What has been your worst mistake when cooking?

I don't cook much, so limited events to draw from. One comes to mind.

I put a large number of eggs (in shells) on the stove in a pot to boil. No lid. Planned on making deviled eggs. Completely forgot about them. Long story short, some of them exploded, eggs landed up on the wall behind the stove, among other places.
 
jujube said:
It would be in the early days of microwave ovens, when I tried to cook a plate full of chicken livers. Have you ever tried to clean exploded chicken livers off the entire inside of a microwave oven? I hope not. It's not pretty.
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And burning popcorn in the microwave, might as well just set off a really good smoke bomb. :cower:
 
I could probably set a piece of toast on fire. I mean of course I can do basic cooking. But given a choice my kids and husband do far better in the kitchen than I will ever learn. I do many things well but food prep isn't one of them.
 
NancyNGA said:
I don't cook much, so limited events to draw from. One comes to mind.

I put a large number of eggs (in shells) on the stove in a pot to boil. No lid. Planned on making deviled eggs. Completely forgot about them. Long story short, some of them exploded, eggs landed up on the wall behind the stove, among other places.
Click to expand...
I'm imagining the mess and the clean up!
 
jujube said:
It would be in the early days of microwave ovens, when I tried to cook a plate full of chicken livers. Have you ever tried to clean exploded chicken livers off the entire inside of a microwave oven? I hope not. It's not pretty.
Click to expand...
No, but various things have splattered the microwave down the years. Not least eggs and soup!
 
Years back I made a homemade lasagna which was normally pretty good. But I made a homemade sauce with beef neck bones for flavor and simmered the sauce so long that the bones started to fall apart in tiny pieces. I didn't know it until I served it to my husband and his parents. My husband got a small piece of bone that he had to take out of his mouth, and complimented me on my bone-in lasagna. We all laughed, I felt horrible, but we proceeded with caution. Kinda put a damper on what would have been a nice dinner. :eek:
 
I almost scalded myself when I dropped a pot of boiled macaroni in mid air in the kitchen. Luckily, I made it out of the room before I got burned. I also sometimes burn things with rice in them, don't know why.
 
I married very young do they were many, the first on was cooking a large chicken, I thought I had done fine till it was carved at the table and my husband found a melted plastic bag in innards in it

Another time I wanted to make a baked rice pudding, I has seen my mother do it so thought it was fine, I put a pint of milk, sugar, butter, and nutmeg in a casserole dish and added a bag of rice, of course I should have added half a cup maybe not a 1 pound bag. I set my oven on to turn off at a given time as I was going out and I knew it had to cook slow which it did.

I was gone longer than I expected but wasn't worried about the oven as I knew it would turn off. When I got home the oven was stone cold, the pudding had risen up the milk mixed with the rice and sort of got like paste it ran out of the dish and all over the bottom near the door which , then the oven turned off and it went cold. I could not get the door open, the mixture had set and sealed the door real good.

When I first came to Canada I bought some hotdogs, I sked the best way to cok them and was told to boil them, I did and made hot dogd for all the kids..nobodt told me they had removanle plastic skins onthem I thought they were just casings..

I did get better though
 
The very first cake I baked as a young married woman was a disaster. I used self-rising flour instead of regular flour and then added the baking powder that the recipe called for. The cake rose up in a giant dome and then collapsed like a pyramid scheme. The cake ended up about two inches high around the outside and about a half inch high in the middle. I cried and cried but my sweet husband said it was the best cake he had ever had and ate every bit of it.

It didn't help that the oven I had only had two settings.....off and on. I had to put an oven thermometer in there and if the cake was supposed to bake at 425, I had to keep the door shut until it got to 450 and then open it until it got back down to 400. Rinse and repeat all through the baking. I never DID have a cake that turned out all that well, needless to say.
 
I wanted to make some deep fried tempura calamari rings, like the ones I had at a Japanese tempura bar. So, while shopping at Trader Joe's I found a bag of frozen calamari rings, so I said "yes", I can do this! I looked for, and found some tempura batter- yay! We're good-to-go.

I mixed up the batter, chilled it in the fridge, heated up the deep fryer. The fryer was a SunBeam brand, didn't have a thermostat dial where you could adjust the temp, was just preset(presumably) to just the right temperature for deep frying everything. Wrong. Didn't get hot enough, maybe 335°F or 340°F, not the 360-370°F needed to do the job.

Calamari rings were limp, kind of a cadaver pale color...everything went in the trash- I went to Jack n the Box down the street.

The Sunbeam deepfryer went to the Goodwill.
 
Once was making potato salad for a picnic, pared and boiled around ten lbs or so, and when I went to drain them, hubby took a bottle of dish detergent and squirted soap in the pot of potatoes. Couldn't believe he did that but he was low and didn't know what he was doing.(diabetes) Had to start over! Learned to hide the dish soap after that, haha.

I have had my share of cooking disasters--made a meatloaf and still don't know what I did wrong, but it exploded in the oven! Ever grab the wrong spice? I was making stuffed peppers and thought I had cumin but it was Cayenne pepper! Well, I scooped out as much as I could once I realized it but they were still a bit tangy!
 

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