In 1966 we had fried chicken for dinner. Or, rather, that was the plan. We didn’t eat it. We* couldn’t *eat it–it was well cooked, but it had the consistency of boot rubber. We couldn’t chew it at all, and I think we had to send out for hamburgers.
Ever have a dinner go bad because of the food/the stove/the preparation/the restaurant staff/someone at the table?
Last night TheKid tried to make alfredo sauce from scratch. Turned out to be buttery milk with small cheese curds. She claims she followed the directions, but…
In junior high Home Ec we were tasked to make ginger snaps, I think it was. It was one of those recipes where you chill the dough, then cut slices off and bake them. I cut the slices too thin and managed to set them on fire in the oven.
You remember that meal from 47 years ago? That must’ve been some spectacularly bad chicken.
I mentioned this in a similar thread about a year ago. I tried this recipe for Indian vegetable curry, and I followed the instructions exactly. It smelled so good, but it was completely devoid of flavor, even after I added extra spices and salt. Too bad I didn’t notice the terrible reviews for that recipe before I tried it.
First turkey dinner I ever made. My mother told me to use equal amounts of fat and flour; problem is, she didn’t tell me not to use ALL the fat in the pan. So I dumped in at least a cup of flour or more. Not long after, I had a pan about 18x12x4 full of what appeared to be–and tasted like–wall plaster. Ten minutes later, it was like concrete. I’d left the serving spoon in the mess while we ate and used to have a photo of me holding up the serving pan by the spoon handle.
One of my earliest bachelor cooking disasters was a recipe for baked pork chops and rice that Mom used to make. She gve me the recipe, which included the recipe for the spice mix.
I didn’t realize that, after putting together all of the spices, I was only supposed to use a portion of it. So I dumped about a cup of very salty spice mix in.
The chops were mostly edible after being scraped with a knife and brushed off with a napkin. The rice was a loss.
The ***WORST!! ***Did you ever try to eat a rubber boot?
I should have known better, but shortly after my wife and I were married, we had both families to our house for Christmas dinner.
Being in a big hurry, I put the boiled potatoes, butter, garlic and cream cheese in the food processor in the expectation that it would puree it nicely.
Wrong… it apparently ruptures a lot of starch granules when you do it that way. The mashed potatoes ended up a gluey, sticky mess. They tasted pretty good, but had the weirdest, sticky viscous consistency.
I still remember the butterscotch pudding my mother tried over 30 years ago. I still remember the endless cornflour puddings I endured 35 years ago.
You were saying?
My ex-wife and I had my parents over for dinner one night shortly after we married, and I grilled chicken. I had no idea what I was doing and even less how long it takes chicken to cook on a grill. It was a disaster of “let me check again, no not ready yet.” I think we finally just gave up and said, screw it, maybe we’ll all die from food poisoning, but we’ve got to eat.
Several years later, at our first Christmas dinner after moving to Charlotte, the ex-wife made a lovely dinner that included Brussels sprouts, which we had recently learned to enjoy. I don’t know how she did it, but she managed to put so much lemon juice in the sprouts that they tasted like they’d been glazed with lemon Pledge.
I’ve had spells where I apparently forgot how to cook, and hence several days of bad meals. Burned food, bland food, oversalted food, not done enough, too well done…The more I made, the worse it was. Like a ziti casserole, which isn’t goormay cooking, but everyone clamors for it. So I made a huge vat. Overcooked the pasta, but I put it together anyway, into an big casserole dish, into the oven it went (with that nagging prophetic feeling that this was going to turn out awful but maybe they wouldn’t notice). So of course that night dinner was delayed. Heat it up. Delayed again! Heat it up. Hours later, by the time they sat down, it was a mooshy, soggy, yet dried out mess. They picked at it, no one wanted seconds, and no one wanted it the next day, I had to throw out pounds of really bad ziti casserole.
My cousin marinated some chicken in a wine based marinade in the fridge. We were all in our teens, btw. The chicken apparently went bad (either before marinating or during). We, my brother and I, cousin and other cousin (her brother) ate it all anyways because we didn’t really know how this “special” chicken was supposed to taste.
The squirtz started later that same night. Guy cousin was sick for 3 days. I had plenty of Gatorade on hand, so he didn’t die of dehydration.
We were all staying together while our parents went to some gathering out of town. As far as I know, none of us ever told our parents about the food poisoning. I couldn’t stand looking at chicken for some time afterwards.
Someone tie-dyed a t-shirt in one of our cooking pots and didn’t wash it out afterwards.
Mom didn’t think to check if the pot was clean before trying to boil a piece of corned beef…
I was introduced to BBQ chicken pizza about 25 years ago on Thanksgiving day when Mr. Turkey was unwrapped and judged to be a rancid, foul fowl.
Today, we have a multitude of options that are open on Thanksgiving, but back then, in suburban Chicagoland, the only things available in a ten mile radius was pizza.
Once I tried to make a jelly roll. The recipe called for spreading the batter on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. I had no wax paper, so I used plastic wrap. Then I wondered where the plastic wrap had gone, and decided I’d forgotten it. So I put in the filling, rolled, sprinkled the powdered sugar and served. You can guess where the plastic wrap went.
Another time in my poverty, I decided to cook a rotisserie chicken on a small rotisserie we’d gotten as a wedding present. Being poor, I bought the cheapest chicken I found-a big fat stewing chicken. I actually couldn’t cut into it-we tore off bits and believe me, Wrigley’s got nothing on that.
I think I have told this story before – but anyway, here it goes 
During my university years in Barcelona, I lived in a flat shared with 4 other students. We shared kitchen duty, with each of us cooking dinner for everybody one day from Monday to Friday.
When it was my turn, I decided that I’d cook spaghetti with a nice meat sauce. That day I had a bad head cold and couldn’t smell anything – remember this, it will be important.
I gathered the ingredients, and from the fridge I picked up the communal tube of tomato paste we had. I used it all, to make a nice, flavourful tomato sauce. As I was cooking, one of my flatmates came into the kitchen and said to me: “Hmm, looks nice, but the smell is a bit weird.” “Oh, it will be good, trust me.” “OK…”
I take the meal to the table, and we begin eating.
Absolutely inedible. Horrible, horrible spiciness, everybody lunged for water or something to quench the supernovas that had suddenly appeared in our mouths and throats!
What the HELL had happened? Well… … The tube of “tomato paste” I took from the fridge happened to be the wrong tube 
It was actually a tube of concentrated hot pepper paste.
And I had used it all, as the base for the sauce :smack:
In order to avoid being summarily lynched by my flatmates that very night, I had to pay for pizza for everybody from my pocket
You can be sure that, from that day on, I made sure to check very carefully what was exactly what I was using when cooking… … …
I’m having difficulty remembering what I had for dinner last night.
[QUOTE=DummyGladHands]
I decided to cook a rotisserie chicken on a small rotisserie we’d gotten as a wedding present. Being poor, I bought the cheapest chicken I found-a big fat stewing chicken. I actually couldn’t cut into it-we tore off bits and believe me, Wrigley’s got nothing on that.
[/QUOTE]
Oh yes, I’ve done that before. Go to store and grab a chicken-shaped object. Being in a rush and not paying attention helps here. Get home, put the chickenoid on the rotisserie and an hour and a half later, I’m fishing the bird’s wrapper out of the trash to see if I bought some sort of inedible movie prop. :smack:
You’re Bo Pilgrim’s most favorite person in the whole world.
In college I had 7 or 8 friends come over to cook a brisket. Dirt poor, we all chipped in, I cooked it on the outdoor grill wrapped in foil and we were going to drink beer and eat like kings. We ended up just drinking beer because the entire bottom half scorched to the point where it looked the cow got stuck in magma and was hit by lightning. We learned our lesson though and from then on spent all our precious money just on beer.
Mom’s attempt at homemade split pea soup about 30ish years ago is legend- wait for it- dary.
She put the ingredients in a crockpot before work and let it cook all day and cook it did. She got home from work, went to serve supper… and well… it all went in the dumpster including the crock pot. We had pizza for supper that evening.
I believe the “soup” eventually was used as the foundation for some new beachfront condos in the area.