Well, it’s quite obvious that you have yet to live. On the streets of Copenhagen, that is. In the delicatessens you can get fiske frickerdeller med remoulade sauce (i.e., fishcakes with relish sauce). You (quite plainly) await a taste of the hereafter. Trust me Ike, if I could make these I wouldn’t have to work for a living. Any Dane is happy to claim racial superiority on the basis of this recipe alone.
As to you attention span of a fruit fly, goodness knows!
I spent well over $20 for the ingredients, leeks are expensive for some lame reason.
I tried a potato-leek soup. It’s sposed to be creamy and rich but mine turned out like glorified but runny mashed potatoes and the addition of buttloads of liquid wouldn’t make em creamy.
Decision has been made, must get professional food processor as I used a hand blender, not enough umph I guess.
Sourdough bread. Back 30 years ago, I bought a packet of sourdough starter, and used it to generate some bread. I think that it took about 10 days before it was ready for the last steps. Finally, I put the nearly-finished batch in the oven, thinking it was the most evenly-temperatured atmosphere in the house. In a glass bowl, with a hard plastic lid atop.
My husband got home before I did, and preheated the oven to make something else.
Sigh,
-Another
I tried once to make chicken soup and used the redcabbage that comes in the “soup mix” vegetable mix.
Blue chicken soup. And living on my own, I ate it.
My mother has yet to figure out how to make mashed potatoes.I even wrote these instructions down for her:
**Peel potatoes
**Cut them into small pieces
**Rinse them
**Boil in salted water until they are done i.e. very easily pierced with a fork.If they can’t resist crumbling, they’re done
**Heat up milk while the potatoes cook
**Mash with a potato ricer until fairly lump free
**Add a large spoonful of butter
**With the hand mixer on high, whip to desired consistency, SLOWLY adding the warm milk.
She slways misses a step. It’s playdough or Cream of Wheat.
Ahh, leeks. My one spectacular failure in the kitchen so far. Love the babies, and decided to try my hand at whipping up/inventing off the top of my head a recipe for Scalloped Leeks. I figured it’s just leeks in…scalloping stuff, you know? Stuff would be (as I imagined) milk, maybe cracker-crumbs, something for flavor…I at first went with a can of Cream of Chicken soup, but decided I might need something more, so I bit the bullet and added the Food of the Devil[sup]TM[/sup]: Cream of Mushroom soup. Traumatized throughout my youth, I was, by this horrendous substance (Mom was big into cassaroles). I decided it was time to grow up, be brave, and take the plunge.
Bad, bad idea.
Threw out about 80% of it. Hated to say goodbye to the leeks, but Good Lord, that was nasty.
My first and only atempt at making a fritata probably would’ve been yummy if it hadn’t exploded.
The recipe mentioned several times that you MUST use an oven-proof skillet. You cook the fritata on the stove, then bake it in the oven to brown it. Well, all my skillets have plastic handles so I used a round Pyrex casserole dish. My reasoning for this was,
1.) It can go in the oven.
2.) Although this item was made for oven use, Pyrex makes items for stove top use.
The recipe says to put a lid on it and let it cook on the stove undisturbed for however long. So I go into another room while I wait which turns out to be the smartest thing I’ve done so far. KABLAAAAM!!! I ran into the kitchen and the lid is sitting on the burner with nothing under it. Fritata and glass are everywhere, the largest piece of Pyrex left intact was about 1 inch.
I was making macaroni and cheese-the real deal where you make a white sauce, add cheese and combine this with your macaroni then bake it. After I added the cheese to the sauce I thought it looked a little too thin. I didn’t want to add flour cause uncooked flour=paste so I decided to thicken it up with a bit of cornstarch and water. I have used this method with great success many times while making gravey. I grabbed the canister (I always transfer dry food items from the box to a canister–don’t want any moisture or bugs or anything in there) and put a couple of tablespoon in a jar, mixed with water and added to sauce. It didn’t seem to thicken at all so I repeated the process adding about twice as much cornstarch. Again it didn’t seem any thicker, in fact the sauce was even thinnner than when I started. I decided to taste it then I found out why. I had been using powdered sugar instead of cornstarch. Bleh! And I ruined about 8 oz of sharp cheddar in the process.
I make sure to label my jars a little better now.
My most memorable disaster also involved cookies. These were the kind called “icebox” cookies, where you form the dough into a roll in waxed paper, chill it and then slice the dough. They were going to be very yummy, with sugar and cinnamon swirled through the dough. However, we didn’t seem to have Crisco or butter or whatever the shortening was supposed to be. So I got the bright idea of using the lovely white fat in the can my mom kept on the back of the stove. It looked just like Crisco.
Mmmmmmm. Sugar, cinnamon and…bacon.
My particular failure was about 20 years ago. I was wearing braces at the time and I had just gotten back from the orthodontist, where my braces had been tightened, leading to loose, painful teeth. Maybe I was feverish when I decided to make a green tomato pie. Yeah, that’s the reason. Really, we were out of apples so I made the green tomato pie. Everything went well so I left the pie to cool overnight. The next morning I noticed the pie was gone. My younger brother gave me a dirty look and said that he tore into the pie when he got home after midnight. He spit out the piece when he discovered what was in it. He was so mad, he threw out the pie. He still reminds me of it, years later.
Oh boy. I have plenty of failied culinary masterpieces.
I present for your amusement and delight: The Beverage of Acid Death. I had been drinking Turkish Coffee at a local restaurant and had decided I could create a reasonable facsimile at home in my automatic drip coffee maker. I added the usual amount of ground coffee to the filter. On top of this I put a few whole cardamon seeds and a stick of cinamon. I proceeded to brew the coffee in the usual automatic drip method. The aroma was wonderful! I poured a big ol’ mug of it, inhaled the fragrant steam and drank a mouthful of Acid Death. I have no idea what kind of chemical reaction took place between filter and coffee pot but I think I may have figured out the recipe for Drano. I have since then found out how to make perfect turkish coffee (hint: an automatic drip coffee maker is not involved at all in this process).
#1: Like Darkwriter, I cannot fry chicken. The outside ends up simultaniously burned/crispy and raw flour/pasty at the same time! And the inside is either burned or raw.
#2: An early attempt at Spaghetti Carbonara: [ul]
[li]Cook the spaghetti[/li][li]Fry the bacon[/li][li]Remove and crumble the bacon[/li][li]Try to get that yummy bacon-y goodness by dumping the cooked pasta in the hot bacon grease.[/li][li]Get a phone call and get distracted.[/li][li]Notice smell.[/li][li]Try to identify smell.[/li][li]Realize that “OH SHIT! I’M FRYING THE GODDAMNED SPAGHETTI” and hurriedly dump it into a bowl.[/li][li]Note that the spaghetti which has fused into a solid mass now has a loverly brownish/black crust on the bottom. Decide it’s probably still edible.[/li][li]Spend about 5 minutes looking at the spaghetti, and trying to break it up (like peanut brittle) with a chopstick (I don’t remember why a chopstick)[/li][li]Try to resolve the problem by dumping the scrambled eggs and cream on the spaghetti.[/li][li]Realize that that 5 minutes of breaking up the spaghetti-brittle has allowed it to cool enough that it no longer has the heat to cook the raw eggs.[/li][li]Try to reheat the mess in the bacon-pan[/li][li]Stir mess. Note that mess doesn’t stir. Egg is bonding at a molecular level with the pan.[/li][li]Dump resultant mess[/li][/ul]
Fenris
I was 15 years old, trying my hand at cooking a fancy dinner for my father’s birthday. As an appetizer, I was going to make fried mozzarella sticks from scratch. We didn’t have a deep-fryer, so I filled a saucepan with cooking oil, set it on the burner on high, and proceeded to dip the cheese in the batter. Water bubbles when it’s hot, right? Oil must too. Hm, the oil’s not bubbling yet, but the spaghetti’s done. I better go ahead and dump all the breaded cheese sticks into the oil at once.
Whoosh. Goodbye eyebrows and lashes.
But wait, there’s more. I did have the sense to know you smother a grease fire, so I slammed a lid onto the flaming pot. The house is now full of greasy, stinky black smoke, so I opened the back door, ran out with the pan… and hit a patch of ice on the concrete patio.
After we returned from the ER with my badly sprained ankle taped up, we ordered pizza.
I took out six lovely chicken thighs, bone in. I lovingly removed them from my own lime juice/olive oil marinade. I placed them on the preheated gas grill. I set my mental clock for 25 minutes. Ten minutes pass…I decide to check the lovely chicken thighs and see if they’re ready to turn yet. I lift the lid and discover…
…six chicken-thigh shaped charcoal briquettes. Maybe I had the heat a trifle too high, ya think? Some olive oil causing a bit of a flare-up, perhaps? Final step- go to grocery store for edible, if not homemade, rotisserie chicken.
My mother-in-law, back when she was my boyfriend’s mother, made us her specialty: whole chickens roasted in the oven on a bed of rock salt. MMMMM…she cut into one and served me a large portion first, as I was the guest of honor that evening. The thing was running as red as a rare steak. I stared in horror, wondering if it was worth spending the next two days purging to avoid insulting the lady, when my boyfriend said, “What are you trying to do, Mama, KILL HER?? The chicken isn’t done! Put it back in the oven!!”
…so I married the guy.
Tried twice to make a recipe my mother-in-law gave me, for a Dutch Breakfast Spice Cake. I couldn’t figure out what would make it rise, since there was no leavening or egg in the recipe. She insisted that it worked, though, so I tried it. First discovery: when a Dutch person says “teaspoon,” they mean “coffee spoon” which is half the size. (note: recipe contained cloves and ginger. Imagine the stench while baking.) Second, when a Dutch person says “flower,” that is a mis-translation of “self-rising flour” which does have leavening. I discovered this after making two recipes of Uber-gingerbread flavored bricks with liquid centers (after an hour and a half of baking).
…But at least I never put Comet on my pasta! HA HA HA HA!! That’s a good one!
I have a true story that will put you to shame…me too.
A few years ago I was working in a large supermarket. It was during the holidays and things were busy. As the Store Manager left that day she had a few parting words for me.
“Make sure you take the turkeys out of the bakery ovens at 7:30p.m.”
Well, I was bound to not forget so I told several other people the same thing.
See, the turkeys were for a local Rotary Club who was giving them to needy families.
I bet that the suspense is killing you. You’re wondering, “Did whatami take the turkeys out of the oven?”
The answer to that question is of course…NO!!!
As our freight crew was stocking the store at about 3:30a.m. (you’ll notice this is past the 7:30p.m. time I was told to remove the turkeys) they smelled a wonderful aroma coming from our bakery…not common for that store :).
When I entered the break room the next day prior to the start of my shift I was treated to a virtual feast in the breakroom. There on the table were 15 golden brown turkey’s waiting to be carved. I went to one, ready to snatch a drumstick…
Have you ever eaten rock?
p.s.
We did replace the turkeys for the needy…
As always, Google is your friend. Or not in this case, if this is the recipe you tried to follow. 
Spaghetti and eggs.
No wonder I never see it on menus.
I also had a rock candy related mishap. Must’ve been about 10 at the time with a science-experiment book that had instructions to make rock candy. Had no problem getting the supersaturated liquid but wasn’t sure how to get the string to dangle into the liquid, so I used a nut. Yeah, the hardware kind. If I ever try this again, I’ll use a lifesaver.
BTW: it is possible to make your own microwave popcorn. Just use a paper lunch sack and some cooking spray instead of that bowl.
Then there’s the time I wanted to make a chocolate cake for my Boy Scout troop, except I forgot the sugar.
I’ve been known for more than a few failed culinary experiments.
When my husband and I were first dating many years ago my friends and I decided it would be fun to cook dinner for our boyfriends together (we were 19) - 40 (garlic) clove chicken, some kind of salmon pasta salad and vegetables.
We didn’t peel the garlic cloves when we put them in the chicken, then forgot to turn on the stove. After 30 minutes we checked the oven and realized it was ice-cold. When we finally got it cooking and tasted it the chicken had no flavor whatsoever because the garlic wasn’t peeled. Then we moved on to the pasta salad. We were too poor to spring for fresh salmon, so we bought canned. The cheapest brand available. It smelled and tasted like rotten cat food. There was no saving this meal and my husband reminds me of this disaster every time I cook something that’s not up to par.
My dad can’t cook - boiled hot dogs are a stretch for him. One day when mom was at work he wanted something sweet. He tried to make fudge but we were out of sugar so he substituted maple syrup.