Cooking Flops

[kyuuei]

As much as I experiment in the kitchen, you can bet one out of every 5 or so new things fails miserably. I've blown things up in the oven, set things on fire, and just tonight we cooked this AWESOME riblet and shrimp grilled with vermicelli and ginger sauce salad... Except I tried a new marinade that was clearly too spicy for my entire family. Nothing on the label indicated it was spicy, but now we're all dying and acting like we were pepper sprayed

So what'd you screw up on? Don't be shy!

 

[ReadingRainbows]

-Tried to make custard a few weeks ago without the water bath. It FAILED.
I threw it out.

- Tried to make brownies but added too much oil, so it was like brownie slime.
I was convinced to throw that away.

- Tried to make an egg souffle on my first try, the top of it turned black, luckily I cut the top off and still ate it.

- Whenever I try to make pizza from scratch, it never makes all the way.
Ever since I was 14 and my ENTP friend and I tried to make a pizza from a kit (our isfp friend turned the oven off while it was baking so it was only half done)

- My beer bread was really salty on the first try.

 

[Gloriana]

First thing that comes to mind was the first time I tried making brownies when I was about 12 years old. My friend and I bought all the stuff and followed a recipe, and we thought we were geniuses for deciding to add a little peppermint extract to make them into 'mint chocolate' brownies. So we baked them up, they looked beautiful. We cut them up with anticipation and we had our first taste.

It tasted like minty DIRT. They were bitter and horrible. It took us awhile to figure out what went wrong, then we realized we were supposed to use MILK baking chocolate and we bought UNSWEETENED baking chocolate by accident. Didn't even notice. It was so nasty and the taste stayed in our mouths for hours.

First Thanksgiving I spent away from home, I decided I wasn't going to cook anything or make a fuss. Then, at the last minute, I changed my mind. I went to the grocery store but they didn't have any decent turkey breasts left so I bought some ground turkey instead. I never worked with the stuff before, but I figured I'd just 'throw' something together.

I got home, plonked the stuff in a bowl, added chopped onion, some sage & thyme, some egg and bread crumbs. I made this 'loaf' and shoved it in the oven. I made some sweet potatoes and green beans to go with it. I got it out, let it cool, and sliced into it.

Holy crap it was so disgusting. It was like trying to eat slices of stiff, dry kitchen sponge with raw onions in it (they didn't soften at all). So I wound up tossing it all out and having sweet potatoes, green beans, and hummus on pita bread that Thanksgiving, haha.

 

[Redbone]

I've cooked pre-soaked beans for hours and they were still inedible.

Baking gluten free breads--hit or freakin' miss! They are often not done and gooey in the center.

I burned some beautiful country style ribs not too long ago. I was grilling them and didn't get back outside fast enough to save too extra fatty pieces from the fire. It was my fault because I should have trimmed that extra fat off!

 

[kyuuei]

Gloriana: Although not a total disaster, I decided I'd bake my parents a cake one time and took out the box and followed the instructions meticulously so I wouldn't mess it up.. I beat the mixture together for twice as long as the instructions said, and I still couldn't figure out why the mixture didn't look yummy. It looked god awful. I finally ask my sister what's wrong with it, and she states plain as day, "You need to actually open the box and put the cake mix in."

Red - I never do beans anymore unless it's the day before I intend to eat them in a crockpot anymore for the saaame reason!

I'm too scared to try grilling yet, but I started trying to venture into red meats.. so I tried a filet mignon (or however you spell it) recipe. The instructions were easy enough, except I forgot the detail in the pre-recipe instructions that stated to let the filets warm up from cold to cool - nearly room temperature. They had been defrosted for a couple hours and I figured them good or about the same.. Upon serving it, I was disappointed to find that it wasn't pink in the middle - it was Raw in the middle. Too cold for the recipe I presume.

 

[Southern Kross]

Hollandaise sauce: it just wouldn't thicken.

I wish someone had told me beforehand that the eggs need to be room temperature

 

[Giggly]

I unknowingly coated chicken in pancake mix instead of flour (it was in an unlabeled container and I was cooking at someone elses apartment) when I was trying to fry it. It looked and tasted horrible and I had no idea why until someone told me that it was pancake mix that I used.

 

[Patches]

My significant other started storing tupperware in the oven when he didn't have room for it.

He didn't tell me.

I preheated the oven without checking inside.

Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiire.

 

[foolish heart]

when I was 7 my best friend (ENTP) and I were making spaghetti and I put the sauce in with the noodles without draining the water out... it turned out to be spaghetti-lite

the first time i used a gas stove i turned it on and left it without checking for a flame. when i came back i noticed it wasnt lit so i turned back the dial to ignite and FWOOOOSH

somehow i still had all my hair after that

 

[Chaotic Harmony]

when I was 7 my best friend (ENTP) and I were making spaghetti and I put the sauce in with the noodles without draining the water out... it turned out to be spaghetti-lite

the first time i used a gas stove i turned it on and left it without checking for a flame. when i came back i noticed it wasnt lit so i turned back the dial to ignite and FWOOOOSH

somehow i still had all my hair after that

My aunt did that... Except, she lost an eyebrow! It grew back though.

Oh man... I remember when I was in middle school, I baked a cake...or at least tried to... It was the flattest cake I had ever seen... I think I left out the water and it ended up being like a half an inch thick. It tasted okay...but it was super thin...

I've given up on making fried chicken, it's definitely not my forte! I can't count the number of times that I've attempted it only to have a greasy floury mess in the frying pan and hardly any breading on the actual chicken.

 

[Aquarelle]

One time I decided I was going to try this recipe for hazelnut soup. It was from an American Indian cookbook. But it apparently was meant to feed the entire tribe - it made 24 servings, and was supposed to simmer for like 4 hours!! So I divided everything by 4 and made it for 6.

That was fine, except I didn't think to reduce the cooking time. About an hour into the simmering, my roommate chanced to walk by the pot... and notice that almost all the liquid had boiled away.

We ate it anyway. It actually didn't taste too bad!

 

[Gloriana]

Oh man... I remember when I was in middle school, I baked a cake...or at least tried to... It was the flattest cake I had ever seen... I think I left out the water and it ended up being like a half an inch thick. It tasted okay...but it was super thin...

Ahaha! I've done this too. I did it trying to make a cake for my family for July 4th. I wound up with three chocolate 'discs' that were almost like brownies. My brother and aunt wouldn't touch them but my mother and I cut them up into triangles and dipped them in the frosting I had already made. It was not too shabby!

 

[gromit]

Heheh... one time we tried to make gumdrops but apparently it was a different kind of pectin than they used in the recipe, and I guess we didn't use enough, so they really WERE flops.

 

[Phantonym]

I've had a case of spoon cookie flops. Carefully formed and arranged dough ended up covering the whole pan when it came out of the oven. Nothing nifty moves with a knife wouldn't save though. The square cookies tasted great.

 

[strawberries]

the first time i made pavlova the meringue turned into a disgusting crusty soup. a pavlova for the uninitiated is a meringue that is stiff and crisp on the outside with soft fluffy insides topped with cream and fruit.

i've since learnt that you must add the sugar into the egg whites super slowly (a spoonful at a time) and then beat it like you mean it between adding spoonfuls of sugar. you can test whether you've beaten it thoroughly enough by rubbing a little bit of the mix between your thumb and finger - if it feels gritty, keep beating.

my first one did not look like this

 

[miss fortune]

I've made bread without salt a few times by accident... thankfully I haven't done THAT lately that's too much work for something to turn out that disappointing!

I also once dropped a pizza on the way into the oven... it was the saddest thing ever (well, sort of... it was the saddest thing at that particular moment!)

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

I tried to make fondant once and wound up with a solid lump of rock-hard sugar on my counter. I also had some chocolate seize when I accidentally dropped a little water in the pot. Neither are very pretty.

 

[NPcomplete]

The first time I made gratin, I placed the dish too near the broil grill and set the whole thing on fire.

Once I got carried away with my experimentation on a tapioca pudding and decided to add yogurt to it.

Also, in my first baking attempts, I didn't realise that I was over-mixing the dough and everything was quite difficult to chew. Oh and I've also tried to block an incident involving sour cream and spinach.

 

[Vasilisa]

Most "one pot meal" recipes (especially if they involve a crockpot) are fundamentally flawed.

Once I attempted one kind of stew from one of those and the resulting mush meal was so icky and disappointing. I just happened to grab a wooden spoon to serve and it looked so much like the scene from Oliver with the gruel with this big wooden spoon that my sweetheart and I burst out laughing and started doing our best, "please, sir, can I have so more?" (although, truly we didn't want any more).

This was long ago and I am a better cook now, and much more cynical about "one pot meal" recipes as a result.

 

[ItsAGuy]

As much as I experiment in the kitchen, you can bet one out of every 5 or so new things fails miserably. I've blown things up in the oven, set things on fire, and just tonight we cooked this AWESOME riblet and shrimp grilled with vermicelli and ginger sauce salad... Except I tried a new marinade that was clearly too spicy for my entire family. Nothing on the label indicated it was spicy, but now we're all dying and acting like we were pepper sprayed

So what'd you screw up on? Don't be shy!

A few weeks ago, I tried caramel bread. It was the first time I tried to make caramel myself, so I managed to burn it... then I went and burnt the bread, too. I'll try again, I'm sure...