Well, my most recent failed experiment was last week. I got a recipe for Jamaican beef patties online, and wanted to try them. Well, first off, it called for scotch bonnet peppers, which are almost as hot as habeneros. Since I had none, no peppers went in. Skip to half an hour to serving time, I have the dough for the beef-stuff, I now had to make patties out of the dough, put in my beef mixture (which was basically beef, onions, water, and breadcrumbs because of the stuff I was lacking.) Well, no time for that. So I just put the beef stuff in a pan and covered it with the dough (which contained a LOT of curry, BTW.)
I took it out of the oven with the bread not quite done and served it. Words cannot desribe how awful it was. First off, the bef mixture had NO flavor whatsoever, so the only thing anyone tasted was uncooked curry bread. Ugh.
zenzelli, what kind of chocolate chip cookies were you making that you have to put the ingredients in in a certain order? When I make them, I just toss everything in a big bowl willy-nilly - the only thing I have an order to is that I always save the chips for last, so the rest of the dough is blended. Everything else goes in as I grab it.
My story:
Some friends and I were having a bit of a mini-party on the spur of the moment, at my house, spending the night to watch scary movies and hang out. We decided to try to make some refreshments. Two of us wanted to make smoothies, two were less adventurous and just wanted juice.
Well, I didn’t have any juice in my kitchen, so I made “kool-aid” for them out of cherry jell-o packets.
We didn’t have much in the way of fruit in my kitchen, so the “smoothies” consisted of:
Ice cubes
Mango
Blueberries
Strawberry-Vanilla and Strawberry-Banana Swirl Danimals yogurt
They were HORRIBLE. The mango imparted a hideous slippery feel to the whole; the swirled yogurt flavors, well, I’m not a fan of yogurt anyway, but these were horrible (from now on, if I must use yogurt, I use plain unflavored), the ice cubes didn’t crush right so there were CHUNKS in it, and the blueberries were NOT a positive taste sensation.
We should’ve just gone to the store.
Long ago, when I did not know how to cook, which was approximately before I was born (I was delivered with a spatula in my hand… and yes, it was a painful birth) I used to make spaghetti by boiling the noodles, saucing them with ketchup (Heinz 57 fer criminey sakes, I’m civilized, you know!) and topping them with grated Cheddar cheese.
Now that you’re done hurling, I will tell you that one time I attempted to jazz things up with some soy sauce… yes, soy sauce. Don’t try this at home, in fact, don’t try this at all unless you are a masochist. Does the word suckalicious ring a bell? How about craptacular? 'Nuff said.
A few years thereafter I volunteered to make a special Danish porridge for breakfast during a camping trip to Point Reyes. Since whole milk would not keep in our unrefrigerated backpacks I brought the best dehydrated milk money could buy (i.e., Foremost Milkman™). However, I neglected to blend it with water the previous night in order to obtain the best results before mixing it with the rice flour that morning. After the correct amount of cooking, it most perfectly approximated a fine rendition of library paste. Nothing more and nothing less. You could have easily hung wallpaper with it. Put up circus posters all over town? No problem!
On a camping trip to Lake Tahoe twenty years ago I decided to make blueberry pancakes. I had a small tin of blueberries and instead of wasting the juice I thought I’d play boy genius and mix the syrup into the batter for “purple pancakes” al fresco. When the tainted mess hit the overheated aluminum Sigg Tourister pot lid cum frying pan it instantly adhered with a weld factor of 1. The howling laughter of my girlfriend only served to increase my intense humiliation as I attempted to crowbar the fused flapjack from the ersatz skillet. My second attempt was different from the first only in the increased amplitude of my lover’s cackling laughter.
Several years ago, when I first began to make salsas I decided that I wanted to create a completely different (as in, “And now for something completely different…”) type of salsa. I settled upon the idea of making a “white salsa”. The ingredients:
[li] White onion[/li][li] Cucumber[/li][li] Garlic[/li][li] White vinegar[/li]
Trust me, it didn’t work. It really didn’t work… at all.
A friend of mine was making "Your basic everyday chocolate cookies"™. The recipe book said “Mix butter and eggs in a bowl. Add flour. Add half cup for rounder cookies” My friend decided his cookies didn’t need to be that round, so he only put in a quarter cup. Neglecting the three cups of flour in the ingredients list
What with the shortening and such, the little balls of dough didn’t look too bad as they went into the oven. But as soon as the heat hit it, they became little clumps of melted chocolate on a sea of butter, egg and shortening.
That was my biggest failure in the kitchen… blehhh! Did you taste it? Don’t!
Also, has anyone tried to make Pringles? I made a little effort: instant mashed potatoes on a glass dish, microwaved. It stuck like glue to the dish. But the pieces I could pry off tasted good, like un-flavored or -salted Pringles.
I wonder why there aren’t any ‘generic’ Pringles knock-offs — they’ve been around too long to be patent-protected… Hmmmm…
I’ve ruined more meringue than you can shake a stick at.
For some reason, meringue techniques escaped me for the longest time.
I’ve also tried making fudge without a candy thermometer, convinced that I had done it enough that I could eyeball it. Cleaning the pot after that was a nightmare.
That was my biggest failure in the kitchen… blehhh! Did you taste it? Don’t!
Also, has anyone tried to make Pringles? I made a little effort: instant mashed potatoes on a glass dish, microwaved. It stuck like glue to the dish. But the pieces I could pry off tasted good, like un-flavored or -salted Pringles.
I wonder why there aren’t any ‘generic’ Pringles knock-offs — they’ve been around too long to be patent-protected… Hmmmm…
Racinchikki I think my mistake was not blending the soft stuff separately, or something, what I remember is a big unmixable mess, not even close to cookie dough…eck.
Who knows? Maybe my wooden spoon was possessed by a demon.
Or it could have been the bowl…no one ever blames the bowl.
I’m a good cook, but I just can’t make good fried chicken. No matter what recipe I try, it just comes out soggy, not crispy. And the kitchen smells. I’ve just given up and usually make oven-fried chicken.
My sister decided to bake some brownies from
the Duncan Hines? mix which included the little packet of
softened chocolate.
She didnt combine the little packet of chocolate into the mix.
After the brownies were baked she, yes, I’m sorry to say she… ICED THE BROWNIES with the softened chocolate. The VERY BITTER chocolate.
We will never ever let her forget it.
I always mix the “dry” ingredients together before adding them to the butter + sugar, so that the baking powder and salt, etc. get distributed evenly throughout the batter rather than clumping up. Also, when making crunchy chocolate chip cookies, many people use a sugar cookie-style base, which involves alternating between mixing in the flour and the milk (about 1/3 at a time), ending with milk.
As for culinary disastes, mine was an improvised “stroganoff”, attempted by adding “onion and garlic” soup mix to sour cream with a dash of red wine and pouring it over swedish meatballs on rotini with sauteed green peppers and onions. Atrocious. The faux garlic in the soup mix was truly awful.
Ahh. I see. I’ve never made crunchy ones (or sugar cookies) so I didn’t know about that. And :shrug: I’ve never had a problem with clumping, but maybe that’s just me. Maybe it’s because I use melted butter?
My failed culinary experiments?
Anytime I make something that doesn’t come right out of a can. I have, in the past, messed up cereal. Note that it is always a good idea to check your milk if you are single!
A friend of mine, on making her first Thanksgiving turkey, did not know about the plastic bag o’ giblets. Y’all can imagine the results.
Another friend, making pancakes. When the pancakes started forming bubbles, she squashed them down with a spatula. The pancakes had the taste and consistency of linoleum.
Last Thanksgiving I fried the turkey with the giblets still inside. Thank goodness they weren’t in a plastic bag, they were just shoved inside the turkey.
It probably would have been upsetting had my father not eaten most of them.
Deep fried turkey giblets = yummy! (to my father anyway.)
When I made my very first turkey as a newlywed, my mom walked me through it on the phone (I was 20). She told me to pull out the stuff that was inside the turkey. The little bag wasn’t so bad - it was the long, slimy neck that nearly did me in.
That is so funny! I was making veggie soup which I usually do well but I couldn’t find any tomato base at all so in my infinite wisdom I decided to use ketchup instead… green ketchup… blah!!! The taste was not as bad as you’d imagine but nothing could have looked worse!!!
Oh boy, reminds me of a famous story involving neighbors of ours when I was a little kid. Father was a salmon fisherman, and one Thanksgiving he decided to spend on the boat, with a couple of his guys and his 14-year-old son, Paul. For whatever sadistic reason, he assigned Paul KP duty, including turkey preparation. So Paul roasted the turkey according to the wrapper instructions…
with said wrapper still on the turkey. :eek: :eek:
My mom was famous for a different experiment - she was a fabulous cook, well known in the neighborhood. As was typically late-sixties, she decided to start baking bread. And she decided that rye bread would be worth a try. Teeny, tiny problem: she took a white-bread recipe and just substituted rye flour.
Enough loaves like that and she coulda built the Great Wall.
My worst disaster was a birthday breakfast for my father when I was 15 - it started with a sort of baked-custard affair, and I, um, kinda forgot to put it in a pan of water first. So it baked for however long, and smelled kinda weird and sulfrous…so I took it out, and gingerly cut into it…and it was green. A sort of greyish green, mind you, but green no less, with a smell I can only describe as that of vulcanized eggs. I have not attempted a birthday breakfast since.
I DID THIS!! It was a big ol’ mess! We even tried to let the sea of chocolate chip cookie whatever dry off and cut out the cookies… but they were the most disgusting things. They tasted like hard butter only worse.
Other failures… Well, lets see. Anytime I ever try to play Iron Chef… that just doesn’t work out. It doesn’t matter how fail proof the ingredient is… I just am a slow cooker… I don’t have enough time. Everything is always rushed and become half cooked piles of goop. (I even remember trying to convince my g/f it was hamburger style-sushi)
Hmmmm… Otherwise, I can’t think of anything else. I try to follow recipe’s fairly closely if I don’t know it well. And if I do know it well, I usually have the recipe book handy just in case… I must say I’ve gotten to be a pretty decent cook though…
I’ve been smirking at this thread for a couple of days now. But this evening I went to my kitchen to do battle once more with FISH CAKES…and was again defeated.
I don’t know why I can’t produce a simple fucking croquette, but I’ve never turned out a decent one in my life. Usually I curse and whomp them with the spatula and end up serving them as hash instead.
Then again, perhaps the pertinent question is WHY I want to consume fish cakes in the first place. I’ll bet the first time I get 'em right, I’ll immediately lose interest.
