Worst Meals Ever...cooked by you

Inspired by a recent thread:

I offer a delectable dinner put on hold for friends stuck at O'Hare of bloody roast chicken and a blackberry fool that looked perfect and smacked of...yum...butter...from over-whipping...

A few months ago, as the whether turned cold, I had the fine idea of making a Mexican inspired chicken-lime soup on a chilly Saturday.

I filled my stock pot with browned chicken backs, onions, garlic, carrots, cilantro and sliced limes.

Yuck. I left the peels on the limes which left my broth with a metallic bitter taste that made it completely inedible.

That day's lesson: Squeeze the limes in the broth after it's finished cooking. or, in the alternative, seek out a recipe for something you've never made before.

Once while making a cheesecake, I had the brilliant idea of making a savory cheesecake. Same basic idea, but no sugar, and plus sauteed mushrooms and onions, etc. Unsurprisingly, it tasted like a brick of cream cheese with some mushrooms and onions in it.

The lesson: it's perfectly fine to dream up exotic foodstuffs while under the influence, but definitely do not attempt to make them until the cold sober light of day arrives.

Suzy Creamcheese wrote:Once while making a cheesecake, I had the brilliant idea of making a savory cheesecake. Same basic idea, but no sugar, and plus sauteed mushrooms and onions, etc. Unsurprisingly, it tasted like a brick of cream cheese with some mushrooms and onions in it.

The lesson: it's perfectly fine to dream up exotic foodstuffs while under the influence, but definitely do not attempt to make them until the cold sober light of day arrives.

The error was in execution, Suzy, not theory. Savory cheesecake can be awesome. Emeril's printed recipes for a couple -- one with smoked salmon, and one with mushrooms.

So don't beat up on yourself for the idea

Sigh.

This one is embarrassing but I'll share it anyway. Years ago, one Christmas, my brother, noticing the abundance of lemons on my parents' lemon tree (they live in SoCal) asked me if I would make his favorite dessert, lemon meringue pie, for Xmas dinner dessert, according to my Mom's recipe. I was somewhat flattered - and agreed - so I called my Mom up for the recipe. My Mom (ADD as she is) left out some key technical direction in the lemon filling (egg yolks, perhaps) that would thicken it appropriately - so I had the lemon pie filling on the heat for a long time, stirring, waiting for it to thicken. I eventually gave up, tasted it (it tasted fine) and poured it into the pie shell I made. I then made the meringue, popped it into the oven to brown - it was a stunner visually.

I was pretty proud of it when it was being sliced by my brother later on at dinner. He pops the first bite into his mouth, bites down, and his jaw clenches and it appears as if something's wrong. He's trying to talk, but the pie is literally stuck to his teeth rendering him speechless. I get nervous - pop a piece into my mouth - and it becomes clear. Apparently, I unwittingly made a lemon *taffy* pie, not a lemon meringue pie.

(In retrospect, in fact immediately, I know what my error was - duh - I candied the filling during its long sojourn on the stovetop.)

I was smoking a rack of ribs in my WSM as I had been trained to do by the estimable GW. Having done this many, many times before I was relaxed, even casual. Everything was going along fine, it was a lazy August afternoon, so I laid down to nap, enjoying the whiff of hickory and charcoal smoke wafting up to the bedroom.

I awakened to a different smell - more like burning fat. Actually, I dreamed of burning fat, then awakened gradually to realize that was what I was really smelling. Half awake I stumbled out to the smoker to discover I had let the water pan go dry and the fat in the pan was now burning. Thinking this was a bad thing but still too sleepy to think much else, I dumped water in the pan, creating a burst of super-heated steam heavily flavored with burning fat. Then, since the ribs were not done yet, I covered them up and went back to lay down again.

When I awoke an hour later, wide awake and full of a strange anxiety, I ran to the smoker and saw clearly that I was a fool. The resulting ribs had every possible flaw - fall off the bone from the steaming, wood smoke flavor leached out, coated with a light gray layer of smut and flavored with the charming aroma of a grease fire. Talk about making a bad situation worse.

Cheap as I am, I doused them with sauce and served them to a few of my daughter's friends who ate them happily. I think my reputation carried me that day, though I should have just tossed all those racks into the garbage.

Last night I attempted some version of a pad thai-like dish, using whatever ingredients I had on hand. Problem: I didn't really have too many pad thai-like ingredients. Instead of rice sticks I used whole wheat spaghetti. Instead of fish sauce I used soy sauce and sesame oil. And - the kicker - having no tamarind on hand I checked the fridge to see what sort of sour, fruity thing I might substitute. Low and behold, my fiance has recently gotten the idea that pure, unsweetened cranberry juice is cleansing or something, so there was a bottle of it on the top shelf. The stuff is absolutely undrinkable, but I decided to reduce it and add some honey to approximate (I hoped) the tamarind flavor. Cranberrry juice is indeed a cleanser, as my pad thai tasted exactly like Formula 409.

My story is also one of ribs. After being subjected to a meal of ribs which were pre-seasoned at the grocery store and grilled on the gas grill by my stepfather -- and listening to endless raves about them -- I proudly announced to my entire family that they should try my ribs, which would simply blow these grocery store ribs out of the water. To my surprise, they all immediately agreed to come over the next day and have ribs.

I made the ribs and for whatever reason, they were just horrible -- salty, chewy, and virtually inedible. I'd made them dozens of times before and they'd always been pretty good, even on the first few attempts. I'd never had a full-on failure before but, something I did (or maybe didn't do) killed those ribs.

At first, my family was choking them down, albeit slowly, and being polite about it. But I could see the looks on their faces, which were not good. Finally, I just blurted out "damn, these ribs suck!" and that broke the ice. They all dropped their slabs in progress, breathed a collective sigh of relief and started laughing hystericallly, as did I. But to this day, I've never figured out exactly what went wrong. And even though I have avenged myself time and time again since that ill-fated day, I have never heard the end of it about those ribs, from certain family members.

=R=

While making wiener schnitzel, I once dredged the veal cutlets in sugar rather than flour.

My mom had a stroke when we were kids, and so as kids we were in charge of housework. My sister had gone on to college, and so my first meal: pork chops, which I fried on top of the stove. My dad said they tasted like shoe leather. And they did. He also said that he wouldn't serve my pancakes to the neighbor's dog. I don't get it. I just can't make pancakes, although my crepes are quite excellent.

Also, I made the HUGE mistake of making spaghetti sauce (central Illinois style) for my Italian boyfriend in New York City. He was horrified. Again, justifiably so.

Happily, I've made many good meals since these mishaps, to the delight of Dad and boyfriend allike.

I have too many of those to list, though the time I thought it would be a good idea to thicken runny mashed potatoes with bisquick has got to be up there on the list. In my defense, I was young and I was sorely disappointed to have ruined my mashed potatoes by accidentally adding too much milk. But Bisquick? What went through my mind? Not surprisingly, they were a gluey, doughy mess. I now add milk or cream in very small increments.

My mother had a pretty good one recently--she added cumin instead of cinnamon to her French Toast. My dad hasn't yet let her live it down.

My worst was probably the first dinner for company in our very first house.

I wasn't planning anything too ambitious. We were broke (did I say we'd just bought our first house?); we were still arranging the kitchen for optimum use; our friends were not foodies. So the meal was casual: pasta, salad, garlic bread, etc.

I had made the pasta sauce in advance and stashed it in the freezer. Just before the guests arrived, I began to heat it up in the microwave. Pulling the pot out to stir it, I managed to upset it ... spilling thick, boiling-hot tomato sauce over my wrist.

So our friends arrived to find tomato sauce splattered all over the kitchen and me holding my arm under running water in the sink and trying not to scream.

They finished making dinner while my husband cleaned up. I got through the meal with my hand in a large bowl of ice water. After they went home, we went to the emergency room where they took away my ice water, wrapped the arm up painfully and informed me I would probably need a skin graft.

Ultimately, the doctors decided against the graft, but that section of skin is still faintly scarred and somewhat sensitive, two decades later.

My kitchen mishaps rarely mess up the food irretrievably, but I do wind up damaging myself, sometimes permanently. I have sliced the tip of my finger off with a mandolin, burned various unlikely parts of my body (do not bake without clothes on, no matter how hot the weather is) and dropped a 2-pound jar of honey on my instep to devastating effect.

Yes, also lost the tip of a finger in the manner of 'nearly headless Nick' in the Harry Potter books. All I really remember about the incident is that I matter-of-factly bandaged it tightly and went on making dinner - and got yelled at by the ER tech who didn't think he could put the tip back on. He did with a few stitches - leaving a thick scar that is nobody's fault but my own.

My wife does not do a lot of cooking, but she is the designated cookie baker. One time she used ground chipotle instead of cinnamon in some molasses cookies. How she didnt notice the smell is beyond me, but she had no idea until she tasted them. I thought they were pretty good (in fact I have been meaning to make them again) but they were not very popular with the kids.

-Will

GardenofEatin wrote:--she added cumin instead of cinnamon to her French Toast. My dad hasn't yet let her live it down.

No one found out that I put cumin in my oatmeal instead of cinnamon. Due to the added sugar and butter, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and I ate it anyway, but it was bad enough.

WillG wrote:My wife does not do a lot of cooking, but she is the designated cookie baker. One time she used ground chipotle instead of cinnamon in some molasses cookies. How she didnt notice the smell is beyond me, but she had no idea until she tasted them. I thought they were pretty good (in fact I have been meaning to make them again) but they were not very popular with the kids.

-Will

I prefer ancho in mine

(Chocolate chip cookies, though... plus cinnamon!)

LAZ wrote:My kitchen mishaps rarely mess up the food irretrievably, but I do wind up damaging myself, sometimes permanently. I have sliced the tip of my finger off with a mandolin, burned various unlikely parts of my body (do not bake without clothes on, no matter how hot the weather is) and dropped a 2-pound jar of honey on my instep to devastating effect.

I've cut and burned myself so many times I've lost count. I needed stitches to sew up the side of one hand from washing a glass I didn't know was cracked, I sliced off a chunk of my middle finger slicing veggies, burned my foot with boiling water (I was trying to clean the gunk of my shoes; probably should have taken them off first, what was that line about hindsight?), dropped a 10-pound iron base to a cake plate on my pinky toe, jammed my hand between a 6-foot tall warming oven and a dish machine while trying to move the oven through a narrow hall at high speed, cut my thumb on the cut edge of a can lid - the list goes on and on. Now whenever I burn/cut/otherwise maim my no longer youthful hands/etc, Boyfriend is always telling me to put the enflamed part under water, asking if I need to go to the emergency room, etc...my answer is always "nah".

The worst meal I remember making is fish with, for some reason, fat free hummus. The hummus was because Boyfriend was on a diet. What made me think it went with plain white fish is beyond me. Anyway, it was a grainy, flavorless paste, and we got so involved with chatting that I forgot about the fish so it became a leathery, dry...thing. He ate it anyway, the sweetie pie, and I decided to keep him around. He often likes what I cook because he typically likes everything, period. His usual comment when I negatively assess my own cooking (often) is "No, it's good! Everything you make is good. Except that fish."

I guess burns and cuts are just part of the game, like injuries in football.

As for worst meal, I was staying with friends in Australia, and I had offered to make dinner. The mistake I made was following the directions on the package of rice, rather than just going with what I know -- but following before reading all of them. It's one of those dishes where you sauté the uncooked rice first, add some onions, and then, when all is browning nicely, add the liquid. Looking at the package, I started to add broth at the fairly substantial rate specified. It was only after I got to about the fifth cup that I started to think, "They have to be kidding," then read to the bottom and discovered that they expected you to drain the rice after cooking. I tried to remove some of the liquid, tried to add more rice to soak up more of the liquid, but that of course cooked at a different rate than the sautéed rice, and I ended up with a flavorful mess where half the rice was uncooked and half was mush.

They did, bravely, allow me to cook again, but after that, every meal was greeted with, "Did you know this would turn out, or did you just get lucky?" Despite assurances that I did know how to cook, I never lived down that first disaster. So if you're cooking in a different country, read all the instructions on the box, and then ignore them if they are different from what you know to be right.

Cooked dinner for friends back in college. They had rented a shore house, and the oven didn't work right. It only had a top burner, so I essentially broiled a meatloaf. The top was crunchy and the bottom was raw.

dicksond wrote:I was smoking a rack of ribs in my WSM as I had been trained to do by the estimable GW. Having done this many, many times before I was relaxed, even casual. Everything was going along fine, it was a lazy August afternoon, so I laid down to nap, enjoying the whiff of hickory and charcoal smoke wafting up to the bedroom.

I awakened to a different smell - more like burning fat. Actually, I dreamed of burning fat, then awakened gradually to realize that was what I was really smelling. Half awake I stumbled out to the smoker to discover I had let the water pan go dry and the fat in the pan was now burning. Thinking this was a bad thing but still too sleepy to think much else, I dumped water in the pan, creating a burst of super-heated steam heavily flavored with burning fat. Then, since the ribs were not done yet, I covered them up and went back to lay down again.

When I awoke an hour later, wide awake and full of a strange anxiety, I ran to the smoker and saw clearly that I was a fool. The resulting ribs had every possible flaw - fall off the bone from the steaming, wood smoke flavor leached out, coated with a light gray layer of smut and flavored with the charming aroma of a grease fire. Talk about making a bad situation worse.

Cheap as I am, I doused them with sauce and served them to a few of my daughter's friends who ate them happily. I think my reputation carried me that day, though I should have just tossed all those racks into the garbage.

you wouldnt have that probelm if you used sand in the pan instead of water..FYI

I forgot to mention my meatloaf.
Never use cornmeal in place of bread crumbs, unless you like eating bricks.

I keep thinking I've told all these stories before, and perhaps I have, but until the search function improves, you'll all have to scroll past them again.

There was the first chocolate cake I ever made. Age 10. The recipe called for sour milk. My mother told me just to combine some vinegar with the milk. 50-50 turned out to be not the right proportions.

Then there was Thanksgiving dinner shortly after I was married. Bought a live turkey from Gratiot Central Market in Detroit. Followed the Joy of Cooking instructions on how to eviscerate it. Borrowed my landlady's oven to cook it in instead of my small apartment stove. Took it out three or four hours later completely tasteless and dry. Turns out her oven ran hot. Turns out that was the last time I cooked a turkey without a thermometer.

When I was first married I wanted to make my Italian hubby some homemade meatballs. I had never worked with real garlic before, only powder. The recipe called for 2 cloves of garlic and I added 2 heads because I THOUGHT THOSE WERE CLOVES!!!! I will love my hubby forever because he sat there and ate a big plate of them.

Misreading Tbspns for Tspns of salt is always a recipe for, well, disaster, particularly when we're talking meatloaf for 12 (and tripling all those other pre-seasoned ingredients, too, like catsup, Worcesteshire, soy sauce, etc).

Also, some advice: Never try to make crepes for the first time when you're really, really angry at your SO.