Your most memorable FAILURE at cooking (v.2)

Everyone who has attempted the culinary arts knows that it can sometimes lead to horrific failure. In this thread, post the failure story that your brain will simply not let you forget.

Mine would be when I tried to make beef pinwheels a few months back. Basically, a beef pinwheel is steak strips spiraled with lettuce and cheese inside. I recently had them at a restaurant, and they looked easy enough to make. So I then hopped in my car and went to Big Y (the local supermarket) to get the ingredients.

I got the ingriendients, but when I went to checkout, I realized that I forgot my wallet. So I drove back home, got it, then went back to the market and bought them. When I got back home, I realized that I didn't have enough cooking oil. After a fair amount of cursing, I drove back to the market a THIRD time, and bought the oil.

I then proceeded to prepare the pinwheels. Making them was indeed fairly easy and I had completed that in less than 5 minutes. The recipe said you could either bake them or cook them in a pan with oil. I had the baked version, so I deicded to try the pan version. Terrible mistake.

You see, I apparently had grossly overestimated the amount of oil I would need in the pan, and I didn't use a pan with steep enough sides. Needless to say, the pinwheels started cooking and splashing oil all around the stove area. Some of it got by the burner and the whole pan ignited into a grease fire. I tried to grap the pan and put it into the sink, but I spilt a good portion of the brnig oil on the floor, with some landing on my sock. The pan crashed into the sink as I let out a rather loud explicitive, ruining the pinwheels (as the sink was not washed).

Moral of the story: Fanciness without experience leads to pain and ruination.

What's your most memorable cooking failure?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well, I had this pack of muffin mix, but no muffin pan. In fact, I had no cookware except for a saucepan and a plastic fork. I decided, hey, a saucepan is nothing but a glorified frying pan, I can make pancakes!

Well, they were some ugly ass pancakes, but they were still pancakes. And chocolate-chip pancakes at that. They were pretty good, all things considered.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I tried to make wonton soup when I was about ten and I had my mom's help for the most part, but she had to lie down and left me with written instructions. When it came time to add Soya Sause to the mix I grabbed the bottle I thought was soya and it turned out to be pure vanilla extract

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I tried to make chicken teriyaki at work last week. I found in the back (Coffee Shop) a bottle of the famous Kikkoman Soy Sauce. It looked VERY old.

Older than me. It smelled awful. That said, I marinated the cihicken and other stuff in it. I sent one person home sick that night and myself a trip to the toilet to give back to the earth that which I soaked in soy sauce.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Two summers ago I spent the summer working/living on my College campus. I got to move into my regular housing early, but the housing lottery stuck me in a rickety wooden house that's slightly off the main campus. I was the only person living there at the time.

So I was cooking a hamburger, because that's all I know how to make. I had the fan on, because that's what you do when you cook things. Nonetheless, I managed to set off the smoke alarm. In a normal house this wouldn't have been a big deal, but since this house was actually a College dorm the "smoke alarm" was actually a Fire Alarm connected to the local Fire Station. Thus, I had to leave the building and be the only person standing outside when the truck came down the street. The firemen looked slightly annoyed.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I distinctly remember the time I thought I would be Joe Cool and put some waffles in the toaster oven while I was watching TV in my room. Ten minutes later, I'm wondering where the burnt smell is coming from. I run in the kitchen and I see smoke pouring from the toaster oven. Somehow I managed to get rid of all that smoke without the smoke detector going off...

I remember one time I was baking salmon. I usually leave it in the oven for thirty minutes on 350. So, about an hour later, I was wondering where my salmon was (I was watching TV again). I run in the kitchen and snatch open the oven. My poor delicious salmon was hard as a rock on the edges, but it was fine in the middle...

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

One time I was making pancakes, and I was surprised at the fact that they were burning to a crisp upon touching the pan for no apparently reason. Until I finally figured out that, due to being used to boiling water for rice, I'd just flicked the burner on max without thinking. The aftermath wasn't pretty. Burned batter everywhere.

FELIPE NO

My favorite memory was when I tried to make chicken adobo for the first time. The chicken ended up being too salty because I had put too much soy sauce, and it was too late to neutralize the flavor somehow. I'm just glad I didn't use too much chicken.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Haha, the original story is awesome.

I've never really done anything that badly in the kitchen in terms of burning food. The worst thing I've done I think is knock a blender onto the floor and have it explode in a shower of glass everywhere. The worst part was it was my roommate's blender, and it was a Christmas present from some relative of his that was deceased, or something. =/

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I can't really remember a major cooking accident I've had off the top of my head but I do know my sister once tried to make cookies out of cookie dough...with the microwave. The dough got nuked so badly it turned all black and seemed like it fused with the bowl she put the dough in. Plus the dough started smoking and the whole house was just filled with the smell of nuked cookie dough.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Something simple, but still a failure.

Usually i'm a good cook and I watch my time carefully. For some reason this time I didn't. I was baking brownies for my cousin and next door neighbor because I was stuck at home babysitting both of them. After a lunch of popcorn shrimp, we decided to bake some brownies. Long story short, due to a lack of correct time estimation, I undercooked the brownies and messed up the cooking cycle... I really don't think putting it back would've saved it either. I messed up somewhere along the way, I just can't remember.

As far as I could remember, that was my only failure.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

One time I got this recipe for a chocolate souffle. It said something about folding. I was not sure what folding was so I started mixing everything together. The result was a wet chocolate wad. It tasted good, but it feels like I was eating a turd. HAHA!!

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

When I was six, I cooked tinned pasta in a saucepan on the stove, I did not stir it or but the heat on low. I ended up with a boiling mess with all the pasta burned at the bottom. Mom had quite the time cleaning it up.

I was speaking idiomatically.

When I used to live at an apartment with my mom and I decided to try and make pancakes for breakfast. Oh the adventures I had.

Venture one - Mix = Bisquick. Needless to say, it tasted like cardboard.

Venture two through like..10 - Mix = Some kind of Pancake Mix. I made a pancake that was about a foot in diameter and it tasted like cardboard.

Needless to say I quit and just stuck with cooking dinner type meals.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Im not a good cook, so half of the time I dont even try, but their was this one time, when I burned my hands making kraft dinner, long story short, I had to keep my hands submerged under water for hours ... heh ^_^'

FELIPE NO

I was cooking a dinner party and i was preparing the portions of pork chops, instead of gettin the tenderizer i some how grabbed the cheese powder right next to it. Need less to say it made the people at the dinner say wth.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Usually, all of my failures end up being problems with timing. I can never seem to finish the food when I tell everyone it should be done.
One time, I was running pretty much an hour late, because my crock-pot was not cooking as fast as I had hoped. (you would think that 5 hours on high would be enough to cook pork and cream of mushroom soup) So, I take the thing out, and put it in the oven at a rather high temperature.
Needless to say, though pot boiled over, and I cooked off too much water... so we had a very salty meal that day.

And that is pretty much the extent of my bad cooking experiences. I suppose I have been rather fortunate so far in my culinary pursuits.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

When I was really little I tried bakeing some cookies, it all went right except for one thing, the flour.

My mom decided to use those little jars with handles to put flour and baking powder and stuff in. So I was searching around for the flour and pulled it out. Well it turned out to be powdered sugar instead of flour. And to say the least, what turned out of the oven was very very very sweet, so sweet it was gross.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Cooking at camp.
We tried to make a chocolate sauce for our fruitcake. Not only did we manage to curdle the sweetened condensed milk, but one guy that we were cooking something savoury and put Italian herbs and spices into it

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Well, it was PROBABLY the time that I tried reheating Chinese food in my microwave... in the original packaging (this could also be classified under my "most blonde moment"). On the other hand, the fire it prouced was rather pretty.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Moon

So I then hopped in my car and went to Big Y (the local supermarket) to get the ingredients.

Must be local... I loved the Big Y when I was back in college.

ANYWAYS, this weekend I had a horrible failure in the kitchen. I made some floured, pan-fried, steak strips and an artichoke/white wine/parmesan sauce with some pasta. THAT came out fantastic.

What I failed with was using the leftover stuff in the pan afterwards. I thought I'd put on my "I SAW IT ON TV, I CAN DO THIS!" hat and tried to deglaze the pan using some wine. Which I did, that was fine. I tried to now turn this into a gravy. So I poured a little flour into it and mixed it well. Well, apparently I used a little TOO much flour in the pan because not only did it smell like rancid ass, it started to burn and create this awful smelling beefy-cakey substance.

So for the future, I'm gonna have to actually LEARN how to make pan sauces.

I was speaking idiomatically.

You know, once our very own Chaotic Lullaby actually caught water on fire in a pot. She was trying to make rice and somehow caught the oil and water on fire because she forgot about it boiling while playing video games, and when she came back there were flames bursting forth everywhere. She took so damn long with her ADHD that the water entirely evapourated and all that was left with a flaming glob of goo.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

THERE WAS NO GOO, ONLY FIRE jls;fdjkasdf.

i hate you so much.

i also made pancakes stick to teflon ;_;

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Chaotic Lullaby

THERE WAS NO GOO, ONLY FIRE jls;fdjkasdf.

BUT GOO SOUNDS SO MUCH MORE AWESOME.
and yeah, you are obviously some sort of anti-miracle worker messiah because i'm still trying to figure out how you actually made something stick to NEW teflon.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

When I was cooking typical mac and cheese from a stove...I poured water in and sat around (played video games or something...waiting for it to boil). Ended up forgetting about it and the water vanished *gasp!* (turned to steam after leaving it on the stove for too long T-T)

Jam it back in, in the dark.