# Food disasters **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 23, 2013, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060 "2013-01-23T00:23:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/1 "2013-01-23T00:23:35Z")
My wife decided she was going to make lasagna her own way, which meant taking a tub of ricotta and sauteing it in a pan with half a block of cookeen and sugar to make a rue. > **[Cookeen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookeen)** > > Cookeen is a British brand of block vegetable fat, marketed for use in making pastry, and other baked goods. It is claimed to be usable straight from the refrigerator. > It is sold by Princes Limited, a British food producer owned by Mitsubishi. The brand is owned by Edible Oils Limited, a joint venture between Archer Daniels Midland, an American food processing corporation, and Princes. The product is produced at a factory in Erith, England. > In October 2006, Cookeen and the other hard vegetabl... Then pouring it over cooked noodles and baking it, with ketchup on top. :eek: Even she won’t eat it! ---
**Author:** ![Soul\_Brother\_Number\_Two](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/soul_brother_number_two/32/3515_2.png) [@Soul\_Brother\_Number\_Two](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soul_Brother_Number_Two)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/2 "2013-01-23T00:27:59Z")
Sweet holy Jesus. Cookeen. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/3 "2013-01-23T00:31:28Z")
Ugh… Ricotta sautéed in Crisco? and sugar? No way in the world that would ever form a roux, but it will be a nasty cheese-ish sauce. Someone needs to confiscate her stove! ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/4 "2013-01-23T00:31:54Z")
Wow. And I thought the time that I made dressing (of the Thanksgiving/Turkey kind) and forgot to add the spices was horrible. I panicked and put the spices in the already-baking dressing, making for a quite untasty dish. Had I left the spices out, it would have been fine, just kind of bland. But with the dry spices… ugh. Fortunately, it was the first time I’ve ever made dressing from scratch so I could chalk it up as a learning experience. Next time I made it (for Christmas dinner, for 20 people) it was very good. But that first time… I’m still apologizing to my wife. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/5 "2013-01-23T03:15:58Z")
I’d give it to the dog, but I don’t want to be charged with animal cruelty. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/6 "2013-01-23T03:39:42Z")
that is an abomination. WTF was she thinking? ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/7 "2013-01-23T03:43:31Z")
No kidding… it doesn’t take much culinary training of any kind, or even theoretical cookbook reading to realize that “recipe” isn’t going to produce a very good result. I’m sure you could eat it and it might even be nutritious in some way, but it damn sure won’t taste very good. My own personal worst food disaster was one where I tried to make General Tso’s chicken, except that the internet recipe I used was missing a couple of steps. I ended up with a super-intense, gluey/gelatinous sauce that stuck all the fried chicken pieces together, and made it taste pretty atrocious. ---
**Author:** ![SeaDragonTattoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@SeaDragonTattoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeaDragonTattoo)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/8 "2013-01-23T03:48:31Z")
That was a really knuckleheaded thing to do. Has she ever cooked before? I mean, beyond boiling water? Maybe she’s trying to get kicked out of the kitchen. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/9 "2013-01-23T03:55:33Z")
If she asks you what you want for dinner, and you say “I don’t care”, this is what you get. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/10 "2013-01-23T03:58:56Z")
She actually isn’t a bad cook, and in the past has made rue sauces and homemade mac and cheese that wasn’t bad at all. But she has never used ricotta, and I think she wasn’t sure what to do with it(she thought it was going to rise like bread). Ok this one time I get to say I told you so. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/11 "2013-01-23T03:59:47Z")
My mom put the Thanksgiving turkey in the oven one year and then went out to due some errands. She instructed my brother to baste it periodically. When she got back hours later, my brother insisted that he’d really tried, but there’d never been any juices to baste with. The turkey was indeed in the oven, but the oven was not on. We ate at 9PM that year. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/12 "2013-01-23T04:03:04Z")
When I hear about food disasters I always think it’s not that bad, and I’ve probably done worse. Not this time. ---
**Author:** ![Hockey\_Monkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a183cd/32.png) [@Hockey\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hockey_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/13 "2013-01-23T04:10:15Z")
If she had used flour instead of sugar, and cooked the flour in the cookeen for several minutes before adding the cheese, it may have come out OK…no make that passable. Sugar was the killer. In my food prep lab today we actually made rouxs for mac and cheese. One of the experiments was making a dark roux for the recipe. Don’t do this for mac and cheese. It’s bad. Our experiment turned out perfectly demonstrating just how bad. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/14 "2013-01-23T04:22:12Z")
My worst cooking disaster was roux related, too - it was one of my first attempts at cheese sauce, and I ended up with a big lump of hot cheese and flour and a pan full of hot oil separated off from the cheese. That was NOT a good roux! Hey, I should have put sugar on it and then ketchup on top! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/15 "2013-01-23T04:27:13Z")
> [@grude](#): > > My wife decided she was going to make lasagna her own way, which meant taking a tub of ricotta and sauteing it in a pan with half a block of cookeen and sugar to make a rue. > > [Shortening - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookeen) > > Then pouring it over cooked noodles and baking it, with ketchup on top. > > :eek: Even she won’t eat it! No offense to you intended, but this sounds pretty revolting. Way too much fat and sugar, not enough cheese or tomato, and the texture had to be pretty weird. ---
**Author:** ![Vicullum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/6de8d8/32.png) [@Vicullum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicullum)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/16 "2013-01-23T04:37:15Z")
Long ago, for some inexplicable reason my father got it in his head to help clean out the pantry while everyone was away. When he came across two half-full containers with a white granular substance in both, he assumed they were the same and dumped one into the other to save space. Only, you guessed it, one was sugar, the other salt. Not knowing this, my mother later baked up a home-made cake complete with icing. The first forkful nearly made be gag; I couldn’t spit it out fast enough. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/17 "2013-01-23T09:13:19Z")
**Grude** : It looks like your wife is setting you up to take over cooking duties. And then there were the cookies my mother once made, when she used a cup of salt, instead of a teaspoon. Well, she did have cataracts at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/18 "2013-01-23T09:55:10Z")
Reminds me of [Wanda’s macaroni salad.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4zw99VsoMA) Youtube link to the making of an gazillion calorie “salad”. ---
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/19 "2013-01-23T11:52:51Z")
My wife watches all the food porn channels, then thinks that because she saw the TV chefs do something, she can do it as well or better. We went grocery shopping one day, and came home with our loot. She was hungry, and remembered the leftover pizza from the night before. “I saw this great new way to warm up pizza on TV!” She proceeds to put several pieces in our biggest skillet, covered it with a lid, and cranked the burner. Then she turned her back on the stove to put away groceries. A couple of different times, I told her to check her pizza, with the second one being the point I was smelling something acrid. “It’ll be OK.” She continued to deal with groceries. When she finally did return to her pizza, it wasn’t just burned, but charred. She tried to eat it in front of me to save face, but as soon as I looked away, it wet into the trash. She also never repeated the pizza in a skillet technique, either. Different time, she threw a handful of parmesan cheese in the bottom of a hot skillet, and laid the garlic toast on top, then complained because the cheese wasn’t stuck to the bread. Well, you idiot, that’s because you have to press the cheese into the bread first. ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060/20 "2013-01-23T12:06:02Z")
Heating up pizza in a skillet is perfectly cromulent. It makes for a not-soggy crust. I don’t know why you’d cover it, though. Or leave it in the skillet for more than, like, 5 minutes. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-disasters/648060.md?page=2)