Is what my husband tells me when he serves dinner.
3 heaping Tablespoons of salt, he used. For 2 cups of rice.
Anyone got any spare blood pressure meds? I’m gonna need them tonight! 
What was your last kitchen flop?
Erm… I can’t imagine cooking rice (from the dry state) with anything other than water or some kind of stock. I eat rice 2 to 3 times a day btw.
Yes, yes, of course there was water. And yes, the water should be salted. But do you use a quarter cup of salt in it?!
Here in the Philippines, I know only three basic rice recipes: plain water to make steamed rice, some sort of stock for paella/risotto/jambalaya, and coconut milk and sugar for sweets. Not much salting in any of them. And rice has always played the bland counterpoint to your spicy/savory dishes.
Bender// “There was nothing wrong with that food! The salt level was 10% less than a lethal dose” //Bender
Wow. That is a lot of salt. I salt my rice water (well, when I remember), but maybe a teaspoon for that amount of rice. Maybe. No kidding it’s salty. 
Well, since we’re talking about rice disasters, my husband forgot to put water in the microwave rice cooker the other night.
I’m sitting in the living room minding my own business. My son goes to the kitchen to get something and comes back out, coughing. Then my husband comes out coughing. Neither one of them can figure out what’s wrong.
I go in the kitchen, and it is indeed like walking into a cloud of toxic gas. I opened the microwave to see the melting rice cooker. No smoke, just lots of off-gassing plastic. The rice inside is absolutely charred to cinders.
The kitchen still smells of burnt rice and plastic.
I would have made at least 4 more cups of rice w/o salt and combined the two batches. Any rice left over would have been turned into fried rice the following day.
Well, how did it taste? 
Not my latest, but my saltiest.
When my son was just days old some in-laws were coming to meet him and I fixed chicken and dumplings. The recipe I was following called for salt (though thinking back it probably would have been fine with none, but anyway…) I added some ingredients including the salt. The baby started crying. I went to tend to his needs, which were minor and returned to the kitchen. Where was I? Oh yes…salt. Added it twice.
Here’s where it gets funny (in hindsight, at the time I was mortified). Ladled dinner into bowls, and almost sat down when the baby started crying. “Don’t wait for me,” I said as I went off to take care of him. When I got back several minutes later people were polite, if maybe a little quiet. I sat down and had a bite of my dinner. Gagged, and asked “Why are you all eating it?”
We ordered pizza.
Turns out none of them, including my husband was sure I didn’t mean for it to taste like that.
I was visting a friend’s grandparents for the weekend. They have an apartment in the basement where great-grandma used to live, so we would hang out there, have coffee in the morning etc.
One morning I needed sugar for my coffee. I looked around in the cupboard and found a covered bowl full of a white, granulated substance. “Ha!” said I. “Sugar!”
Heaped a couple spoonfulls in, stirred, and took a nice big swig.
Apparently great-grandma did a lot of pickling, and kept her SALT in a a bowl. Gak.
Here’s an overmeasuring story, courtesy of my wife: she called me at work and said, “I want to make your stir fry sauce tonight, what’s the recipe?” So I told her. The last ingredient is cayenne pepper. I told her, “The recipe says a quarter teaspoon, but I usually put in half a teaspoon.”
I got home and tasted the sauce. WHOO! Apparently, rather than a healthy half-teaspoon, she had put in two tablespoons of cayenne pepper. Holy Moses, was it hot. No idea how she heard that one wrong.
Sounds like your wife uses a 1/4 cup as a teaspoon.
When I was very young I wanted to make fudge for my family “all by myself” so my mother gave me the recipe and stayed in the next room while I made it. Looking back it was probably some kind of no-cook mix; I can’t imagine she would have let me use the stove.
What I do remember is that I mixed up the measuring amounts for the sugar and salt. So I put in about a half a teaspoon of sugar and a cup and a half of salt, or something like that.
I let my mother taste it first. I still remember the look on her face.
Back in the day, my grandmother would come for a 2-4 week visit. Grandma and mom (mother-in-law) got along OK, if a little formal. And grandma knew that her visits were a bit of an imposition (she was very arthritic, so needed help for a lot of things, but lived in Seattle (we were in MN), so a long stay was a nice way for her to see her grandkids).
Grandma also didn’t eat much - not picky, just a light, quick eater. As often happened, she finished her supper ahead of the rest of us. Mom offered her dessert (chocolate cake) to eat while the rest of us finished up the main course, and grandma accepted.
Not too much later, the rest of us got our cake - and it tasted distinctly of soap. None of us would eat it. No idea why - just a Duncan Hines (or somesuch) mix, so no real opportunity for cook error. But, grandma, lady that she was, and unwilling to raise a fuss - had powered through at least half of her piece before the hub-bub raised by her grandchildren convinced her that politeness to her hostess didn’t go that far.
re: Salt in Rice
the diego who seems to insist in two posts salt is never used in cooking rice says: " Not much salting in any of them."
Y0ou do realize that may be read as “Some salt in all of them.”
Steamed/boiled white rice? Doesn’t need any salt at all. The salt comes from what you eat with the rice.
Back in the 60s when putting instant pudding in your cake mix was new and exciting, my mom cut out the recipe, and it became the family standard. (I make my mix cakes that way to this day.) It was made with milk, eggs, oil, and vanilla, along with the mix and the pudding mix - super easy.
My sister wanted to make a cake one day, so she got out mom’s recipe and added all the ingredients… and then she added all the ingredients listed on the cake mix box also - which would have been water or milk, oil, and eggs. Needless to say, the whole mess went in the garbage as soon as it cooled.
Well, you can do it either way. I like it slightly better with salt (or broth, which already contains salt.) It’s kind of like pasta that way. Pasta cooked in plain water just doesn’t taste as good as pasta cooked in salty water (well, to me, at any rate.) I often forget to salt rice, but a little bit works wonders with the flavor, in my experience.
Heh… my last kitchen flop was last night. We’d bought a sausage at the store, and I had it on the grill on low (or so I thought). Went out, and noticed that one side was a little bit burnt- apparently “low” isn’t as low as I thought.
Flipped the sausage, turned heat down. Went back inside for a couple of minutes (literally!). Came back out, opened grill and sausage was totally on fire.
We ate somewhat charred sausage last night for dinner…