# Great Cooking Disasters Of Our Time **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 22, 2009, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722 "2009-10-22T09:58:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2009, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/61 "2009-10-26T19:11:39Z")
One of my teachers used to claim his wife burnt the ice cubes. He really was adamant that she couldn’t cook. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/62 "2009-10-27T15:34:13Z")
I volunteered, as a brand new mom, to make pumpkin bread (baked in empty coffee cans) for my brand new mother-in-law’s bake sale. I had a great recipe, made it dozens of times to great acclaim. I whiped up a HUGE batch one morning - mix the wet things, mix the dry things, fold in, fill up the coffee cans, bake. I did this. I thought I did this. I got the stuff baking in the oven, went to clean up the kitchen…imagine my surprise to find a bowl full of the dry things still sitting there on the table! I was baking the eggs, pumpkin, raisins, dates, nuts - forgot to add the flour! I burst into tears - all that work, all that expense, all for nothing. To this day I think about it and wonder HOW in the world I could have messed up so badly. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/63 "2009-10-27T15:55:22Z")
> [@congodwarf](#): > > … > Oh, I also cooked the giblets once. I was 10 and it was my first turkey. I have come close to doing it again but have always caught myself. My son nearly did this, just a week or so ago. I was up to my elbows in Concord grapes (to make a pie) and the chicken needed to be put in the oven to roast. As **Dweezil** is taking a gourmet cooking class in high school, I thought he could do the bird under my instruction. He couldn’t quite figure out how to do the trussing, so I washed up and went over to help with that. Then I discovered the bag ‘o’ guts and explained that to him. In college, a friend of ours made Turkey A l’Orange (duck a l’orange but he couldn’t afford a duck). It was quite good even after he pulled out the roasted bag of giblets at serving time. He simply missed it - I think there was no neck, which makes the bag much smaller compared with the cavity of the bird. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/64 "2009-10-27T16:12:03Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > as a brand new mom… > To this day I think about it and wonder HOW in the world I could have messed up so badly. This is how. You were sleep-deprived, and sleep-deprived people do dumb things. ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/65 "2009-10-27T19:56:41Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > I volunteered, as a brand new mom, to make pumpkin bread (baked in empty coffee cans) for my brand new mother-in-law’s bake sale. I had a great recipe, made it dozens of times to great acclaim. I whiped up a HUGE batch one morning - mix the wet things, mix the dry things, fold in, fill up the coffee cans, bake. I did this. I thought I did this. I got the stuff baking in the oven, went to clean up the kitchen…imagine my surprise to find a bowl full of the dry things still sitting there on the table! I was baking the eggs, pumpkin, raisins, dates, nuts - forgot to add the flour! I burst into tears - all that work, all that expense, all for nothing. To this day I think about it and wonder HOW in the world I could have messed up so badly. I guess I’m not seeing why you couldn’t have pulled the coffee cans out of the oven, put everything back in the bowls, and mix the flour in. (I did something similar, actually, although I didn’t realize I’d forgotten the flour until I was eating the brownies and noticed the texture was a bit denser than normal. Luckily they still worked out rather well as flourless chocolate cake!) ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/66 "2009-10-27T20:19:40Z")
> [@Kaio](#): > > I guess I’m not seeing why you couldn’t have pulled the coffee cans out of the oven, put everything back in the bowls, and mix the flour in. You’re my best friend from middle school! How are you doing, after all these years? I didn’t know you were a Doper 😉 She was over at my house once, and we decided to make brownies. When the timer dinged, the brownies still looked uncooked. We figured out that we forgot to put the eggs in. I wanted to just throw out what we had, but she insisted that we could put the eggs in the hot pan and stir them in. She cracked the eggs into the pan, and I started stirring. Me: “The eggs are frying in the pan!” Her: “Stir faster!” We ended up throwing out the brownie and fried egg… well, 20 years later I have still not come up with a name for what we made. My mom was out while this all happened. Later, she came home, sniffed the air in the kitchen, and asked “Did you make some sort of yummy chocolate treat?” I very truthfully said “No”. ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/67 "2009-10-27T20:48:22Z")
Ha. While that’s very funny, that’s not at all what I meant. If she’d just set stuff to baking and turned around to clean the kitchen, the liquid pumpkin stuff had been in the oven for what? 5 minutes? ten? It would have been slightly more than lukewarm, and not even close to setting. There’s no reason not to just pull it out and mix the flour in. I’ve done this with banana bread where I meant to add in ground flaxseed, but forgot. It turned out fine. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/68 "2009-10-27T20:52:37Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > We ended up throwing out the brownie and fried egg… well, 20 years later I have still not come up with a name for what we made. “Breakfast.” ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/69 "2009-10-27T21:37:30Z")
My old company used to give out turkeys for Thanksgiving. Most of the time I’d just give mine away, becuase a 12 lb bird was too small for my extended family, and too much for just me. However, one year I kept it and threw it in the freezer, figuring I’d do something with it someday. Someday came in the form of an ice storm. I was housebound for 3 days, and decided since I had the time, I’d cook the turkey. Think of all the wonderful things you can do with the leftovers! So I called my mother and got instructions. Yes, I remembered to that it first. It was smelling wonderful! It came out of the oven golden-brown, with crunchy skin. And when I tried to slice it, I kept hitting bone. It turns out I cooked it upside-down. It was delicious, once I found the meat. A couple months ago I decided to have some cinnamon toast. I mixed up the cinnamon sugar and sprinkled it on the toast. That’s when I found out that chili powder-sugar isn’t at all like cinnamon sugar. StG ---
**Author:** ![abbeytxs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb9ed0/32.png) [@abbeytxs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abbeytxs)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/70 "2009-10-27T21:51:01Z")
Years ago, I think I was around 8 or 9, my Great Grandmother was babysitting. She was the most laid back, easy going person and allowed us to pretty much do whatever we wanted. My best friend and I decided we would bake a cake. It came out ok. So we decided to make frosting for it. I don’t think they had frosting in a can back then. Even if they did, we didn’t have any on hand and no way to get to a store to buy some. We found a recipe for frosting and started assembling the ingredients. All was going well until we got to the part about needing 2 cups of Confectioner’s sugar. Neither one of us had any idea what that meant. We knew what sugar was. Its the stuff you put on your cereal in the morning. We added 2 cups of granulated sugar to the liquid ingredients in the mixer. We beat the living crap out of it, yet it never got fluffy like frosting is supposed to. We finally gave up, poured the sugar soup over the cake and presented it to my Great Grandmother. Being the awesome person that she was, she cut herself a nice big slice, ate it all and told us what incredible bakers we were! ---
**Author:** ![badbadrubberpiggy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/57b2e6/32.png) [@badbadrubberpiggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/badbadrubberpiggy)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/71 "2009-10-27T21:52:03Z")
> [@StGermain](#): > > My old company used to give out turkeys for Thanksgiving. Most of the time I’d just give mine away, becuase a 12 lb bird was too small for my extended family, and too much for just me. However, one year I kept it and threw it in the freezer, figuring I’d do something with it someday. Someday came in the form of an ice storm. I was housebound for 3 days, and decided since I had the time, I’d cook the turkey. Think of all the wonderful things you can do with the leftovers! So I called my mother and got instructions. Yes, I remembered to that it first. It was smelling wonderful! It came out of the oven golden-brown, with crunchy skin. And when I tried to slice it, I kept hitting bone. It turns out I cooked it upside-down. It was delicious, once I found the meat. > StG My father did this, the first time he made a turkey. My poor mom kept looking and looking for the drippings, because there were almost none - she was terrified it would be bone-dry. Apparently, they all went into the breast meat instead, and made the best turkey we ever had. I don’t often cook turkey, b/c I don’t really like it even when it’s cooked properly, but when I make a whole chicken, I do it upside down. It’s a great way to cook a bird, if you’re not concerned with skin on the breast side is going to look. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/72 "2009-10-27T22:02:03Z")
> [@badbadrubberpiggy](#): > > My father did this, the first time he made a turkey. My poor mom kept looking and looking for the drippings, because there were almost none - she was terrified it would be bone-dry. Apparently, they all went into the breast meat instead, and made the best turkey we ever had. > > I don’t often cook turkey, b/c I don’t really like it even when it’s cooked properly, but when I make a whole chicken, I do it upside down. It’s a great way to cook a bird, if you’re not concerned with skin on the breast side is going to look. I did that once with an ambiguous chicken. I removed the liver giblets,and neck, and by the way, where’d the heart go?- There is never a heart… do they sell them to canners and dog food companies?, well, anyways, I put it in the roastring pan, breast side down- The thing had a back like Ahhnold’s! Turned out the juiciest, most succulent, schmalz infused breast I have ever eaten, the crispiest and juiciest basted back and pope’s nose to savor. ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/73 "2009-10-27T22:14:23Z")
My wife just (accidentally) cooked a turkey upside down last month. It didn’t look that appetizing, and the skin didn’t crisp, but it was delicious. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/74 "2009-10-27T22:58:06Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > Her: “Stir faster!” OK, I nearly fell out of my chair at this part 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/75 "2009-10-27T23:23:47Z")
Cook’s Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen recommends roasting your turkey upside down for about an hour, then pulling it out and flipping it over for the remainder of the roasting time. That was a great idea, so last year I did it… and didn’t consider how tough it would be to flip over a blazing-hot, slippery, ~25 lb turkey! I did manage, but I was worried for a bit there. ---
**Author:** ![King\_Solomon\_Hill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/59ef9b/32.png) [@King\_Solomon\_Hill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/King_Solomon_Hill)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/76 "2009-10-28T01:22:45Z")
Camping one year with a friend of mine who is usually an excellent chef, he decided to dig a Celtic cooking pit, like he’d seen on one of those survival TV shows. It involved digging a big hole in the ground, lighting a fire in it, then throwing in a chicken and burying it. At first it tasted pretty good, maybe it was the beer, but it was better than you’d expect a chicken buried in a flaming hole for several hours to taste. Sadly however it was too dark and we were to drunk at that stage to realise that it was pretty much raw in the middle until it was far too late. The evening ended with a memorable vomitathon under the stars. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/77 "2009-10-28T01:35:25Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Parents are away, I’m maybe 15, so I’ll cook for myself! Put on baked beans to cook the way it said on the can - place can in boiling water for a few minutes, open and serve. An hour later I’m deeply engrossed in a book in my room downstairs when I hear WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMP - as the ad almost says “oh my god, the beans!”. > > The kitchen was covered - nay, _coated_ - with scaldingly hot baked bean sauce on every single surface regardless of orientation. The day we left the house 10 years later the ceiling still had a somewhat orange cast to it, which oddly but luckily, no-one but me seemed to notice. Dude! When you boil a can, you have to punch a hole in the top! I was reading a cookbook from the library and in the desserts there was a recipe for making dulce de leche by boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk for an hour or so. There was a sticker on the page said “see page one of this book” - and on page one was a printed note glued on saying “WARNING: DO NOT BOIL an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk in a pan on the stove” … can explode and kill you..etc. Imagine! they caught this gross error after the book was published and on the market, and someone went to the trouble to print out warnings and glue them in all the individual books out there! ---
**Author:** ![I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Am_The_Lorax)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/78 "2009-10-28T20:41:52Z")
When I was fifteen and had very little cooking experience, I tried to do something nice for my mom. She was at work, we had plenty of eggs; I was going to make a batch of egg salad so she’d have it for lunch the next day. I knew that when raviolis and pierogies were done, they floated. So I put the eggs on to boil and waited, and waited, had to add some more water, and wait some more. My aunt called three hours later and howled with laughter when I asked how long it was supposed to take for eggs to float. The egg salad wasn’t the best, but it was sort of edible. My family still laughs at me about that, and I laugh with them because they all say I turned into the best cook in the family. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/79 "2009-10-28T20:54:53Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > Dude! When you boil a can, you have to punch a hole in the top! I was reading a cookbook from the library and in the desserts there was a recipe for making dulce de leche by boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk for an hour or so. There was a sticker on the page said “see page one of this book” - and on page one was a printed note glued on saying “WARNING: DO NOT BOIL an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk in a pan on the stove” … can explode and kill you..etc. Imagine! they caught this gross error after the book was published and on the market, and someone went to the trouble to print out warnings and glue them in all the individual books out there! I don’t know about boiling, but putting an unopened can of condensed milk into a pot of water, completely covering it, bringing it to a boil, and then _simmering_ for three hours or so is a somewhat well-known technique for making a caramel-like substance (like dulce de leche). The Michelin-starred restaurant I worked at in Scotland would make a dessert filling in this manner. ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722/80 "2009-10-29T00:29:01Z")
This isn’t up there with most of the atrocities in this thread, but the other night my husband cooked a spaghetti squash. No big deal. He does that all the time. But this time, he felt too lazy to cut it in half. So he poked some shallow holes in it and tossed it in the microwave. Spaghetti squash makes a pretty loud noise when it explodes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-cooking-disasters-of-our-time/514722.md?page=5)