I tried making a fish chowder once. Horrible stuff. My crockpot was too small, and I’d never used leeks before. I was so happy wanting to make my own and I even spent extra to have all the proper ingredients…
Yech. I couldn’t eat it, it tasted horrible and Mom wouldn’t eat it either so into the garbage it went and I haven’t tried again. If I want chowder I go somewhere I know they make a good one.
Oh, many times. Like when I did Caesar Salad with iceberg lettuce, for the main course. It just really, really didn’t work. I still have nightmares about that one.
Chocolate covered Peanut butter balls
We’d had them at a friends and liked them eough to ask for the recipe. The next year when we pulled out the recipe (scrawled on the back of another recipe) we proceeded to follow the instructions. One ingredient stood out to me and we both knew that something was amiss. We followed the recipe anyway and it failed as we expected.
We cannot figure out why the recipe says to add 1tbsp of water to the melted chocolate. I asked my friend who had made them and she confirmed that it is not part of the recipe. We pitched the seized chocolate and started over.
yes I did and it turned to my advantage.The joy of cookings recipe for Poppy Seed Cake was a tradition for eldest sister birthday cake. Our mother passed, so 2 yrs. later I made this cake for her bday.I couldn’t STIR it I mean major muscle needed. Had a male friend do the stirring and the cake was FABULOUS!! But it haunted me how my mother had done that all those years, I mean it was tough stirring a few times let alon e the 50 or so needed,.Went back and read recipe-Lo-1/2 milk I had left out.It’s a far superior cake, the mistake way, but you need a man or a Hulkwoman to stir it. I have no Kitchenaid but the batter was that of a bread.,even he complained till he ate it, Now everyones favorite cake!
A couple of months ago, my wife called me at work for the recipe for my stir-fry sauce, so she could make it before I got home. Aww, how nice. So I told her the ingredients and amounts. The last thing you add is a quarter-teaspoon of cayenne pepper, but I told her, “I usually put in half a teaspoon.”
Took two bites to realize that something was wrong. “Half a teaspoon” somehow got translated as “two tablespoons” of cayenne pepper. Hachi machi! The little Torqueling couldn’t eat it. I soldiered through for a while, but yikes. Took a lot of plain white rice to soak the heat out of my mouth and lips.
I was visiting my aunt over her birthday this year. She mentioned in passing loving butterscotch blondies and I decided to make her up a surprise batch. I make amazing brownies, I figured blondies couldn’t be too difficult.
I found a recipe on a food blog I love that has always served me well. I follow the directions exactly, come up with a nice looking batter, and throw the pan in the oven.
After baking for the requisite amount of time, I check my blondies… to find batter. I throw them back in for another ten minutes. Still batter. Another ten. Batter. At this point, I figure that my blondies batter will never metamorphisize into actual blondies, so it’s better to give up before the whole thing bursts into flame.
The odd thing was, the batter tasted GREAT, not off at all. My aunt and I ended up stealing bites out of the bowl I put in the fridge until it was all gone. I still don’t have any idea where I went wrong.
Was the oven on? I ask only because I have had more than one cake refuse to bake because I had turned the temperature dial to 375 but not the other one to bake.
Ok, here’s one of mine.
I tried to make ras gulla once, which are homemade cheese balls in syrup. It’s absolutely my favorite dessert, and i reasoned, I know how to make cheese, I know how to make syrup, it’s easy, right?
Well. I made the cheese properly, no problem. I rolled it into balls. It was a little crumbly but still made balls.
I started the syrup, and then you are supposed to put the balls in the syrup, and sort of cook/simmer them in there.
Well, after only about five minutes my cheese balls began to lose all consistency. They all crumbled to little bits. Think like feta cheese…so I now had cheese soup, for want of a better word. I wanted ras gulla! Instead of cheesy soup. I don’t know what I did wrong, but I’ll tell you I never tried it again.
Oh, yes, and if a recipe tells you it needs cornstarch, don’t forget the fucking cornstarch. No matter what. Even if it only needs a tiny bit of constarch.
I have never had any problems that were a result of a bad recipe. My problems are always from my inability to fully read each direction before doing what I think it says. My biggest oops was adding cups of shortening instead of tbsps of shortening while making the filling for whoopie pie. My most recent was trying to make meringue in a plastic bowl. I used over a dozen eggs before it occurred to me that maybe there was nothing wrong with me or the eggs or the mixer.
Sounds like you overcooked the cauliflower. It is a very short time between cooked to soft enough to puree and overcooked and emitting that nasty cabbage funk.
Sugar s a texturizer in most recipes, not just a sweetening agent so with a lot of stuff you need to figure out a texturizing substitute.
Ouch … Copper bowls work the best but stainless, ice cold no water and no fat works as well.
Beer-sauced meatballs. Exactly as described.
Source: some long-forgotten recipe from the dawn of cooking in a microwave oven. Think **very **early 1980s.
They were beyond gawd-awful. I couldn’t eat them. My mother and sister couldn’t eat them. My soon to be BIL couldn’t eat them. And he was doing his best behavior thing in front of his soon to be MIL and SIL.Screw that. The DOGS wouldn’t eat them.
I still get flack about that meal from hell 20-plus years later. 
the only other time i came out with a less than edible product was the cake i tried to bake.
in canada.
at 10,000 feet.
forgot about altitude.
it was sort of okay.
sort of. 
It might have been some residue from a previous meal in your blender that caused the flavor to go off. I’ve had that happen.
This Thanksgiving I thought I’d try whipping the cream for the trifle dessert in my nifty new Ninja blender. No go. First, no air got in the cream to actually whip it. Second, as aruvqan points out, plastic is not a good material for whipping air into ingredients. But I did get a nice bunch of sweet cream/almost butter out of it. When I told my brother about it I was immediately invited to bring my butter over for a pancake breakfast in the morning.
The trifle was saved by my having bought far more cream than I needed. I put a glass mixing bowl in the freezer for 15 minutes and whipped up another batch of cream. Nobody knew my error until I confessed.
I made Mamie Eisenhower’s Million Dollar Fudge [it should be called Million POUND fudge] one year from what I thought was my mom’s recipe. It never set up and was barely passable as cake frosting. The following year I made sure to get the recipe long before I attempted to make the fudge and it turned out wonderfully.
Interesting. I hadn’t realized that could happen, since my mad cooking skillz have never resulted in overcooked cauliflower before. I’ll have to re-try it sometime!
Um… no. I wash my dishes. There is no residue in my blender, trust me. The blender is always promptly washed after use, because it’s easy to wash when the stuff is fresh, impossible to wash if it dries on. Plus it’s fun to blend up a blender full of hot water & soap.
This has nothing to do with my cooking, just the food. I bought some frozen pizza patties for camping. I grilled them for my brother and I. We each took one bite and started to gag and choke they were so bad. We spit it out and threw the pizza patties with bun on the ground. We ate something else. During the night the large number of coons ate the buns but didn’t touch the pizza patties. There were empty packages all over the place from other campers coolers, but those pizza patties were so bad the coons didn’t eat them. I’m getting nauseous 25 years later thinking about them.
I think the Splenda for-baking stuff is a blend of Splenda and sugar, probably for this very reason.
My stir-fried mackeral was a…
…miscalculation.
Grilled cheesus, that’s bad, if the raccoons wouldn’t touch it.
Now I’m giggling at the thought of all these raccoons picking over your trash and whispering to each other: “Humans are so gross! They’ll eat anything!” “I’m not touching this stuff either; it’s disgusting!” “Hey, Frank! *Frank!! *Yo, man, try this!” “Naw, dude, I’m not eating that!”
Ranch dressing. My wife is sensitive to processed corn and it upsets me as well. In order to avoid the corn syrup and starch I have been making my own ranch dressing mix and making fresh dressing.
The recipe calls for 1 tsp onion salt and then later 1/4 tsp of salt.
First time I made it I just substituted onion powder for the onion salt at 1:1 and just put the 1/4 tsp salt in.
Got ONION ranch, definitely not onion ranch it was ONION ranch. Edible if you really like onions, which I do.
Next time I put in 1/4 tsp onion and only the 1/4 tsp extra salt called for, good but rather mild.
Last night I tried again and made it by the recipe with 1/2 tsp onion powder and 1/2 tsp salt for a total of 3/4 tsp salt.
Total salt lick, neither of us could even attempt to eat it, there was no taste other than SALT! I tried thinning it out by 50% and have some with me now in my lunch but it is still SALTY! I won’t have to or be able to use much on my salad.
This was strictly by the recipe before I thinned it out.
