Share your cooking failures

[HalcyonDaze]

Inspired by the fact that today, finally, my couscous challenged self was able to make some good couscous (with the help of an Ainsley Harriott packet mix) share the dismal failures that have come out of your kitchen and gone straight to the bin.

[poppy]

one of my best ever failures - how I did it who knows - made a pastryless quiche and forgot to add the eggs. Didn't realise until I pulled it out of the oven and it wasn't quite right.

The lesson in that disaster, check the recipe over and over again.

[HalcyonDaze]

Eggless quiche! The mind boggles.

[wapsyisuppose]

I spent HOURS making stock and had a few drinks with friends whilst it was boiling away. I tipped out the broth into the strainer, keeping the bones and boiled to death veges, watching happily whilst all the goodness seeped into the sink.

I didnt notice what I was doing until it had all gone.

[Deleted]

Hahah, wapsy, it happened to me too, and I wasn´t even tipsy!

My biggest failure ever was my attempt to make Beef Viennese while playing on the late Tree. You can even see the result on the pblog.

[Deleted]

Jan 12, 2013 6:45:12 GMT -5 rezberry said:

Hahah, wapsy, it happened to me too, and I wasn´t even tipsy!

My biggest failure ever was an attempt to make Beef Viennese while playing on the late Tree. You can even see the result on the pblog.

[paddox]

The only thing I've never been able to make well is soup which annoys me somewhat. Fortunately the supermarkets do some good ones.

[Queen]

i recently shelled some peas - and then threw the peas in the bin.

I've also come a hair's whisper from serving cheesecake made with salt instead of castor sugar.

[Deleted]

I don't make cooking failures!!!!

Kidding- when I was a poor uni student I decided to cook my ex husband a special meal - I spent a small fortune on prawns. He ate the whole thing and raved about it... When I went to clean up I realized instead of cornflower in the sauce I had used custard powder ... After he admitted it tasted truly awful but hadnt wanted to upset me.

Then there was the time I dropped a whole tray of cakes on the floor

And the first time I made macarons- they looked like dog turds

[Tulipana]

I used to buy spinach at the supermarket where they always wash it before they sell it. Then one day I bought spinach at the farmers market and without thinking I chucked it in the pan with the veggies and meat for a stirfry only to find out that the spinach wasn't washed! There werenn't little bits of sand in there, but whole clumps of mud!! We ordered pizza...

[Webs]

There are too many to be mentioned, but my first try at crock pot cooking was dismal

[viv]

I had the piss taken out of me for months after a wonderful Sunday roast. The meal was really great.... with the exception of the yorkshire puddings which were hard enough to bounce off walls. They were a total disaster.

[bundes]

Jan 12, 2013 6:22:54 GMT -5 @wapsyisuppose said:

I spent HOURS making stock and had a few drinks with friends whilst it was boiling away. I tipped out the broth into the strainer, keeping the bones and boiled to death veges, watching happily whilst all the goodness seeped into the sink.

I didnt notice what I was doing until it had all gone.

I've come close to doing that several times. Now whenever I'm about to start straining I have to stop and think of what I'm doing and think ok, I WANT the liquid.

My last one was maybe two months ago, I had a roll of what I thought was parchment paper and lined the baking sheet with it and put my chicken on it. Within a few minutes it started smoking filling up my apartment and the fire alarm had gone off. I then remembered it was wax paper.

[MsBelleRae]

haha, you all are aaalmost making me feel better about my cooking. BUT, just a month or two ago, I made pasta sauce with cumin and tofu. In my defense, I was out of basil and didn't have any sausage.

[Liiisa]

I cooked a raspberry tart with creme anglaise in a leaky tart shell that leaked all over the inside of the oven and caught fire

I baked lemon squares using rancid flour and luckily discovered it before I brought them in to the office (this was on pblog)

I was melting cheese on nachos in the toaster oven and it caught fire... I kept looking to see what smelled like smoke, looked at everything else in the kichen except for the toaster oven - only finally noticed when it looked like Kilauea

Not me, but amusing: my housemate blew up the pressure cooker and sent a potful of beans rocketing onto the kitchen ceiling

belle, surely your cumin/tofu sauce was better than the sauce I made with yogurt and chickpeas, which curdled and looked like a vat of puke

[owlet]

I live in denial and promptly forget any of my cooking disasters. Helps keep up the illusion of being competent in the kitcen.

[mei]

carrot cake. had always wanted to try it so when I found a recipe in my fabulous new cook book I tried it. so bad. still not really sure what made it so bad, but will have to try again sometime.....

my dad's a chef but not really good at making desserts (I guess my lack of baking skills is genetic) and for our christmas dinner last month he attempted to make a pavlova for dessert. Hmmmm. didn't turn out so well, outside was still mushy etc. still tasted good enough though...
anyway, next day when my dad was at work my mum and I decided to try again. it doesn't seem so difficult after all..... it looked PERFECT. so we're making fun of my dad that the amateurs can do this better. Until we cut it at night for dessert and it turned out to be completely burnt inside. gah.

so, if anyone can tell me what a foolproof way is to make a pavlova.... am all ears!

[HalcyonDaze]

Pav is one of those tricky things - the weather and humidity of the day you make it can change how it comes out, plus the age of the egg whites and then you have to work out the vagaries of your own oven ( I actually haven't tried a pav in my oven here, and we've lived here for about 5 years!)

My mum used to have a pavlova plate that had the recipe in the middle of it, and hers usually worked out really good - it was always her thing to bring to family picnics and celebrations. Then we moved and they never worked as well out of the new oven!

[littlevixen]

I made salt and pepper squid. the receipe was for 4 so I halved everything....except the salt part. It was foul....truely foul. Since then if we have a craving for it we order from the local chinese place

[Traveldude]

The first time I made risotto. Ugh, I cringe when I think about it.

[kneazle]

Jan 12, 2013 7:29:06 GMT -5 @witchypoo said:

And the first time I made macarons- they looked like dog turds

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

Also there was my pre christmas meringue failure

There was the mysterious failure of a lamb dish I did in the crock pot - I have no idea where I went wrong but it was inedible.

Not mine but Poppy's eggless quiche reminded me of my friend's chocolate mousse - she found the cream in the fridge a few days later and we suddenly understood why the mousse was so rich - it was basically chocolate and egg whites!

[sprite]

it came out ok in the end, but we were several hours late for dinner one evening because i'd switched the grill/broil on a very low heat, rather than the entire oven.

currently, i'm trying to adapt to the foods here and struggling a little. stuff is coming to the table edible but not great. nowhere near as good as what i make at home, even though it's just basically stir fry and rice.

the first--and only--time i made meringues, they came out like flat cookies. there was no picture and i was puzzled because the recipe said you could put fruit in the middle like a next. my grandmother very kindly ate them, and then a month later provided real meringues for dessert. lightbulb.

[wombatrois]

I haven't had too many disasters - the ones that stand out are recipe errors (my first attempt at gnocchi did not end well, given the measurement for the liquid was ridiculously wrong).

My all time stand out was when I was cooking in my bf's family cafe - it was off-season, so thankfully only cooking for the family. The dry ingredients were kept in large plastic bins with lids that weren't attached. I think you can already sense what went wrong. Someone swapped the sugar and salt lids and I made a beautiful rice pudding for dessert with salt instead of sugar.

One of my bf's brothers was very kind when he said "it's a bit salty". I took one mouthful and spat it out.

The story doesn't end there. Someone thought it would be a great idea to feed it to our dog, rather than just throw it out. Poor Prince, he ate every scrap of pudding then spent the rest of the day drinking water .... and ALL night going in and out of the house for a wee.

[brodiebruce]

I remember trying to be clever and making moussaka only to find out the oven had shit itself and only the grill would work. It wasn't great.

The ex once made pasta, tofu, pesto, soy sauce and covered in cheese. It's one of the few meals which I couldn't actually eat as the combination was so awful. I'm still undecided as to whether it was a stroke of genius as she never had to cook again or proof that she couldn't cook.

That meal may have been mentioned to the Finn (I have no idea what to describe her as....that could be a whole new OP) who actually can cook and her response a while later on BBM was "if you make me that I'll kill you". Fair enough really.

[sprite]

i like all the things in her dish, brodie, but blech. sounds horrid.

[wombatrois]

Perhaps she was trying to kill you :-D

I can't imagine anyone who can cook who would think that combo would work.

[brodiebruce]

It was pretty awful. So much so that it still gets mentioned several years later......

[riverhorse]

Years and years ago when I first moved to Germany, my future in-laws came over for afternoon tea. I'd decided to make something typically Anglo for them, so I thought, scones, perfect! As you can't get self-raising flour in Germany, I made them with what I thought was the right amount of baking powder but they ended up stone hard little disks that hadn't risen at all. My lovely in-laws still spread them with the proffered jam and cream and were extremely polite, although I did try to tell them that they weren't meant to be like that! To make matters worse, my stepfather-in-law was a professional pastry chef...

[fishface]

I have too many.disasters. Hell, I set fire to my parents kitchen twice. Small fires though.

But two disasters- I made apple muffins for the dogs and they barked at them. I've also never been successful at roasting a chicken. Boobs are ok, just not the whole chicken.

[HalcyonDaze]

Twice?? I think we need more details! Sure you weren't trying to meet a hot fireman?