Hmmm.
My cousin/next door neighbor and I both love to cook, and sometimes we try new recipes out togther. Once, we spent the day at my grandmother’s house and we decided to cook something. The pastry part of the eclairs came out beautifully, and I made chocolate frosting to put inside with sugar from an unmarked container. You know what comes next. Ughhhhh. Don’t EVER cook in a kitchen you’re not familiar with, never ever.
Add a little sugar to cut the acidity. Start with a half-teaspoon or so, taste, add more as necessary.
Huh, I thought those were gulab jamun (which I’ve made - flex). Upon Googling, it seems they’re a bit different in process; it looks like gulab jamun are made with powdered milk as the base ingredient, and no cheese-making is done. How do the two desserts differ in terms of texture and taste?
Sorry for the hijack but would you mind sharing those tricks? I’ve wanted to try cheesemaking and that recipe looks yummy. Should I use whole milk or is something lower fat OK? The recipe calls for yogurt. I assume that means plain yogurt, yes?
Doesn’t fix salty tho. I made a too salty batch of mac and cheese recently. Added a little sugar to try and fix it. Maybe a teaspoon. It wasn’t inedible… but most ended up in the trash.
I was raised to make fudge the “right” way(at least according to all the older women in my family), which means marshmallow fluff in the recipe, not sweetened condensed milk. Given this, I can only assume that sweetened condensed milk is easier to work with than fluff. Fluff is hard, because if you’re not careful to make sure that it’s boiling instead of bubbling, the fudge will not set, and is fit only for being glopped onto icecream.
On the other hand, if you’re 17, making fudge for the first time on your own, and extremely anxious about making sure it’s boiling, another bad thing can happen. This bad thing is that the fluff burns some, but doesn’t look burned. It doesn’t look black like other burned things do, but it does give the fudge a rich smoky flavor. I don’t recommend it.
When I was only 11 or so, my friend Dawn and I discovered that you really do need some cold water and some boiling water to make jello properly. I can’t quite recall if we only used cold or only boiling (I suspect the latter) but it too never set. I still have no idea why the temperature of the water makes that difference.
Way back in the early 70’s, not too long after getting married, my wife and had moved to Boston (from the midwest) and we bought some salt cod to make for dinner. Our troubles started with the fact that neither one of us knew a damn thing about seafood and we were too lazy to look up anything in a cookbook. We placed the fish in a Corningware dish with some oil and pepper and proceeded to bake it in the oven. We took it out of the oven and it looked great. We both fixed our plates, sat down, cut off a piece (the fact that it was so crunchy didn’t faze us one bit) and both took our first bites at about the same time. We both spit the fish out at the velocity of a high speed projectile and started consuming copious quantities of water. :smack:
No way to rescue that particular fiasco!
I once screwed up FRIED RICE.
I was 15. My parents were out so I had to feed myself. Instead of breaking out the ramen I decided to make some real food. I had no cooked rice sitting around so I cooked some with a bowl of water in a microwave. Then I added salt, egg, fish balls, crab stick, shrimp, peas and bok choy. It was going to be the raddest fried rice EVAR.
Then I tasted a little bit of the rice. It seems I accidentally added SUGAR instead of salt. Well, maybe it’s still salvageable. I put too much effort into this plate of rice to just toss it out! I put the stuff on a cheescloth and ran water through it. Then I squeezed the water out. Unfortunately, a little bit of smooshed-up rice came through the cloth as well, but never mind that! Alas, the water did not wash out the sugar but instead left me with a mushy, sweet and waterlogged blob of rice. Oh well. Maybe I can just cover up the taste. So I added salt. A lot of salt. WAY too much salt. Which then turned out to be MSG :smack:
Anyway, long story short, my parents came home to find a steaming, beautiful, untouched plate of fried rice on the counter and me muching on a block of dry ramen. Their confusion ended soon after they tasted the rice. Then they started laughing at me. Have they no sympathy?
Teenage cooking adventures, hooray!
My worst wasn’t actually a meal, it was a condiment. When I was in grade school, maybe 8 years old or so, I went through a phase where I was fascinated by the process of sprouting various beans and seeds. I did mung sprouts successfully, alfalfa sprouts, and a few other kinds (yes, my mom is a hippie and she encouraged that sort of thing).
I also had strange tastes in food - rather adult for someone my age - and loved Dijon mustard, but Mom wouldn’t buy it because my sister to this day is a 100% meat-and-potatoes person, so Mom would only buy yellow mustard (which my sister wouldn’t eat anyway, but that’s beside the point).
So one day I decided I was going to make my own Dijon mustard. Of course, I had no clue how to do so, but for some reason I decided it involved sprouting mustard seeds as a prep step. I went down the street to the local health food store, bought some mustard seeds, and sprouted them. Then I thought about what else probably went into mustard (why I didn’t just read the label on the jar, I have no idea). It must have salt and pepper, right? And it’s French, so it must have white wine in it, right? And maybe some herbs - what herbs are French? Rosemary? Thyme? Tarragon? Let’s throw in some of each!
So I threw all that crap in the blender with the mustard sprouts. Needless to say, what I ended up with was a far cry from mustard.
True enough; I’m not sure anything can fix too salty. Maybe diluting it by making another batch of mac and cheese without salt. 
I screwed up plain rice.
College. Some friends decided to make rice & handed me a skillet and something that looked vaguely rice-like, but not quite.
I’d grown up in a house with multiple rice cookers. You put rice in & wash it, you put in water, you turn it on, and magically after a while, there’s rice. I don’t quite know how it works - but it does. Every time. Without fail.
So, I put rice & water into the skillet and stared at it. Then went back to reading or talking or something. It honestly didn’t occur to me that I’d have to do anything. And shortly afterwards, parts were burned, parts were raw, there were some cooked grains - but they were few and far between, and they were definitely the wrong temperature. Luckily, some people like burned rice - so some of it got eaten. But for the most part, it was mess. I still don’t know what the hell you’re supposed to do with rice & a skillet.
The worst, however, was bread. It was a recipe from cooking light. Combine white flour, whole wheat flour and water - press it out very thin and then heat it. I got not so much “bread” as those christmas ornaments you make in preschool out of playdough.
As a kid I was making a Jello no bake cheesecake (which are truly awful) and it says to dunk in water to lossen before serving. (i.e. the bottom of the pan) Well I dunked the entire thing under water. Nothing like a soggy Jello cheescake.
My sister got the salt and suger amounts switched on a batch of sugar cookies.
My mother made her eat a whole cookie as a lesson.
Once I made bacon cheeseburgers with the last bit of hamburger, lettuce, tomatoe…etc. I had it all done and was carring it all to the living room…and dumped it all in the floor.
Gulab jamuns are deep fried and then stewed in rose/sugar syrup
ras gullas are basically paneer balls in sugar syrup. There’s no deep frying.
The trick with rasgula is to get the paneer to stay intact. With gulab jamun your main concern is trying to get it fluffy and light instead of hard and leaden.
But I like to think gulab jamuns are the matzo ball debate for desis. I grew up in a heavily Jewish town and some kids just preferred their mom’s heavy, leaden matzos despite the light and fluffy standard. Same for me-a dense, hard gulab jamun for me…it reminds me of my mom.
Once I made a Chinese-style steamed trout with green onions, ginger, and soy sauce. I suddenly realized as it was steaming that I was missing the Band-Aid from my cut finger. I searched the kitchen, with no luck; when I took out the fish, no Band-Aid in sight; then I opened up the fish and there, in its body cavity, where I had stuffed some ginger and green onions, was the Band-Aid. I ate a little bit from the outside of the fish (it was my Band-Aid, after all) but the idea was just too revolting and I had to throw most of it away.
Last night I made challah from scratch. It took all day:
10 AM: mix and knead dough; let rise
11 AM: punch down dough; let rise
6 PM: knead dough; let rise
6:15 PM: shape challah loaf into beautifully braided, egg-washed piece of bread art; let rise again
7 PM: start baking challah
7:15 PM: rotate bread in oven so it browns evenly. So far, so good…
7:30 PM: 15 minutes later: check on my beautiful loaf of bread and discover that it is now a deep, shiny, dark brown, like a varnished walnut cabinet, and that the crust is hard as a rock 
The first time I made fudge, I was ambitious and used a traditional recipe. So, I pulled out my candy thermometer, followed all of the instructions to the letter, and watched that thermometer like a hawk. Now, if you’ve ever made fudge, you know that after you cook it, you have to stir it until it “breaks”. It can be a pretty exacting thing, but I didn’t know that at the time. I kept stirring and stirring the syrup until my arm was about to fall off. Finally, I thought I saw it start to lose its sheen, so I dumped it in the pan, and called it a day. About 1/2 of the pan turned out pretty good, and the other half was like really, really yummy tootsie rolls… except about 10 times denser and tougher. I’m lucky I don’t have any fillings because they would have been gone. I just took the rest of the “fudge” to work and ditched it in the lunchroom while no one was looking.
And then there was the time my sister made mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving. My brother was bringing over his girlfriend… who he had forgotten to tell us was vegan. We improvised and figured that we could make the mashed potatoes with margarine and vegetable broth, so she would at least have that. My sister had almost finished them and was just seasoning them… when the cap came off the salt shaker and dumped a metric buttload of salt in the potatoes. :smack: We tried to add more potatoes to see if we could dilute it, but in the end, it was just absolutely godawful. Amusing enough, my brother and his girlfriend broke up shortly after that.
My guess is the oil was rancid. Not too long ago I made some brownies with oil that smelled a bit off, but I thought it would come out OK. The finished product tasted worse than the oil smelled.
Probably, but it wasn’t necessarily your fault. Ovens have quirks resulting in differing temperatures in different parts of the oven, and the temp on the dial may not reflect the actual temp inside. Professional quality ovens are designed better to minimize these problems, but the rest of us just have to figure our ovens out by trial and error.
I think if she did what she intended, it would still be very weird.
Fish is cooked when you can drag a fork across the grain and it flakes easily. (Unless you’re making a seared ahi steak or something like that. This should only be done with sushi grade fish anyway.) The edges should be slightly translucent. If you have a piece more than about 1" thick, turn it over about halfway through cooking. In my experience, the thickest piece of fish you can successfully cook in an oven is 2", and that was some salmon steaks with herb butter, under the broiler. The butter helps conduct heat to the center.
Cold water doesn’t dissolve the gelaltin and you get clumps. Boiling water will eventually break down the gelatin, destroying its ability to set.
Salt cod is preserved, and inedible in its original form. You’re supposed to soak it in a bunch of water for a day or two, to remove the salt and reconstitute it. I’ve never had it but my mom used to complain about how hard it was to find bacalau (the Portuguese version).
My rice recipe. There’s other ones in that thread and around the board, take your pick. Although mine is clearly the best.
Now you’ll probably want to know about my food fiascos. Well, in the PS2 game Harvest Moon they’re actually called Food Fiascos, and they appear as a lump of charcoal on a dinner plate. In the real world, I was making some pancit and accidentally used way too much damn fish sauce. Fish sauce in small amounts adds a nice flavor to lots of Asian dishes. Too much makes it smell like funky fish and taste like a salt mine. Another time I tried to make fried chicken, but I couldn’t control the temperature well enough on my ancient and lame electric stove, and I ended up with some crap that was burned on the outside and raw in the middle.
I’ve told this story a couple times here before, but I figure one more time is due.
I was living at my parents house very shortly after college. It was football season, and we’re pretty big on watching the games Sundays. I decided I’d treat the family by making my Chili, which I’m pretty proud of, for lunch during the game. Mom excitedly buys some suordough bread bowls for the occasion.
There was one detail which I should mention, the recipe is cooked in a crockpot for about 8 hours, meaning it needed to get cooking very early in the morning. Of course I was recently out of college and partying on the weekends, so I decided that I’d just prepare the chili before passing out after the Saturday nigt festivities.
I get home at about 5 AM, start preparing and combining all the ingredients I’d bought the previous evening and set out on the counter. I’m very tired and a little tipsy, but I’ve done this dozens of times so I proceed confidently. Once I’ve got the crockpot filled and cooking I crash.
My mom wakes me at about noon, letting me know that the foods about ready and the game will be starting. The aroma in the house is peculiar, but I don’t let that concern me too much. I stir and check the chili and it looks perfect. I dip a spoon in for a taste and am horrified with the flavor. Truly awful. Confused, I look around at the ingredients I’d tossed trying to figure where it went wrong.
Soon it becomes clear…the recipe calls for a half shaker of Chili Powder. Chili Powder looks remarkably similar to Nutmeg. In my dazed state in the wee hours I’d added about 2 ounces of nutmeg instead of chili powder to the huge vat of meat and veggies. I tried salvaging it by adding the chili powder and cooking it, but needless to say it wasn’t successful.
We had pizza and cold cuts for the game, the bread bowls went stale.
My biggest problem when cooking is that I’ve sometimes been seduced by an enthusiastic description of a wonderful dish that turns out not to be to my taste-- and now I’ve got enough to feed a small army.
Most of the time when I try new recipes, they are successful, it’s just every now and then I try something that isn’t. This is the story of one that wasn’t.
Problem number one: It called for a pound of pork loin and 2 pounds of mushrooms(or maybe it was the other way around). I’m single, living alone. A dish that is supposed to serve 4, then have a few more ingredients added and serve 4 again, is probably not the right recipe to sample.
Problem number two: The recipe calls for taking the pieces of pork and coating them in taco seasoning and then browning them in oil. I did that. Unfortunately, I think my pan got too hot-- I ended up with smoke, had to open a window, and ended up deciding to clean my pan before I added the rest of the ingredient (or maybe I just switched pans, I’m not sure).
Problem number three: The sauce tasted too much like hot tomato. I don’t like cooked tomatos. Raw are ok, cooked are bad. Spaghetti sauce is acceptable, so is chili, plain hot tomatos are horrid.
I pick out some of the pork and eat it anyway.
Fixing it. The next day, I took some of the mixture and added salsa and peach preserves to it. This made it resemble a real recipe for Peachy pork picante I have. It was still not great(still a little bland, still slightly burnt, but I ate more of it than I would have if I hadn’t added these ingredients.
I think I did try adding their ingredients to some of the rest and was underwhelmed–it wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t to my taste.
If your recipe calls for blanched almonds, don’t assume that hickory-smoked salted almonds would be an acceptable substitute.
Some things you learn the hard way! (BTW - the Portuguese version is bacalhau)
I did nearly the exact same thing–making chicken and cheese enchiladas a la nutmeg. Blech. That’s what happens when you buy bulk spices and don’t check the labels.