1989. The time when I didn’t know how to cook but my little brother was hungry so I made him Every Spice In The Cabinet Soup. It was terrible, but he ate it and pretended it was good.
1997. The time when I didn’t know how to cook but I wanted to make dinner for Rockford and my little brother so I made a chicken-broccoli casserole recipe that I found on the back of a can. It was terrible, but they ate it and pretended it was good.
2001. The time when I didn’t know how to cook but I needed to make dinner for Rockford and myself and all we had in the house were potatoes. I tried to make potato soup, but I only used potatoes, water and pepper. It was terrible, and we did not eat it.
2002. The time when I tried to make stuffed shells with goat cheese. They were terrible, and we ordered pizza.
2009. The time when I tried to make a vegan meal and it used every pot and pan in the house. It was terrible, and we ordered pizza.
2017. The time when I nearly cooked a spider in the rice. That was tonight, and I fished it out in the nick of time.
What’s your most memorable kitchen disaster?
Every time I cook has potential to be a culinary misadventure! I am so not a foodie, not a cook, not any of those things. I have burned canned biscuit bottoms (but that is usually due to forgetting to take them out, rather than actually burning them having followed the directions.
Heck, I don’t even enjoy cooking. I am trying to learn, but it’s just not coming to me.
I can’t think of any huge mishaps in the kitchen, but maybe I’m just blocking them out to protect myself because I’m sure it’s happened.
1987-ish. The time I tried to boil eggs for myself and my little sister. Dropped one in rapidly boiling water and it cracked and kind of exploded. I proceeded to drop 11 more. They all exploded. We didn’t eat them.
Also the time I tried to make pudding from scratch, absolutely burned the milk into a very stinky black mess, threw the ruined pot into the yard and cried.
I just recalled the worst and most recent one. I tried to deep fry some tater tots and they had ice crystals on them. When I dropped them in the hot oil, the ice caused the oil to bubble up and overflow into the gas flame, which ignited the oil and it pretty much turned into an inferno. I screamed and by the time my husband ran in, the oil miraculously burned itself out and there was just some melty bits on my microwave and soot on my cabinets. I could have burned myself and the whole house down! Scott used to be a firefighter so he lectured me quite thoroughly.
I accidentally added a whole extra stick of butter to a Buttermilk Pie. We ate it anyway.
I also once made scones you could build a house out of. I’m still not sure what I did wrong.
The best cooking disaster I know of was actually by my aunt when I was about 9. She was trying to make some sort of fruit cake thingy-ma-bob. The instructions called for fermenting the fruit in a jar for weeks at least. Apparently she misinterpreted the instructions of ‘finger tip tight’ and over tightened the jar. We came home from the store one day to the worst disaster I’ve ever seen. The jar exploded, took off like a rocket through the ceiling, and I mean through, and then rained down fermented fruit on the whole kitchen like a volcano of fruit doom. It was awesome. And by awesome I mean ‘the best thing ever to a 9 year old’ but ‘horrifying’ to the adult who had to fix the mess.
I boiled 6 eggs and forgot about them. Went upstairs and a little while later heard what sounded like gunfire. It was the eggs exploding in about a 15 foot radius. We found hidden egg bits for months.
I remember two of those times.
Once, I made rice a roni three times over the course of a month and all three times it never got tender and then Mrs. Perry Mason told me I needed to read the box because it said I needed several cups of water and not several spoons of water.
I made biscuits with baking soda instead of powder. They were horrible! I also tend to burn bread EVERY time!
Burned caramel (buy a dang jar, me) and undercooked turkeys (two of them! Two different years!!). Also box brownies in which we tried to sub mayo for eggs, but had unfortunately already added oil before the mayo. Double oil means double crunchy, and by crunchy I mean impossible to chew. I did a similar thing twenty years later trying to improv vegan brownies. (One does not improv vegan things, turns out.)
My kitchen mishaps don’t usually qualify as disasters – just C minus level nobody-really-wants-to-eat-but-I-make-them-choke-some-down-and-then-pull-out-the-cereal episodes. However, there was the day I burned the croutons, on three separate attempts – two industrial size pans worth on each attempt – at the catering kitchen where I worked. My boss gritted his teeth and very quietly took over the task for the day. He may or may not have noticed my barely contained tears, but I’m so grateful he had mercy.
I love that your guys ate the terrible food and pretended it was good. Such champs. <3 All of these stories are wonderful - and reminding me that we should test our fire extinguishers...