Weird. I know about poking holes in microwaved potatoes, but I’ve never done so with oven-baked, even when working in a dinner house. I had no idea that I’ve danced with death, or at least a messy oven, so many times.
Yeah, I did that, too. Except it was a Cook’s Illustrated mac & cheese recipe. Candied macaroni… not so good.
Last year, in a crock-pot mood, I made a chicken stew. But I wanted to freeze the leftovers, so didn’t want to add potatos and have them turn to ick. In a moment of inspiration, I thought to substitute rice. But all I had was Arborio rice… it looked a little thicker while cooking away. By the time it was done, though, the starch had flooded out and soaked up every bit of moisture in the crock-pot, creating some godawful stew-sponge. Still tasted good (if chewy).
Tried to hard-boil eggs in a small, covered Pyrex pot in the microwave. It was loud, it scared me, and I miss my small Pyrex pot.
We did the “purple cabbage broth to check pH” experiment on Tuesday. Despite several cleanings, the kitchen still smells like gym socks.
That said, my latest greatest disaster was the barbecued mutton ribs in a mint dry rub that I tried while visiting my Mom. Mutton is greasy, and it needs to be cooked over an indirect heat, but I had it right over the burners on the grill. At one point, the entire grill was engulfed in flame.
Ah, yes, memories. I think I peaked in my late teens (like so many other genuises) when I put a can of baked beans on to boil, went back downstairs, and naturally forgot all about it. Around an hour later there was this huge POOOOM that managed to cut through my fog of self-absorbtion. The entire kitchen - and I mean entire, every skerrick of wall, floor, appliance and ceiling - was covered in scalding bright orange goo. When my mother sold the house a decade later I could still see the orange cast to the previously pristine white ceiling, luckily the new owners didn’t appear to notice.
These are all fabulous.
Actually, if you do it right, you can blow the microwave door open altogether.
I wish I didn’t know this.
Regards,
Shodan
It had to be close to 1/4 cup of black pepper, in a small (4 quart?) pot. He wasn’t making much sauce - maybe 4 servings.
(Then again, maybe you’d still have liked it.)
Destroyed a pressure cooker AND burned the merry hell out of my legs with hot oil.
The potholder slipped and then fingers met really, really hot metal, and that was when nature demanded I let go because of instant pain and then gravity took over after that.
Gee, I wish I’d just held on to the damn thing. :rolleyes:
The seal popped when the cooker hit the floor, spraying oil everywhere and left me with seriously-nasty, second-degree burns over 60 percent of my thighs and lower legs.
On the plus side, I happened to be wearing shorts instead of long pants and I found out from my mom later on, that that kept me from being even more seriously injured. Hard to get that into perspective since I had blisters on my legs bigger across than my hand.
Wore shorts or skirt for weeks afterward so nothing would rub up against the burns. I have no idea why it all didn’t scar, but I was very fortunate.
Never gone near a pressure cooker since then. 
Mine is another involving eggs.
One evening, around Christmas, I got home from work, tired. I put a couple of eggs in a small, uncovered pan to boil for a quick egg salad sandwich. That’s when there was a knock at the door.
It was my neighbor, friend and co-worker, Mick. He had fallen on the ice several days earlier and broken his right arm and now sported a cast up past his elbow. He needed help starting a roll of Scotch tape to attempt to wrap Christmas presents for his family.
I stepped across the hall to his apartment, intending to be gone for just a minute, to help him with the tape. What started out to be just a two minute job, turned into me helping him wrap presents for a couple of hours and him ordering pizza.
When I returned, two hours later, my kitchen was covered with exploded egg, there were two carbonized lumps in the pan and the whole place stunk to high heaven.
Moral of the story: never, ever step out, even for just a minute, with something on the stove. :smack:
My most recent disaster was letting a small pot of water boil dry because I changed my mind about a cooking project and forgot that I had already started boiling water. That poor little pot had to go in the trash. 
I miss it.
My biggest disaster story belongs to my husband. When he was a teenager he also had several teenage brothers. They all decided one day when they were home alone that they needed deep fried frozen burritos. So they got out the deep fryer, filled it with oil, dumped the burritos in and went to play Nintendo while they waited for their food to cook.
They of course forgot all about the burritos until they noticed the big black billowing clouds of smoke coming from the kitchen. They all go running in. The pot was actually on fire. One brother tried dumping water on it. This led to the curtains catching on fire.
My husband was even dumber. He decided that it needed to go outside, so he grabbed a couple of hot pads and tried to carry it. Two feet in he dropped the firery inferno. It doused his legs in super heated grease, giving him 3rd degree burns all over his legs.
Later at the hospital, while doped up on morphine my husband told the dr. to let his mother know he remembered to wear clean underwear.
How did you ever get the smell out!?
ETA: @ Missred
I opened up the windows to air my apartment out…in December…in the land of lake effects snow. :eek:
Baked frozen pizza with the cardboard disc - it must have been frozen to the bottom of the pizza and I didn’t notice it. The smell was truly awful, had a noticably unhealthy character to it, and it stuck around for awhile.
Plus, I had no pizza for dinner.
Years ago, as young sailors living off-base, we were feeling somewhat domestic and decided to pick ripe blackberries from the neighborhood patch for a pie. “I’ve watched my Mom do this plenty of times”, my buddy said, “I got this suitcased and don’t need any help”. Sounded great to us, and he bustled around in the kitchen, appearing later on with an actual pie complete with a real crust and that cool lattice-weave top to boot. We were amazed at the product and couldn’t wait to tear into it. With a flourish I was served the first piece and took a big bite…
…that bite came out as quick as it went in. For some reason, 2 cups of salt do not substitute real well for 2 cups of sugar.
My kids still talk about the night I made purple chicken and we had to order pizza.
He PURPOSELY substituted salt for sugar!? Or he was stupid/drunk/clueless and did it by accident.
Okay obviously we need an explanation of the purple chicken.
My nephews win the oven oops award in our family.
No dishwasher. Joe, the youngest, hated washing dishes with a passion. He would wash the ‘important’ dishes - plates, cups, silverware - then hide other dirty dishes in the stove.
(You see where this is going, right?)
Jay, the eldest, came home one day, decided to toss some pizza rolls in the oven. As the oven was pretty slow to heat, he clicked it on then went to take a shower.
Joe had left Tuperware in the oven. Tupperware flamed and melted, oozing out and melting the carpet in the kitchen (yeah, carpeted kitchen - ew). Stove was toast. Carpet was toast. The smell of burnt plastic stayed for months.
Most expensive pizza rolls ever.
Carpeted kitchen, what a terrible idea!
The last apartment I lived in had a thin carpet in the kitchen. At one point I was taking a big cookie sheet out of the oven and, for some reason, dropped it flat right after shutting the oven door. I’d probably burnt myself slightly to cause that, because the dropped pan actually scorched/melted the carpet slightly due to the heat. I bought a mat of the type that people often throw down in their kitchen for traction/padding and tossed it right over top.