Terrible meals you have cooked

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Claire

Master Chef
Joined
Sep 4, 2004
Messages
7,967
Location
Galena, IL
When was the last time you made a bad meal? Last night I made something that is normally a good meal. I'd bought large mushrooms and good (expensive) crab meat to stuff them with. I know it sounds goofy, but rice-a-roni is a comfort food for my husband and me, and I sauteed chicken breasts and added fresh herbs. All of it tasted terrible. I did not overcook it, but the chicken turned into rubber. The Rice a roni ... well, the roni was overcooked, and the rice was like little pellets of stone. The crab stuffed mushrooms were horrid beyond belief. The funny part is that, well, to put it politely, I had gass all night. Hubby says I was rejecting my own bad meal. By the way, he also says that in 30 years of living together, me doing 90% of the cooking, it is only the second bad meal I've fixed. But I may not cook for the rest of the week!
 
I've had three dishes not turn out in all my years...one was my first baked pasta casserole; it had no taste at all (never forgot salt and herbs again, lol!) two was a paella that I made using a funky rice that just never cooked...a little crispy rice crust is good and authentic, but crunchy is just plain bad; three was a savory pie and the crust, a real lard flaky crust, didn't flake but turned to dust. It tasted good but fell apart like crumbs. Not right.
 
The only really, truly terrible meal I remember making as an adult (read: when I should have known better) was when I tried out a recipe for meatloaf that used only 1/2 of ground beef, and the leanest type at that. It was supplemented with cabbage and potatoes and it tasted awful. It came out of the oven gray and I knew no way would my family eat that, so I covered it with bbq sauce. That couldn't disguise the fact that it wasn't any good, though. We threw it away.

That same year, I think, I tried a recipe for some carrot cake bars that used that prune concentrate baking product in place of butter, oil or shortening. I don't remember what it's called. The bars came out like a great big sponge- they were porous and rubbery and not even worth tasting.

I remember when I was much younger, like in my early teens, a friend and I wanted to make pizza but had no sauce. We tried using ketchup instead. My suggestion is that no one else tries that, lol...
 
This one happened recently.

I had some roasted red pepper that I needed to use before it went bad, so I decided to make a red pepper dip that was in one of my cookbooks. I didn't have all the ingredients, so I substituted a few things I thought would work ok. Well, it was pretty good, but I had made so much dip that I couldn't possibly eat it all, and we were out of chips. So, I thought I'd try a red pepper pancake with egg on top for breakfast.

Well, I put the red pepper in the food processor with some bread crumbs and pulsed it until I could shape it into a patty. Then, I put some oil into a skillet and browned the patty on both sides. I salted and peppered it, and cooked an egg for the top.

I tasted it without the egg, and it was not very appetizing. With the egg, it was barely edible. I forced myself to eat it so as not to waste food, but I was VERY glad I didn't serve it to my family. :ROFLMAO:
 
That would probably be the time I made some lovely French toast for my nephews, at my mom's house. The white powder in the unmarked container turned out to be cornstarch, not powdered sugar.

It made a lovely presentation, but I have not lived down the meal yet.
 
I got married when I was 19, and was not really a bad cook, as I had done a lot of cooking when I was in high school. But I had a lot of learning to do, and as I've always liked to experiment in the kitchen, some meals turned out better than others.
But the one meal I fixed that was totally inedible was my chainsaw meatloaf.
I often make meatloaf in the microwave. The recipe calls for cooking the meatloaf, covered, on med/high for 15 minutes. Then the sauce is put on top of the meatloaf, and it's cooked uncovered for 10 more minutes on high, then stands for another 10 minutes.
DH and the grandson were gone to a soccer game, so I got the meatloaf cooking, and when it was ready, I set the timer for ten minutes (I thought), and went to take a bath. I had a nice long soak, shaved my legs, shampooed my hair, the whole deal.
When I finally got back to the kitchen, the nuke was still running, and I discovered that I had set the timer for 10 hours instead of ten minutes.

DH and the boy got home about then, hungry as all get out. I told my husband I'd burned the meatloaf, but he thought he could slice the burnt part off, and we could rescue the inside...NOT! It was hard as a brick all the way through.
I've been teased about my "chain-saw meatloaf" ever since.
 
When I first moved out on my own, I was going to make a steak with gravy recipe I found in a cookbook. It called for a clove of garlic. Back then, being new to cooking, I didn’t know the difference between a clove and a head. So, I put the whole head in this small amount of sauce. It was awful. A single bite could curl your eyebrows. I tried to eat it, but only made it through 3 or 4 bites.

Not long ago, I got a craving for sausage and biscuits. I’m not much of a baker, but I have a simple TNT recipe for biscuits that works every time. I keep it written down and stuffed in one of my cookbooks. I went about making it as usual, and when I was mixing up the dough, I glanced over at the flour bag on the counter and saw it was regular flour and not self-rising. I didn’t have any baking powder either. I was already halfway done, so I baked them anyway. You know, baking powder is pretty important stuff. The “biscuits” turned out to be hockey pucks, but the dog appreciated them.

A couple of weeks ago, I had some left over crab meat and figured I’d make a pasta salad of sorts with a cream sauce. I made the sauce, mixed it with the noodles and crab meat, and it tasted great. I then decided to add some black olives. I dumped a small can of black olives directly into the mix and utterly ruined it! The olives were way too strong for the dish. I tried to eat it........but the dog loved it.

This last one is more of a mishap than anything else. I have an old Pyrex pot that I hardly ever use. It sits way in the back of the cabinet, and only gets used if I somehow occupy all of my SS pots. We were outside grilling and decided to have mashed potatoes with the meat. So, I ran into the house to start a simple gravy made from Cream of Mushroom soup to go with the mashed potatoes. I was scurrying abut trying to hurry and get back outside. I opened the can of soup and saw the Pyrex pot on the stove.

I wondered why it was out, but figured who cares. My wife is a cleaning fanatic, and is in the habit of washing certain pots and pans and leaving them on the stove for me to put away (I’m a bit anal about how pots and pans are arranged in the cabinet :angel:, so she leaves that to me). Since the rarely used Pyrex pot was out, I figured I’d use it for the gravy. In a rush, I mixed the soup and some milk in a small bowl and then quickly poured it into the Pyrex pan without even looking. As I did so, I realized my mistake. Since the pot is rarely ever used, my wife had decided to commandeer it for her own use. In the pot was a batch of homemade potpourri based on a recipe she found on the net. As I sat there staring at it in disbelief, my wife walked in and saw what I did. She started laughing and told me that, while the gravy sure smelled nice, she was going to pass on having any for dinner.
 
We had my wife's family over for a picnic (all eleven siblings and spouses, and alot of their inlaws) I bought a pork shoulder, two whole salmon filets, and a full beef brisket, I mistakingly added "matchlight' charcoal to the all oak fire I was smoking these luscious pieces of meat with as the fire started dying down, luckily, the salmon was done first (before the addition of matchlight) and it came out perfectly, i served it as an appetizer, it went over big. a couple hours later, the pork shoulder was ready, I sliced it up and it looked beautiful, unfortunatly it tasted as though I had marinated it in charcoal starter before smoking it, what a disaster, what an embarassment.

I actually took the brisket and threw it over our river enbankment figuring the local critters would seek out the edible parts and eat it. The following year I was trimming bushes that were blocking our view and I found the brisket, still in tact and slightly mumified. Not even touched by animals.

Everytime I barbeque for anyone that was there I feel that sting at the back of my neck
 
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My worst cooking... or baking experience was trying to bake a cake. I've baked this butter cake for years and years and for some reason, I forgot the one important ingredients: FLOUR. Now how can someone forget to put flour into their cake.. I don't know but I did forget. LOL.

I spent the next 1/2 hour wondering why my cake hasn't risen....
 
on any given night, I can do some real botch jobs.
one night I had this incred meal planned for the man.
took out the fillet mignon steaks from the freezer to thaw, done.
knew the veggies I'd do, yep, they're in the frig, I'll take 'em out right before sauteeing, "thought" done.
I'd do a galette of potato with the spuds on top of the microwave, all I had to do was peel them, mandoline them, clarified butter to pan, line up in pan, drizzle with more butter and olive oil, set pan on medium heat, watch it, 'thought' done.
oh and I've got that marvelous To Die For Chocolate thingie in the freezer in little individual bags ready for vanilla ice cream for dessert, 'thought' done. I'll make him his favorite cole slaw MIL style, it's always a winner with sliced toms underneath, 'thought' done.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
grabbed the pots to scrub and peel. ut oh, what is 'that' smell/why are they so soft and smoochy, ick, forget that.....................uhhhhh
I'll thinly slice the cabbage for the slaw, where the H$\\ is the cabbage...............uhhhhhhhhhhh
the toms are spotted and mushy.......................uhhhhhhhhhhhh
and just how long have these little jewels of squash been in that frig anyway? too long I can see that...................uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
steaks are finally thawed, can you say bad freezer burn?....uhhhhhhhhh
just how large and deep are my 3 freezers? and how hard can it be to find 2 small little zipper bags of dessert? very.................uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
called the man and told him to stop at El Pollo Loco and bring dinner home, he said, "but honey, I thought you told me dinner was gonna be fabbo tonight", I said, "it was, but uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh".......
 
I'm hard pressed to even pick out just a few - so many to choose from! But I have discovered that pasta will turn into a starch disc in the bottom of the pan if cooked too long, chicken pot pies are flammable, and missed bacon grease that leaked under the broiler pan can re-ignite the next time you use the broiler.
 
You're making me feel SO much better! By the way, the rice-a-roni I got on sale (10 for $10) -- well, the rest of them are going to the food bank!

The story about corn starch cracked me up because I once grabbed the cannister of powdered sugar when I meant to make a slurry of cornstarch to thicken a stir fry. Everyone loved it! Neither husband nor I have a sweet tooth, but this was for my sisters, their kids and husbands.

Oh, well. Julia used to say, more or less, that what goes on in the kitchen, stays in the kitchen. Everyone thought my sweet stir fry was supposed to taste like that and loved it, so it doesn't count as a disaster!
 
A long time ago, a chicken dish called for a whole lemon.
I only had lemon juice in the house, housed in a lemon shaped containor. It looked like a whole lemon to me, so I put the whole thing in. WOOPS.
I LOVE lemony dishes, so I didn't think it was that bad. My ex boyfriend whom I was living with at the time couldn't eat it and was making some pretty weird faces "lol".
 
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