE chopping onions), I put it in... the coffee grinder. I wondered why the settings made no sense to me. Coarse onions, anyone?
Six years ago I was making this Italian dessert (struffoli), which is essentially fried tiny dough balls covered in honey. Well, the oil got way too hot and splattered on the back of my hand.
Long story short, I ended up in the burn unit with second degree burns and my hand and fingers. I had to wear a protective glove for a month.
I don't have any great ones, but a couple of weeks ago DH was cooking something in the microwave and he put one of those microwave covers on it (its from when he was a bachelor and his roommate wouldn't cover his food so he bought that to encourage him) well it was right on top of a bowl with no space between, when we went to pull the cover off it had sealed itself onto the bowl! You seriously could not separate the two, he had to stab the cover with a knife to make an air hole to separate the two, I thought my poor bowl was a goner!
@spaniel: Could be worse, you could have tried to brew them afterwards! ;)
I have one for my mother... when I was in elementary school she put on a dozen eggs to hard boil on high heat. Got a phone call from my aunt to pick something up at her house. So she leaves the house and gets distracted into a gossip-fest at my aunt's house. 3 hours later, she came back home to the house filled with black smoke, the eggs had exploded and ended up EVERYWHERE. To this day I have no idea how we managed to find egg pieces in the bedrooms on the second floor back then. When she got into the kitchen, a small fire had started in the pot and when she grabbed the pot handle the bottom of the pot had melted onto the stove. Not to mention the built in microwave on top of the stove had its knobs melted down too... If she had come back 5 minutes later I'm sure the house would have gone up in flames.
To this day... she still refuses to hard boil eggs and cooks them in the rice cooker! =P
I have 2!
1. I was baking my mom a birthday cake last year and somewhoe between the time I put it in the oven and the time I walked out of the kitchen, I hit the temperature knob and knocked it up to like 450 or something ridiculous like that. About 10 minutes in I started smelling burnt cake, so I got up and looked and the cake was completely black on the top. Haha. I was quite upset.
2. This one also has to do with a birthday cake! I had made my FI a birthday cake this past year. I baked it, frosted it, decorated it, it was all good. Except we didn't really have anywhere to put it, so we were keeping it in the oven to keep it out of the way. A couple days later I was making spaghetti for dinner and was going to make garlic bread. So I preheat the oven...well guess what's still in the oven! Yep...it took me way too long to realize it, and the cake was completely melted and liquified frosting was all over the bottom of my oven. So I took the cake out and kept heating up the oven. Well, guess what happens when you have a frosting coating on the bottom of your oven? It catches on fire! It was terrifying. And now I ALWAYS check the oven before preheating it, even if I know nothing's in there.
@vickyness: OMG! I would have been absolutely mortified and scared!
@CarolinaCola: yeah... she was pretty terrified. i was really young at the time, around 8? But I remember the smell and look of the smoke. She left me in the car and went running into the house and I remember seeing the smoke come out of the door when she opened it. In the long run, she got a brand new kitchen out of it. And now leaves notes everywhere in her house saying "turn off the stove"
@CarolinaCola: omg! that's really sad!!! :( (about story #2)
@vickyness: Haha. Well at least something good came out of it.
Yeah, about FI's cake, I felt soooo bad and almost didn't want to tell him that I melted it. But he just laughed.
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Holy smokes (not joking, actual smoke!). I was baking a baked potato in one of those handy potato bags. I smelled something from the micro, and I pulled it out to see the corners on FIRE! Thank goodness we'd gotten a few inches of snow. I threw it out in the yard to cool off and stop smoking and made some other lunch.
I kept smelling a stronger and stronger chemical smell (must be whatever is in the fabric of the potato bag), and I look outside to see that the ENTIRE bag burned up, burned the grass under the 1-inches of snow, and the potato was still on fire. WTF?! DIE POTATO!
I'm a little nervous to go to the gym, I think I may have to skip this after seeing the grass on fire. Better stay on potato watch until I know it's COLD. Freaking A!
Any bees have some other horrible cooking stories to brighten my day? LOL.