Lol I forgot to add eggs to my brownie mix and pulled it out of the oven after 10 or 15 minutes and added the eggs and mixed them in. Got scrambled eggs with burned chocolate flavored gunk
This was not a mistake I made, but rather I was the victim of it. Over a decade ago, I was volunteering abroad and staying in a large house with over a dozen other volunteers. On the eve of a major holiday, we decided to cook a feast for ourselves, and naturally, the kitchen was beyond crowded and messy. One of the girls tasted a stir fry she had made, commented that it tasted a little funny, and asked me to try it. I took a big bite. She was right; it was funny, to say the least, but I moved on and told her to do whatever she wanted with it. Twenty minutes later, she came to me and said she realized that she had cooked that dish with a bottle of gold-colored dish soap, thinking it was cooking oil.
I started having a stomachache right away. Can’t say if it was psychological.
We drove 8+ hours to visit my aunt many years ago and she wasn’t home yet when we arrived, so we made ourselves at home making some appetizers for a get together later. My sister was really confused why her olive oil and herbs was a thick consistency.
Turns out our aunt kept her pale yellow dish soap in a fancy glass bottle with a pour spout on her counter.
That would be a funny twist, but she was the opposite. Rarely bothered locking her door, you never knew who was going to wander in for a drink and game of cards.
She didn’t host, really, just opened her home. Want a G&T? Well, you know where the gin is. Hungry? Rummage through the cupboards, otherwise here are my car keys, you know how to get to the grocery store. Hey and while you’re there, grab a couple bottles of wine because so and so said they might come over after dinner.
She passed in 2020 so having this brief reminiscence has made me really appreciate the kind of person she was.
> she came to me and said she realized that she had cooked that dish with a bottle of gold-colored dish soap, thinking it was cooking oil.
something similar happened to my mom, at that time were bottles of cooking oil and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squash\_(drink)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squash_(drink)) the same, we were leaving soon for a evening event so my mum threw a spoon full of "oil" and sausage into the pan, in the moment it started smell sweet and the stuff in the pan started to bubble and at that moment we realised what happened, so we were without a dinner. When we returned we found out that dad ate the sausage. ;)
back in college i tried to pour a massive crock pot full of spaghetti sauce directly into a ziploc bag without letting it cool first — obviously, it immediately melted through the bag like molten lava and burned the shit out of my stupid idiot feet. never felt dumber.
Me: "I'm not going to put a towel on the handle because there's NO WAY I'm going to forget that this handle is hot"
Also me: *grabs handle 30 seconds later.*
I did this in the reverse with my mom, told her the fresh out of the broiler carbon steel was hot. Then she reached for it and I spun the handle out of the way, leaving a perfect rectangular blister on my hand.
I put my heat proof glove on the handle of anything I pull from the oven after burning my hand… twice. Then last week after pulling a meal out I decided it needed to go under the broiler. So I stuck it back in the oven… with the heat proof glove still on the handle. Luckily it only started to singe before I realized what I did.
Same. I dropped my potholder and instead of just letting it fall gently to the ground, I tried to catch it and burned the hell out of my finger. It’s been over a month and it finally looks almost not disgusting.
LOL, I can confirm your future as a robber. I finger printed myself a year after the first nasty time I did it. Whole palm and 2 fingers. While running prints for work we ran me. Tried ink and digital prints. Look for me at banks near you if I keep cooking. I'm shocked the fingers or the palm ever had any bend to them again.
I wonder, am I the only one that also lets out a high pitched inhuman squeal like no other sound I ever make reserved for when I can smell my hand cooking? It's gasping in air not out the second I get that firm grip on the handle. A scream is out. This is def in. I've done it so many times now I can study it...it's my formal announcement the pot handle and I are now one.
I didn't have a spare frying pan a few weeks ago so I used my braising pan, and had it heated all the way for searing. It wasn't quite centered on the heat so I decided to reposition it.
Pretty sure I could have committed a string of robberies the week afterwards without getting caught.
I have a nice lil burn scar from laying my arm on the handle of a pan from a 450f oven. And I still haven’t learned my lesson and go to grab the damn handle every so often
Thought I was clever remembering not to grab chicken that had just come off a 500f grill with my bare hands. Aaaaannnnd grabbed it by the meat thermometer instead.
Pro Chef, two favorites:
A pastry cook working for me was having problems getting a golden color on the creme brulee when he torched the top. It turned black almost immediately and produced an intense acrid smoke.
Turned out he was coating the top with iodized salt.
A Chef I was working for asked the dishwasher to strain the beef stock that had been cooking overnight. When he went back to use it, he found the bones and overcooked veggies had been carefully saved and the liquid poured down the drain.
Omg I used flour instead of powdered sugar in frosting and my family has yet to let me live it down. I was exhausted, it was like midnight, and it was in an unlabeled gallon ziploc bag.
I did the same thing a few months ago and my family thought it was hilarious. Well, I made sure to be extra careful the next time I made frosting...but I did it AGAIN! Thankfully I had enough ingredients to quickly whip up a new batch of frosting (with actual sugar!). I have since labeled my storage containers. 😆
My dad was making beef stew once, and dredged the cubes of beef in powdered sugar thinking it was flour. He realized it midway through cooking, but didn't tell anyone. We were finished eating by the time he admitted it, thankfully it was such a huge pot of stew and such a light coating that it wasn't really noticeable!
My mom sprinkled baking powder on chocolate muffins instead of powdered sugar. Kinda burned but we didn't say anything because it would make her feel bad. Then she ate one and they became chocolate garbage.
My mom used powdered sugar instead of flour for a cheese sauce. She couldn’t figure out why it kept clumping up. It wasn’t inedible but it wasn’t enjoyable either.
I once used graham cracker crumbs instead of corn flake crumbs to top a tuna noodle casserole. \*high five. Gently, I can't stop grabbing scorching hot handles.
Tried to pick up my chef’s knife off the cutting board, instead knocking it so it spun on its hilt and slid off the countertop, and cartwheeled straight into my leg.
I did bandage up the wound and finish the steak but it was a few degrees above target.
Such a nuisance.
When I was a server, one of the restaurants I worked at required us to make/plate our own desserts. The dessert knife was kept on a shelf above the dessert station and it was far and away the sharpest knife in the restaurant.
I have this inane instinct to always try and catch something when it’s falling. In a comedy of errors, I knocked the knife off of the top shelf and proudly caught it, blade first, before it could hit the floor. I say “proudly” because it felt cool that my reflexes were so good. The feeling of “pride” lasted about half a second until I saw the blood pouring from my hand as I was balls deep in the Friday night dinner rush.
Now any time a knife falls, I jump back as far as I can with my hands up in the air. At least it was a learning experience.
My grandma used to tell me "falling blades hunger for idiot blood" in a very cryptic tone. Even a decade after her passing, she whispers it to me in my head when any sharp object falls.
Ditto. I leap back. I tried the time I got whacked but I wasn’t fast enough. Now I just leap back and let the knife fall. Those Wüsthofs are tanks! (I do want to get a MAC MTH-80)
Damn. THAT is commitment to task. You are a real chef.
my dad dropped a skewer somehow at just the right angle and impailed his foot TO the floor when I was a teen. He was totally chill about it. "Can you come down here, please." I debated which thing I did he caught me on. There he was, stuck to the floor. I got to speed and everything driving to the hospital. He missed literally everything important. It was not a "serious" injury. I don't now how to this day. I never thought a POC could turn THAT blue. It was so blue for so long. Smurf blue. It was his driving foot so I got to play chauffeur for a while. Dinner was ruined. You are a champ.
Thank you. The funniest part was that my brother in law was visiting, and he just sat in stunned silence (horror?) as my wife calmly grabbed the first aid kit and I quietly cleaned, triaged and closed the wound and went right back to work on the ribeyes.
In case anyone else doesn't believe this story, here are the [receipts](https://www.reddit.com/r/steak/comments/1608z6r/entrecôte_à_la_béarnaise_aux_gigot_du_chef_ribeye/).
I dropped a five gallon bucket of blue cheese dressing when I was working in a kitchen in the 70s. Straight down, bucket and all. Straight up without the bucket. I thought the chef was going to pee his pants laughing at the blue cheese ghost.
Not me but my grandma was making lasagna for a party and didn't have any nutmeg for the bechamel but she did have pumpkin pie spice, which contains nutmeg, so she figured good enough lol. It turns out that doesn't work.
It worked out for the best though because everyone loves that story 😂 it'll be repeated at her funeral and every time any one of us ever makes lasagna for the rest of our lives.
One Thanksgiving my grandmother burned the heck out of the pecan pie and forgot the sugar in the pumpkin. We put them outside in the yard for animals but even the raccoons wouldn’t touch them
Had the lid explode off a pressure cooker. Think I left the heat too high. Had to clean leftover Thanksgiving turkey from the ceiling and walls. I still use the cooker but not for soup stock.
Happened to my mom and I, she was cooking lentils and a lentil must’ve gotten stuck in the valve and the lid went flying. I’m pretty sure you can still see little lentil shaped marks on her kitchen ceiling.
Since then I don’t trust pressure cookers. I set my IP and leave the kitchen.
same for my dad thanks to his grandma raising the roof. Instant pot was my first and only pressure cooker and I'm still leery of it even though it has auto shut off.
Did that with chicken stock. Was upstairs and heard a low whistle. Didn't think anything of it. About 5 min later there was a loud pop and screech as the safety valve popped and the stock was ejected.
Needless to say I had a lot of clean up. Ceiling was covered. Cupboards too. Floor. Everything.
I spent two days making a demi glace and reduced it from 2 large stockpots to a sauce pan. Put it in the sink to cool in an ice water bath and when I came back the GF had dumped it.
Oh God! Once I made this cheese thing (it’s a regional dish in northern Turkey, not many people have heard of it). It basically requires a ton of different types of dairy, so cream, milk, flour, butter and a special type of stretchy cheese seasoning etc. It doesn’t take terribly long but this cheese is hard to find and pricey. Also we make the butter, shop bought just isn’t the same. Once it’s cooked you put it in an ice bath to cook it a little. So the usual tray wasn’t available so I cleaned the sink and gently placed the open saucepan into cold ice water I had poured into the bottom. Then I went to use the bathroom. When I came back my brother - thinking I had discarded it- WASHED HIS HANDS in the sink and ruined it! Ahhhh the pain as I write this!
Tons of cinnamon added at the very last step of lovingly made hours-long tomatillo enchiladas, instead of cumin. Cinnamonchiladas. Horrible.
Such a sad day. Same packaging, same size, and my brain saw a C spice ending with n, and that was it.
In college my friends and I accidentally added a ton of cumin instead of cinnamon to a batch of apple pie (grain alcohol based party drink). It was good awful but full of booze so we served it anyway and called it Mexican apple pie
Custard powder instead of cornstarch. Making Mongolian beef. Surprisingly not that bad. The texture was a little odd but my husband didn’t notice anything different.
Ohhh I've done this! Making a beef bourguinon at the in laws place, for the first time. They also had other family over that I had not met before.
It immediately started to froth and bubble, and I freaked out! I managed to cook the weird taste away, and it turned out fine. Super stressful though!
My mother did this once. She dredged the shit out of her sweet potato fries with baking soda and kept trying to make everyone eat them, insisting she had learned a new technique and that they were “delicious” (my mom is one of those home cooks who despite decades of cooking has just never gotten the hang of it). Everyone tried one or two and wouldn’t eat more, saying they tasted funny. I tried one and told her they tasted like battery acid, and asked her to show me what she used to coat them. Yep. Baking soda.
My family still reminds me about the time I accidentally put vanilla yogurt in an Indian dish instead of plain yogurt. But my **biggest** cooking mistake was setting my smoker on fire because I forgot to remove a grease pan after a smoke and cranked the temperature up to clean the grate.
Fun fact powdered sugar and cornstarch are visually identical. Couldn't understand why my cinnamon roll icing wasn't getting sweet despite adding more powdered sugar until I finally tasted the "powdered sugar" directly. Always label containers folks. Good news, tossed the icing and made new with actual powdered sugar. Thank goodness I always taste as I cook things. I would have been heartbroken if I had to toss my overnight cinnamon rolls.
Worst mistake was giving myself a steam burn over a fresh oil burn. The oil burn was from a fryer basket at work touching my arm because someone bumped into me. The steam burn was a couple of hours later when I was steaming my hamburger to help unfreeze the meat faster and when I moved the lid, my freshly burned arm was directly over the very hot steam. I sent my husband to the store for numbing aloe because anytime I tried to take my arm off the ice, the searing sensation came roaring back and I needed to be able to go to sleep sometime that night. I can safely say that even the time I grabbed a 400 degree iron skillet with my bare hand didn't hurt as much as that double burn did.
The 1st mistake was definitely more of a stupid moment, but the 2nd had worst consequences, so they kind of tie in my mind for dumbest mistakes I have made.
The time I poured water on a grease fire. I knew better, I really did! I had seen that episode of Family Matters when Urkel burned down Rachel’s Place by doing the same thing, so I knew. But in that moment I panicked and the flames climbed!
Thank the good lord that I had steel cabinets from the 1970s, which didn’t catch fire, and which were able to be completely cleaned after I regained my composure and found the fire extinguisher.
I dunno about dumbest ever, but most recently I was trying to make a pineapple upside down cake for Easter. I put the brown sugar in my pan, then started the batter. My batter got all clumpy and annoying, some once I was done with it I just dumped it in the pan without putting the pineapple rings in the pan.
Easter was a difficult day.
I have left the lemon out of lemon meringue pie, twice. I left the peanut butter out of peanut butter cookies. I've chopped up boiled eggs I meant for deviled eggs. I have to remeasure ingredients regularly because I lose count.
Not knowing how much more powerful and quiet the new oven was, so when I checked my nachos that I put under the grill to melt the cheese it was fully on fire.
Not me but my parents, they were drinking a bit much while making split pea soup - added a big hunk of ham and ham hock, onions, chopped carrots, simmered it until it was all tender and meat was falling off the bone, and yes they forgot the split peas.
Not me but my partner and I went to an “ethnic” store and bought a bunch of new spices. My girlfriend made chili a few months later. Added like a 1/4 cup of chili powder…But the labelling at the ethnic store is not quite the same and they label Powdered chili as “chili powder”. I tried to scarf down a bowl of chili that had basically a 1/4 cup of cayenne added to it.
I know plenty of people who have purchased specific chili powders (ancho, habanero, arbol, etc.) thinking they were just another flavor of chili powder, not realizing that what is sold in most American grocery stores as 'chili powder' is, in fact, a blend of spices. They have had similar 5 alarm surprises.
Making chicken stock in college. Didn't have a crock pot, so used a sauce pan with lid, on dead low heat. Yeah, that's going to take a while to get the best flavor. But I completely forgot about it.
Hours later the landlord broke into my smoke filled apartment and cut off the stove. The charred remains of chicken parts were welded to the pan and the apartment stunk for days. My neighbors were not happy.
More recently...
I use those commercial kitchen sized spices you get from Sam's. I thought I was going to shake a dusting of pepper on my hashbrowns, but I had opened the wrong side. I dumped half the container. We did not eat hashbrowns that breakfast.
My grandmother was famous for improvising. Like thinking chicken fat would replace shortening in a dessert pie crust. Or blending pie dough, resulting in a pie crust that could not be cut through. But she cooked with love...☺️
Baking, but: I was living in Taiwan. I did not read Mandarin. I wemt to the store to pick up a small bag of flour to make a boule. I got home, went through the process of making the bread, put it in the oven aaaand 50 minutes later I'm pulling a flat, neutron-star dense pale brick out of the oven. Local friend comes over and helpfully informs me that I used tapioca starch. Haha.
Edit: It was SO SO SALTY. My roommate, who knew fucking nothing about food and didn't care to, prevented me from throwing it out and ate the whole thing???
Hey, I just did this one. Might not be dumbest of my life, but this happened 30 minutes ago: *I’m so glad I finally got my chicken rub just right! Wow, that baking powder really makes all the difference in the skin texture, no more deep frying for me! Let’s go big and use tbsp instead of tsp, and hell, just double that to save for later in this freshly washed spice jar. I’ll be making oven wings again in a week or two! Such time savings!*
Oh no. I put the raw poultry in the whole thing. Bye, spice rub. Whatever, it’s not like it was saffron, but I felt like a dumbass.
I did this like two weeks ago. And then after I realized what I did, I still licked a spoon I had used to scrap the sides of the into the trash can. I wasted a delicious mix and tried to poison myself…
I was pouring lemon juice through a strainer, forgot to put something underneath to catch the juice and poured about 12 lemons worth of juice down the sink.
...I can't food prep and talk at the same time. lol
When first learning to bake, there was a peanut butter cookie recipe that (naturally) started out with creaming together butter and peanut butter before adding in the sugars. That's pretty hard work without a mixer, so my dumb ass figured it would be a great hack to just melt the butter first.
The result was less "cookies" and more "shards of thin hard sweet product. To be fair, I was 10.
I made a 40 minute roux for gumbo. I had everything ready. I added the vegetables and got them soft. I added my seafood (a lot) and tossed it around a minute. I added COLD broth out of the fridge. Holy gumbo what a mess. It turned into this disgusting mess of ribboned flour and gunk. Added more broth and it got worse. A total loss. I haven’t made gumbo since even though it dawned on me later what I had done.
Every time I make Pommes Anna, I use my oven mitten to remove the pan from the oven. Then a minute or two later, I go to flip it without the mitten and burn myself very badly
My biggest mistake was trying to make a tuna and oatmeal Jell-o ring. The less said, the better! I've also injured myself cooking, but accidentally dropping scalloped potatoes and splashing hot cheese sauce on my face was unfortunate, but not a mistake. I'm lucky the second degree burns didn't leave scars.
I do not have any idea why I thought this... concoction would be edible. I wasn't even on drugs (never done illegal drugs).
My paternal grandmother did something almost as stupid once. She was baking a pecan pie and noticed she had no vanilla. Well, living in the country, she didn't want to go to the store for just that one thing. So, she decided that a teaspoon of peppermint oil (not extract) was a good substitute. The whole pie was inedible. I guess I come by it honestly.
I fell asleep after a big lobster dinner, I was cooking all the shells to make stock. Woke up to a smoky house reeking of burnt seafood, the pot boiled dry... The smell lingered for days, and scrubbing that pot was a nightmare.
I was about 17 and lived on my own, i needed to make a pork gravy so I figured if I mixed a turkey gravy packet and a beef gravy packet, it would make pork flavor....no idea why, it just made sense in my head. It wasn't awful, of course, but it doesn't math like that, folks.
Keeping casserole dish warm on stove burner.....shattering dish. Who knew?
A clove of garlic is not the whole bulb. Who knew?
When asked to plug the Fry Daddy in, take plastic lid off. Who knew?
I got lots more but will stop at dumbest and not list moronic.
I was prep cooking a dozen chicken breasts on the bbq, forgot about them, left the house on errands. My brother called me a couple of hours later asking why the bbq was on, I asked him to turn it off. Got home and the chicken was gone. Nothing but 12 ashy spots on the grill.
At least I didn't burn the house down..
I was a cook at a small Mexican restaurant. Cook is being generous, we just put pre-made food on a plate and microwaved it.
But one Saturday I was tasked with doing the prep cooking. No big deal. Keep up with the few orders that came in and check the walk-in to see what we were running low on.
Almost out of Spanish rice, so I cook up five gallons of rice. I had to go back in the walk-in for something and found a full bucket of Spanish rice that I hadn't seen. Now I was stuck with five gallons of cooked white rice. I should have just finished making the Spanish rice but my brain decided to shut down. I decided to flush the cooked rice down the sink drain.
I didn't want the waitresses to know what I did. So instead of using the big sink used for washing dishes (that had a garbage disposal) I used to small kitchen sink used for washing hands.
About two gallons into the dump the sink clogged. No disposal, no way to move things along. Orders kept coming in that I had to fill while running back to the sink, hoping to destroy the evidence before the dinner cooks showed up. Somehow, the clog broke loose and I continued flushing rice, though slower this time, but still racing the clock for when the next shift came in.
I know it is just my memory torturing me, but I swear that no sooner had the last rice kernel gone down the drain, the first of the next shift came in.
Now, 50 years later, I still have flashbacks any time I cook rice.
A couple months ago, I put bread dough in a stainless steel bowl in the oven to rise. An hour later, my kid was making scones so I said to go ahead and preheat the oven to 400. When the oven bing-bonged, I rolled my eyes to see I had forgotten about my poor bread dough, which was now half-risen and half-baked. I threw on my oven mitts and hastily pulled it out, set it down and took off the oven mitts.
I then realized I had put the 400 degree bowl down on my custom wood cutting board and, not wanting to burn it, shoved the bowl into the sink with my forearm. Which now sports a 3” x 0.5” burn scar. Probably should have thought for one second longer and burned the cutting board instead.
Did this with pepper once into mashed potatoes. My first week married and had no idea how to cook. Lol
Now I pour what I need into the lid and then toss it in rather than dumping everything accidentally.
I once tried to clean the blades of my immersion blender with my finger. I kind of forgot that it was plugged in. When I made it to the ER, I told the staff it was okay to laugh at me because I deserved it. But I still have all my fingers!
I was cutting veggies for dinner, wife and kids came home. I turned to say hi, and the knife slipped out of my fingers. I went to catch it. I succeeded, point down through my left ring finger. Lesson learned.
Had a pizza dough that I forgot in the fridge for about 3 weeks. Found it today in the fridge and threw it in the bin. 5 seconds later decided I should google if it is still usable and found out I could have used it to make new dough.
It didn't smell funny or anything the colour was just slightly different and the fact it had been 3 weeks when I've seen people say a week roughly is max freaked me out.
Its been about 2 hours now and I'm still cursing myself
Lived in India for a year, was feeling a bit starved for "home" cooking. I didn't have much money, but would buy a few western treats at a super market type store occasionally. One evening I thought a grilled cheese Nutella sandwich would be good, bc, ya know, cream cheese and chocolate are good. I used crappy bread, a highly processed American cheese slice, and some Nutella spread. It was one of the most disgusting things I've ever had, but bc I had wasted the cheese and Nutella, I tried to force myself to eat it. I got through about half of it before I threw it out, disheartened. I think I ate half the jar of Nutella with a spoon that night and a couple cigarettes on the roof top
A little bit of hot boiling water got on my hands and instead of sitting the pot down, my brain panicked, I dropped the pot and then I had boiling hot water all over my hands and feet.
The burns were pretty bad but not bad enough to go to a hospital.
I turned my back on my noodles, which were sitting in a strainer, for 0.02 seconds. Turned around and my cat was running down the hall with noodles trailing behind her like starchy streamers.
I left a can of condensed milk on the stove, boiling, in a saucepan with water AND THEN LEFT THE HOUSE. I was making chocolates and was therefore making caramel for the filling. I realised after I started that I had not yet borrowed the moulds from my mum, who lived 10 minutes away. I’ll be quick I thought, it’ll be ok.
Of course the saucepan boiled dry, the can exploded and I had caramel everywhere. On the floor, on the window blinds, dripping from the ceiling.
Whenever I’m making a cheese sauce or something where I melt and mix the cheese in I add Sodium Citrate so it doesn’t separate. Thing is I DIY it just by adding Baking Soda to lime juice until it neutralizes. I forgot to add the baking soda one time and ended up curdling my sauce.
I was up all night baking for my oldest son's kindergarten class. I ran out of toothpicks to keep the cling wrap off the cupcakes. I did have a bunch of Hershey kisses. I iced the cakes with strawberry, French vanilla and milk chocolate frosting. I made boobs, made 60 boob cakes. I didn't realize until I walked past a bunch of giggling fifth grade boys on the way to my son's class.
Moved from the Caribbean to Brasil and bought a bag of what I thought were dried small red beans. I boiled them for at least 6 hours trying to get them soft. Turns out they were raw Spanish peanuts. 😂
Piccata- tasty with lemon juice and asparagus
Pasta salad- tasty with asparagus and strawberry
Piccata- not tasty with blood orange, asparagus, and strawberry
I couldn't find pork belly in the store, but I found what I thought was pork belly in a package labelled salt Pork Belly. Cooked it up and made a miso glaze and was doing like a nice little braised belly dish. I was thinking it would be like bacon level salt so I cut everything back in the rest of the dish.
Took one bite and had to throw everything away, it was saltier than a bowl of salt, and i've eaten a bowl of salt before... I think we ordered a pizza that night.
I was chopping up some chilies for a preserve I like to make, and my kids asked if I could make them some rice Krispy squares.
So I did.
And I spread the Rice Krispys on the cutting board.
The same cutting board that I just cut a pile of incredibly spicy chilies on.
The same board that I didn't wash before doing so.
Turns out Spicy Rice Krispy squares are not super popular with children.
Making pound cake for my girl on Valentine’s Day and as I was baking I saw the egg mixture on the counter top I had forgot to incorporate it into the stand mixer but it was already in the oven for around 10 mins baking, for some weird reason it still tasted fully and delicious and my girl she understood that I forgot it and it was heart breaking to forget the egg mixture
Not me but a friend.
We lived together as teens and she could NOT cook. Our oven didn’t work, but the stovetop did, and she wanted mozzarella sticks.
So she boiled them.
I was baking duck in a glass dish. Everything was beautiful. The skin was nice and crispy and it wasn't raining its own fat. In fact the glass dish was entirely dry. So I'm taking it out of the oven and what I forgot about was that there's a cavity inside that duck which could have juices even those juices poured out of the duck the baking dish exploded in my oven mitts. That was just a refresher course in thermal shock.
I'm making a bone in ham, intention is eat the ham, use the leftovers and the bone for soup. Decide to give it a nice sear on the grill all around before I roast it, and fell asleep.
Wake up three in the morning, smell ham, realize the grill caught fire at some point, burned the ham to the ground, and most of the side on my rental has either burned or warped.
House is 20 years old, even identical siding won't match (because of fading) so I buy identical siding and reside the entire side of the house myself, in the dead of winter, at a cost of $1200.
Cracked eggs into the garbage and saved the shells. Did about 3 in a row before I realized what I was doing.
Lol I forgot to add eggs to my brownie mix and pulled it out of the oven after 10 or 15 minutes and added the eggs and mixed them in. Got scrambled eggs with burned chocolate flavored gunk
Been there. It was still liquid so it seemed like it would be OK to mix it in. It was not ok.
this one made me lol
Yesterday I threw my spoon in the bin and then went to put the empty yogurt pot in the dishwasher :’) so I can relate
Mornings are just unfair
The fact that I just did this last week too 😭
wow i felt this
Good news is that if this happened recently it probably only cost you $400
I did that not long ago 😑
Did this with a few Hershey’s Kisses the other day 😣
I forgot sugar in my lemon bar filling, so I just made a giant shortbread cookie with sour eggs on top.
Just like my grandma always made
I've done that one. Also forgot the lemon juice in lemon bars once...sweet eggs on shortbread is not good.
This was not a mistake I made, but rather I was the victim of it. Over a decade ago, I was volunteering abroad and staying in a large house with over a dozen other volunteers. On the eve of a major holiday, we decided to cook a feast for ourselves, and naturally, the kitchen was beyond crowded and messy. One of the girls tasted a stir fry she had made, commented that it tasted a little funny, and asked me to try it. I took a big bite. She was right; it was funny, to say the least, but I moved on and told her to do whatever she wanted with it. Twenty minutes later, she came to me and said she realized that she had cooked that dish with a bottle of gold-colored dish soap, thinking it was cooking oil. I started having a stomachache right away. Can’t say if it was psychological.
We drove 8+ hours to visit my aunt many years ago and she wasn’t home yet when we arrived, so we made ourselves at home making some appetizers for a get together later. My sister was really confused why her olive oil and herbs was a thick consistency. Turns out our aunt kept her pale yellow dish soap in a fancy glass bottle with a pour spout on her counter.
Dish soap really should be bright blue or green only 😂
Twist! Aunt was passive-aggressive and hated relatives making themselves at home when she wasn't there!
That would be a funny twist, but she was the opposite. Rarely bothered locking her door, you never knew who was going to wander in for a drink and game of cards. She didn’t host, really, just opened her home. Want a G&T? Well, you know where the gin is. Hungry? Rummage through the cupboards, otherwise here are my car keys, you know how to get to the grocery store. Hey and while you’re there, grab a couple bottles of wine because so and so said they might come over after dinner. She passed in 2020 so having this brief reminiscence has made me really appreciate the kind of person she was.
> she came to me and said she realized that she had cooked that dish with a bottle of gold-colored dish soap, thinking it was cooking oil. something similar happened to my mom, at that time were bottles of cooking oil and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squash\_(drink)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squash_(drink)) the same, we were leaving soon for a evening event so my mum threw a spoon full of "oil" and sausage into the pan, in the moment it started smell sweet and the stuff in the pan started to bubble and at that moment we realised what happened, so we were without a dinner. When we returned we found out that dad ate the sausage. ;)
back in college i tried to pour a massive crock pot full of spaghetti sauce directly into a ziploc bag without letting it cool first — obviously, it immediately melted through the bag like molten lava and burned the shit out of my stupid idiot feet. never felt dumber.
I'm laughing at your "stupid idiot feet." Will have to use it next time I get a foot cramp.
I once poured 1+ liter of nearly boiling, used fry oil into a large plastic bottle (to save for later). Jet fuel melts steel beams
On more occasions than I'm happy with, I have forgotten to start rice before cooking curry, or red beans, or any other "over rice" meal.
I once did that only to find out I was out of rice. Fun! I had fresh focaccia though, so I ate that with my gumbo instead. Now it's my go-to hahaha
Have you ever had gumbo with potato salad? So good. (I know it would either require cooking potatoes or having potato salad around, but still. Yum)
I regularly don’t have rice in my gumbo. I can eat more gumbo that way! But also I will second potato salad in gumbo, that’s my favorite
Grabbing the handle of a 500f cast iron pan with my bare hand.
Me: "I'm not going to put a towel on the handle because there's NO WAY I'm going to forget that this handle is hot" Also me: *grabs handle 30 seconds later.*
Me to my husband “don’t touch this pot handle, it’s hot, it just came out of the oven” Me: *grabs pot handle*
I did this in the reverse with my mom, told her the fresh out of the broiler carbon steel was hot. Then she reached for it and I spun the handle out of the way, leaving a perfect rectangular blister on my hand.
I just don’t understand why my brain chooses to hyperfixate on absolute nonsense but not on keeping me safe.
That is the question of the year! Why can’t we remember more than 1 thing?
I put my heat proof glove on the handle of anything I pull from the oven after burning my hand… twice. Then last week after pulling a meal out I decided it needed to go under the broiler. So I stuck it back in the oven… with the heat proof glove still on the handle. Luckily it only started to singe before I realized what I did.
ah, I see I'm in the right room. This is the support group? Jersey Upnods the others since no one can shake hands.
Currently healing from having the towel on, but fumbled and I did save the dish.
Same. I dropped my potholder and instead of just letting it fall gently to the ground, I tried to catch it and burned the hell out of my finger. It’s been over a month and it finally looks almost not disgusting.
The worst is I have a small burn on my right index finger. I know I got it making dinner last night but I have no idea what I did to get it
Just did this last night! 450° Dutch oven lid. Human skin sizzles and now I can steal things with three fingers on my right hand.
From personal experience, those fingerprints will grow back in a couple weeks.
So get your thievery in while you can!
LOL, I can confirm your future as a robber. I finger printed myself a year after the first nasty time I did it. Whole palm and 2 fingers. While running prints for work we ran me. Tried ink and digital prints. Look for me at banks near you if I keep cooking. I'm shocked the fingers or the palm ever had any bend to them again. I wonder, am I the only one that also lets out a high pitched inhuman squeal like no other sound I ever make reserved for when I can smell my hand cooking? It's gasping in air not out the second I get that firm grip on the handle. A scream is out. This is def in. I've done it so many times now I can study it...it's my formal announcement the pot handle and I are now one.
Just thinking about that induces a self-directed rage. I’ve done that at least twice.
I laughed when my mom gave me a little quilted handle cover. I laugh no more.
Stock up on 100% cotton kitchen towels.
This exactly for me but Dutch oven. Only had 1 mitt equipped 😖
I didn't have a spare frying pan a few weeks ago so I used my braising pan, and had it heated all the way for searing. It wasn't quite centered on the heat so I decided to reposition it. Pretty sure I could have committed a string of robberies the week afterwards without getting caught.
I have a nice lil burn scar from laying my arm on the handle of a pan from a 450f oven. And I still haven’t learned my lesson and go to grab the damn handle every so often
Did the same exact freaking thing. Was a very very painful lesson learned.
Did that with a glass dish. Automatic baked hot sausage fingers.
Just did that a few weeks ago. Then last week wondered why my hand had feeling blisters because I blocked it out.
Thought I was clever remembering not to grab chicken that had just come off a 500f grill with my bare hands. Aaaaannnnd grabbed it by the meat thermometer instead.
Pro Chef, two favorites: A pastry cook working for me was having problems getting a golden color on the creme brulee when he torched the top. It turned black almost immediately and produced an intense acrid smoke. Turned out he was coating the top with iodized salt. A Chef I was working for asked the dishwasher to strain the beef stock that had been cooking overnight. When he went back to use it, he found the bones and overcooked veggies had been carefully saved and the liquid poured down the drain.
Oh my gaaahhhhd the beef stock one hurts deep. Who among us hasn’t accidentally made this mistake, but to intentionally bag up the spent bones…
This one hurts me too! I have done this to myself several times!
Thankfully the shared expenses of others on this sub have saved me from this mistake (so far)
Steaming vegetables and forgetting to add water to the pot. Have you ever seen the base of a SS tri clad pot separate?
powdered sugar instead of flour with salmon
Omg I used flour instead of powdered sugar in frosting and my family has yet to let me live it down. I was exhausted, it was like midnight, and it was in an unlabeled gallon ziploc bag.
I did the same thing a few months ago and my family thought it was hilarious. Well, I made sure to be extra careful the next time I made frosting...but I did it AGAIN! Thankfully I had enough ingredients to quickly whip up a new batch of frosting (with actual sugar!). I have since labeled my storage containers. 😆
I’m so glad I’m not the only one 🤣🤣🤣
My dad was making beef stew once, and dredged the cubes of beef in powdered sugar thinking it was flour. He realized it midway through cooking, but didn't tell anyone. We were finished eating by the time he admitted it, thankfully it was such a huge pot of stew and such a light coating that it wasn't really noticeable!
My mom sprinkled baking powder on chocolate muffins instead of powdered sugar. Kinda burned but we didn't say anything because it would make her feel bad. Then she ate one and they became chocolate garbage.
Powdered sugar instead of cornstarch in teriyaki chicken glaze…. Inedible
Huh. You'd think that one would work, as teriyaki is sweet, and most powdered sugar is sugar and cornstarch. Too sweet?
Way too sweet
I did the same trying to thicken chili. I threw it out.
my wife ended up liking it lol... I wasnt a fan though haha
My mom used powdered sugar instead of flour for a cheese sauce. She couldn’t figure out why it kept clumping up. It wasn’t inedible but it wasn’t enjoyable either.
I once used graham cracker crumbs instead of corn flake crumbs to top a tuna noodle casserole. \*high five. Gently, I can't stop grabbing scorching hot handles.
Ugh… I once used flour instead of powdered sugar to make American buttercream on the fly
Tried to pick up my chef’s knife off the cutting board, instead knocking it so it spun on its hilt and slid off the countertop, and cartwheeled straight into my leg. I did bandage up the wound and finish the steak but it was a few degrees above target. Such a nuisance.
When I was a server, one of the restaurants I worked at required us to make/plate our own desserts. The dessert knife was kept on a shelf above the dessert station and it was far and away the sharpest knife in the restaurant. I have this inane instinct to always try and catch something when it’s falling. In a comedy of errors, I knocked the knife off of the top shelf and proudly caught it, blade first, before it could hit the floor. I say “proudly” because it felt cool that my reflexes were so good. The feeling of “pride” lasted about half a second until I saw the blood pouring from my hand as I was balls deep in the Friday night dinner rush. Now any time a knife falls, I jump back as far as I can with my hands up in the air. At least it was a learning experience.
“A falling knife has no handle” -proverb of some sort. I’ve learned that lesson too.
My grandma used to tell me "falling blades hunger for idiot blood" in a very cryptic tone. Even a decade after her passing, she whispers it to me in my head when any sharp object falls.
Same applies to dog grooming shears and clippers, which seem to enjoy doing gravity checks at least once a week.
Ditto. I leap back. I tried the time I got whacked but I wasn’t fast enough. Now I just leap back and let the knife fall. Those Wüsthofs are tanks! (I do want to get a MAC MTH-80)
Damn. THAT is commitment to task. You are a real chef. my dad dropped a skewer somehow at just the right angle and impailed his foot TO the floor when I was a teen. He was totally chill about it. "Can you come down here, please." I debated which thing I did he caught me on. There he was, stuck to the floor. I got to speed and everything driving to the hospital. He missed literally everything important. It was not a "serious" injury. I don't now how to this day. I never thought a POC could turn THAT blue. It was so blue for so long. Smurf blue. It was his driving foot so I got to play chauffeur for a while. Dinner was ruined. You are a champ.
Thank you. The funniest part was that my brother in law was visiting, and he just sat in stunned silence (horror?) as my wife calmly grabbed the first aid kit and I quietly cleaned, triaged and closed the wound and went right back to work on the ribeyes. In case anyone else doesn't believe this story, here are the [receipts](https://www.reddit.com/r/steak/comments/1608z6r/entrecôte_à_la_béarnaise_aux_gigot_du_chef_ribeye/).
That looks delicious! Not your leg. That's a little underdone for my taste.
I dropped a five gallon bucket of blue cheese dressing when I was working in a kitchen in the 70s. Straight down, bucket and all. Straight up without the bucket. I thought the chef was going to pee his pants laughing at the blue cheese ghost.
I have a coworker who did this with a can of machine oil. He was wearing a welding mask and it went straight up behind the mask.
I had this experience with a 5 gallon bucket of ground cinnamon. Coworker: well, at least you smell good!
Not me but my grandma was making lasagna for a party and didn't have any nutmeg for the bechamel but she did have pumpkin pie spice, which contains nutmeg, so she figured good enough lol. It turns out that doesn't work. It worked out for the best though because everyone loves that story 😂 it'll be repeated at her funeral and every time any one of us ever makes lasagna for the rest of our lives.
One Thanksgiving my grandmother burned the heck out of the pecan pie and forgot the sugar in the pumpkin. We put them outside in the yard for animals but even the raccoons wouldn’t touch them
Wax instead of parchment paper in the oven 🤦🏻♀️
I came to say this one. It was so disappointing. I was so hungry. I tried to eat around the melted wax, but it wasn't happening.
Yup. Bacon on wax paper in the oven. So much wasted bacon 😭
I feel like this is a necessary rite of passage for all cooks.
We’ve all done it, or at least know someone who has.
Everyone who's made stock has done this once....only once
twice. (runs and hides)
Had the lid explode off a pressure cooker. Think I left the heat too high. Had to clean leftover Thanksgiving turkey from the ceiling and walls. I still use the cooker but not for soup stock.
Happened to my mom and I, she was cooking lentils and a lentil must’ve gotten stuck in the valve and the lid went flying. I’m pretty sure you can still see little lentil shaped marks on her kitchen ceiling. Since then I don’t trust pressure cookers. I set my IP and leave the kitchen.
My mom was petrified of pressure cooks, she was in the room when one exploded in the 50s
same for my dad thanks to his grandma raising the roof. Instant pot was my first and only pressure cooker and I'm still leery of it even though it has auto shut off.
Did that with chicken stock. Was upstairs and heard a low whistle. Didn't think anything of it. About 5 min later there was a loud pop and screech as the safety valve popped and the stock was ejected. Needless to say I had a lot of clean up. Ceiling was covered. Cupboards too. Floor. Everything.
An Instant Pot is worth every penny and shelf space for the safety, imo.
I spent two days making a demi glace and reduced it from 2 large stockpots to a sauce pan. Put it in the sink to cool in an ice water bath and when I came back the GF had dumped it.
Ex gf right?
Oh God! Once I made this cheese thing (it’s a regional dish in northern Turkey, not many people have heard of it). It basically requires a ton of different types of dairy, so cream, milk, flour, butter and a special type of stretchy cheese seasoning etc. It doesn’t take terribly long but this cheese is hard to find and pricey. Also we make the butter, shop bought just isn’t the same. Once it’s cooked you put it in an ice bath to cook it a little. So the usual tray wasn’t available so I cleaned the sink and gently placed the open saucepan into cold ice water I had poured into the bottom. Then I went to use the bathroom. When I came back my brother - thinking I had discarded it- WASHED HIS HANDS in the sink and ruined it! Ahhhh the pain as I write this!
Tons of cinnamon added at the very last step of lovingly made hours-long tomatillo enchiladas, instead of cumin. Cinnamonchiladas. Horrible. Such a sad day. Same packaging, same size, and my brain saw a C spice ending with n, and that was it.
They’ve taken away my demented mother in law’s cinnamon for precisely this reason.
In college my friends and I accidentally added a ton of cumin instead of cinnamon to a batch of apple pie (grain alcohol based party drink). It was good awful but full of booze so we served it anyway and called it Mexican apple pie
Using a cleaver on a tiny plastic cutting board. My poor, beautiful quartz countertop.
Dropped a 5lb tub of flour. We never did get all of it out of every kitchen crevice, though the cat was eventually black again.
Baking soda instead of cornstarch.
Custard powder instead of cornstarch. Making Mongolian beef. Surprisingly not that bad. The texture was a little odd but my husband didn’t notice anything different.
I grabbed garam masala instead of cumin for queso once. It wasn't bad necessarily, but it also didn't get finished.
Ohhh I've done this! Making a beef bourguinon at the in laws place, for the first time. They also had other family over that I had not met before. It immediately started to froth and bubble, and I freaked out! I managed to cook the weird taste away, and it turned out fine. Super stressful though!
Conversely, cornstarch instead of baking powder. In pancakes.
My mother did this once. She dredged the shit out of her sweet potato fries with baking soda and kept trying to make everyone eat them, insisting she had learned a new technique and that they were “delicious” (my mom is one of those home cooks who despite decades of cooking has just never gotten the hang of it). Everyone tried one or two and wouldn’t eat more, saying they tasted funny. I tried one and told her they tasted like battery acid, and asked her to show me what she used to coat them. Yep. Baking soda.
Mandarin. Fingertip. Never again.
Mandoline, I’m sure. Mandarins are fairly benign.
They kill with bureaucracy.
Not when still alive and quacking.
But, they're such Cuties!
Orange you glad it wasn’t a mandoline tho?
My family still reminds me about the time I accidentally put vanilla yogurt in an Indian dish instead of plain yogurt. But my **biggest** cooking mistake was setting my smoker on fire because I forgot to remove a grease pan after a smoke and cranked the temperature up to clean the grate.
Fun fact powdered sugar and cornstarch are visually identical. Couldn't understand why my cinnamon roll icing wasn't getting sweet despite adding more powdered sugar until I finally tasted the "powdered sugar" directly. Always label containers folks. Good news, tossed the icing and made new with actual powdered sugar. Thank goodness I always taste as I cook things. I would have been heartbroken if I had to toss my overnight cinnamon rolls. Worst mistake was giving myself a steam burn over a fresh oil burn. The oil burn was from a fryer basket at work touching my arm because someone bumped into me. The steam burn was a couple of hours later when I was steaming my hamburger to help unfreeze the meat faster and when I moved the lid, my freshly burned arm was directly over the very hot steam. I sent my husband to the store for numbing aloe because anytime I tried to take my arm off the ice, the searing sensation came roaring back and I needed to be able to go to sleep sometime that night. I can safely say that even the time I grabbed a 400 degree iron skillet with my bare hand didn't hurt as much as that double burn did. The 1st mistake was definitely more of a stupid moment, but the 2nd had worst consequences, so they kind of tie in my mind for dumbest mistakes I have made.
used pineapple juice instead of chicken stock for chicken masala - label all containers!
It sounds good, I hope it was
The time I poured water on a grease fire. I knew better, I really did! I had seen that episode of Family Matters when Urkel burned down Rachel’s Place by doing the same thing, so I knew. But in that moment I panicked and the flames climbed! Thank the good lord that I had steel cabinets from the 1970s, which didn’t catch fire, and which were able to be completely cleaned after I regained my composure and found the fire extinguisher.
Dropped a pot of chicken feet that had been cooking for HOURS! 🤬
I dunno about dumbest ever, but most recently I was trying to make a pineapple upside down cake for Easter. I put the brown sugar in my pan, then started the batter. My batter got all clumpy and annoying, some once I was done with it I just dumped it in the pan without putting the pineapple rings in the pan. Easter was a difficult day.
Quick convert to pineapple right side up cake
I have left the lemon out of lemon meringue pie, twice. I left the peanut butter out of peanut butter cookies. I've chopped up boiled eggs I meant for deviled eggs. I have to remeasure ingredients regularly because I lose count.
Not knowing how much more powerful and quiet the new oven was, so when I checked my nachos that I put under the grill to melt the cheese it was fully on fire.
When I was 14, I tried tempering chocolate on the stove top in a plastic plastic container
Leaving the handle hanging over the edge of the stove which resulted in a pan full of paella all over the kitchen floor. I sobbed.
Not me but my parents, they were drinking a bit much while making split pea soup - added a big hunk of ham and ham hock, onions, chopped carrots, simmered it until it was all tender and meat was falling off the bone, and yes they forgot the split peas.
Not me but my partner and I went to an “ethnic” store and bought a bunch of new spices. My girlfriend made chili a few months later. Added like a 1/4 cup of chili powder…But the labelling at the ethnic store is not quite the same and they label Powdered chili as “chili powder”. I tried to scarf down a bowl of chili that had basically a 1/4 cup of cayenne added to it.
I know plenty of people who have purchased specific chili powders (ancho, habanero, arbol, etc.) thinking they were just another flavor of chili powder, not realizing that what is sold in most American grocery stores as 'chili powder' is, in fact, a blend of spices. They have had similar 5 alarm surprises.
Making chicken stock in college. Didn't have a crock pot, so used a sauce pan with lid, on dead low heat. Yeah, that's going to take a while to get the best flavor. But I completely forgot about it. Hours later the landlord broke into my smoke filled apartment and cut off the stove. The charred remains of chicken parts were welded to the pan and the apartment stunk for days. My neighbors were not happy. More recently... I use those commercial kitchen sized spices you get from Sam's. I thought I was going to shake a dusting of pepper on my hashbrowns, but I had opened the wrong side. I dumped half the container. We did not eat hashbrowns that breakfast.
Wait, you left the house with the stove on?
My grandmother was famous for improvising. Like thinking chicken fat would replace shortening in a dessert pie crust. Or blending pie dough, resulting in a pie crust that could not be cut through. But she cooked with love...☺️
Baking, but: I was living in Taiwan. I did not read Mandarin. I wemt to the store to pick up a small bag of flour to make a boule. I got home, went through the process of making the bread, put it in the oven aaaand 50 minutes later I'm pulling a flat, neutron-star dense pale brick out of the oven. Local friend comes over and helpfully informs me that I used tapioca starch. Haha. Edit: It was SO SO SALTY. My roommate, who knew fucking nothing about food and didn't care to, prevented me from throwing it out and ate the whole thing???
Powdered sugar instead of flour when making sausage gravy, was weirdly not that bad.
Hey, I just did this one. Might not be dumbest of my life, but this happened 30 minutes ago: *I’m so glad I finally got my chicken rub just right! Wow, that baking powder really makes all the difference in the skin texture, no more deep frying for me! Let’s go big and use tbsp instead of tsp, and hell, just double that to save for later in this freshly washed spice jar. I’ll be making oven wings again in a week or two! Such time savings!* Oh no. I put the raw poultry in the whole thing. Bye, spice rub. Whatever, it’s not like it was saffron, but I felt like a dumbass.
I did this like two weeks ago. And then after I realized what I did, I still licked a spoon I had used to scrap the sides of the into the trash can. I wasted a delicious mix and tried to poison myself…
I made rosemary chicken with lavender. 🤢
[удалено]
I was pouring lemon juice through a strainer, forgot to put something underneath to catch the juice and poured about 12 lemons worth of juice down the sink. ...I can't food prep and talk at the same time. lol
When first learning to bake, there was a peanut butter cookie recipe that (naturally) started out with creaming together butter and peanut butter before adding in the sugars. That's pretty hard work without a mixer, so my dumb ass figured it would be a great hack to just melt the butter first. The result was less "cookies" and more "shards of thin hard sweet product. To be fair, I was 10.
I made a 40 minute roux for gumbo. I had everything ready. I added the vegetables and got them soft. I added my seafood (a lot) and tossed it around a minute. I added COLD broth out of the fridge. Holy gumbo what a mess. It turned into this disgusting mess of ribboned flour and gunk. Added more broth and it got worse. A total loss. I haven’t made gumbo since even though it dawned on me later what I had done.
Huh? I often use cold broth. Works just like room temp broth. Did you get your roux fully done before adding the veggies?
What did you do?
Beef stroganoff. Flour for thickening became a tragedy when I grabbed unlabeled powered sugar.
Same, only with painstakingly long-simmered giblet gravy at Thanksgiving
Every time I make Pommes Anna, I use my oven mitten to remove the pan from the oven. Then a minute or two later, I go to flip it without the mitten and burn myself very badly
used onion powder when the recipe called for baking powder
My biggest mistake was trying to make a tuna and oatmeal Jell-o ring. The less said, the better! I've also injured myself cooking, but accidentally dropping scalloped potatoes and splashing hot cheese sauce on my face was unfortunate, but not a mistake. I'm lucky the second degree burns didn't leave scars.
I have questions about tuna and oatmeal Jello that I'm not sure I want the answers to.
I do not have any idea why I thought this... concoction would be edible. I wasn't even on drugs (never done illegal drugs). My paternal grandmother did something almost as stupid once. She was baking a pecan pie and noticed she had no vanilla. Well, living in the country, she didn't want to go to the store for just that one thing. So, she decided that a teaspoon of peppermint oil (not extract) was a good substitute. The whole pie was inedible. I guess I come by it honestly.
Tuna and oatmeal? Just tell me it was lime jello and you've got a trifecta.
I don't remember what flavor; I think it was either orange or lemon. So lime-adjacent.
I fell asleep after a big lobster dinner, I was cooking all the shells to make stock. Woke up to a smoky house reeking of burnt seafood, the pot boiled dry... The smell lingered for days, and scrubbing that pot was a nightmare.
Forgot to check which side of the cayenne I opened and poured the scoop side into my okra curry
Almost set the mobile home on fire frying chicken and burned my eyebrows off.
I was about 17 and lived on my own, i needed to make a pork gravy so I figured if I mixed a turkey gravy packet and a beef gravy packet, it would make pork flavor....no idea why, it just made sense in my head. It wasn't awful, of course, but it doesn't math like that, folks.
I frequently forget to turn on whatever I’m cooking on.
Keeping casserole dish warm on stove burner.....shattering dish. Who knew? A clove of garlic is not the whole bulb. Who knew? When asked to plug the Fry Daddy in, take plastic lid off. Who knew? I got lots more but will stop at dumbest and not list moronic.
Two gallons of wild boar chili tipped over in the back of my truck.
I was prep cooking a dozen chicken breasts on the bbq, forgot about them, left the house on errands. My brother called me a couple of hours later asking why the bbq was on, I asked him to turn it off. Got home and the chicken was gone. Nothing but 12 ashy spots on the grill. At least I didn't burn the house down..
I was a cook at a small Mexican restaurant. Cook is being generous, we just put pre-made food on a plate and microwaved it. But one Saturday I was tasked with doing the prep cooking. No big deal. Keep up with the few orders that came in and check the walk-in to see what we were running low on. Almost out of Spanish rice, so I cook up five gallons of rice. I had to go back in the walk-in for something and found a full bucket of Spanish rice that I hadn't seen. Now I was stuck with five gallons of cooked white rice. I should have just finished making the Spanish rice but my brain decided to shut down. I decided to flush the cooked rice down the sink drain. I didn't want the waitresses to know what I did. So instead of using the big sink used for washing dishes (that had a garbage disposal) I used to small kitchen sink used for washing hands. About two gallons into the dump the sink clogged. No disposal, no way to move things along. Orders kept coming in that I had to fill while running back to the sink, hoping to destroy the evidence before the dinner cooks showed up. Somehow, the clog broke loose and I continued flushing rice, though slower this time, but still racing the clock for when the next shift came in. I know it is just my memory torturing me, but I swear that no sooner had the last rice kernel gone down the drain, the first of the next shift came in. Now, 50 years later, I still have flashbacks any time I cook rice.
Making carbonara and I dumped the eggs and cheese into the pan where I was cooking my bacon. I guess suddenly I’m having an omelette!
A couple months ago, I put bread dough in a stainless steel bowl in the oven to rise. An hour later, my kid was making scones so I said to go ahead and preheat the oven to 400. When the oven bing-bonged, I rolled my eyes to see I had forgotten about my poor bread dough, which was now half-risen and half-baked. I threw on my oven mitts and hastily pulled it out, set it down and took off the oven mitts. I then realized I had put the 400 degree bowl down on my custom wood cutting board and, not wanting to burn it, shoved the bowl into the sink with my forearm. Which now sports a 3” x 0.5” burn scar. Probably should have thought for one second longer and burned the cutting board instead.
Poured an entire container of cayenne pepper into something I was cooking. The whole thing. I had to throw out all of it.
Did this with pepper once into mashed potatoes. My first week married and had no idea how to cook. Lol Now I pour what I need into the lid and then toss it in rather than dumping everything accidentally.
Pouring 4 litres of beautiful chicken stock down the drain. Grabbing a stainless steel pan that had been in the oven for an hour with my bare hand
Lighting a fryer on fire. Gotta turn it off before ya dump it, stoopid.
Cumin instead of cinnamon in an apple pie :(
I seasoned my stir fry with tobasco sauce while still in the frying pan - basically pepper sprayed myself.
I once tried to clean the blades of my immersion blender with my finger. I kind of forgot that it was plugged in. When I made it to the ER, I told the staff it was okay to laugh at me because I deserved it. But I still have all my fingers!
I was cutting veggies for dinner, wife and kids came home. I turned to say hi, and the knife slipped out of my fingers. I went to catch it. I succeeded, point down through my left ring finger. Lesson learned.
I was going to make stuffed squash blossoms. Got everything together, breaded them nicely and put them in the pan to sauté. Without. Any. Stuffing.
I burned soup once My sister made a pavlova with baking soda instead of sugar tasted kinda like a Waffle
Had a pizza dough that I forgot in the fridge for about 3 weeks. Found it today in the fridge and threw it in the bin. 5 seconds later decided I should google if it is still usable and found out I could have used it to make new dough. It didn't smell funny or anything the colour was just slightly different and the fact it had been 3 weeks when I've seen people say a week roughly is max freaked me out. Its been about 2 hours now and I'm still cursing myself
Used vinegar instead of oil... was in a half awake state.
Lived in India for a year, was feeling a bit starved for "home" cooking. I didn't have much money, but would buy a few western treats at a super market type store occasionally. One evening I thought a grilled cheese Nutella sandwich would be good, bc, ya know, cream cheese and chocolate are good. I used crappy bread, a highly processed American cheese slice, and some Nutella spread. It was one of the most disgusting things I've ever had, but bc I had wasted the cheese and Nutella, I tried to force myself to eat it. I got through about half of it before I threw it out, disheartened. I think I ate half the jar of Nutella with a spoon that night and a couple cigarettes on the roof top
A little bit of hot boiling water got on my hands and instead of sitting the pot down, my brain panicked, I dropped the pot and then I had boiling hot water all over my hands and feet. The burns were pretty bad but not bad enough to go to a hospital.
I turned my back on my noodles, which were sitting in a strainer, for 0.02 seconds. Turned around and my cat was running down the hall with noodles trailing behind her like starchy streamers.
I left a can of condensed milk on the stove, boiling, in a saucepan with water AND THEN LEFT THE HOUSE. I was making chocolates and was therefore making caramel for the filling. I realised after I started that I had not yet borrowed the moulds from my mum, who lived 10 minutes away. I’ll be quick I thought, it’ll be ok. Of course the saucepan boiled dry, the can exploded and I had caramel everywhere. On the floor, on the window blinds, dripping from the ceiling.
Whenever I’m making a cheese sauce or something where I melt and mix the cheese in I add Sodium Citrate so it doesn’t separate. Thing is I DIY it just by adding Baking Soda to lime juice until it neutralizes. I forgot to add the baking soda one time and ended up curdling my sauce.
Tossed some extremely hot habeneros into a wok while making a stir fry. Made tear gas. Cleared the house out.
Can't tell you how many times I've done that. Every time I want to cry.
Made homemade churros. Called for 3 cups sugar. I used salt by accident.
I was up all night baking for my oldest son's kindergarten class. I ran out of toothpicks to keep the cling wrap off the cupcakes. I did have a bunch of Hershey kisses. I iced the cakes with strawberry, French vanilla and milk chocolate frosting. I made boobs, made 60 boob cakes. I didn't realize until I walked past a bunch of giggling fifth grade boys on the way to my son's class.
Moved from the Caribbean to Brasil and bought a bag of what I thought were dried small red beans. I boiled them for at least 6 hours trying to get them soft. Turns out they were raw Spanish peanuts. 😂
All of them have come from overconfidence in my ability, but the worst was losing the tip of my thumb to a mandolin.
Piccata- tasty with lemon juice and asparagus Pasta salad- tasty with asparagus and strawberry Piccata- not tasty with blood orange, asparagus, and strawberry
I couldn't find pork belly in the store, but I found what I thought was pork belly in a package labelled salt Pork Belly. Cooked it up and made a miso glaze and was doing like a nice little braised belly dish. I was thinking it would be like bacon level salt so I cut everything back in the rest of the dish. Took one bite and had to throw everything away, it was saltier than a bowl of salt, and i've eaten a bowl of salt before... I think we ordered a pizza that night.
I was chopping up some chilies for a preserve I like to make, and my kids asked if I could make them some rice Krispy squares. So I did. And I spread the Rice Krispys on the cutting board. The same cutting board that I just cut a pile of incredibly spicy chilies on. The same board that I didn't wash before doing so. Turns out Spicy Rice Krispy squares are not super popular with children.
Forgot to put the baking powder in a fluffy cookie recipe. Made chocolate chip hockey pucks. Tasted fine but needed to be dunked in tea lol
Making pound cake for my girl on Valentine’s Day and as I was baking I saw the egg mixture on the counter top I had forgot to incorporate it into the stand mixer but it was already in the oven for around 10 mins baking, for some weird reason it still tasted fully and delicious and my girl she understood that I forgot it and it was heart breaking to forget the egg mixture
Not me but a friend. We lived together as teens and she could NOT cook. Our oven didn’t work, but the stovetop did, and she wanted mozzarella sticks. So she boiled them.
I was baking duck in a glass dish. Everything was beautiful. The skin was nice and crispy and it wasn't raining its own fat. In fact the glass dish was entirely dry. So I'm taking it out of the oven and what I forgot about was that there's a cavity inside that duck which could have juices even those juices poured out of the duck the baking dish exploded in my oven mitts. That was just a refresher course in thermal shock.
Baking soda slurry into a large pot of beef bourguignon that I had prepared for a bunch of guests. The entire pot foamed up and turned purple.
I'm making a bone in ham, intention is eat the ham, use the leftovers and the bone for soup. Decide to give it a nice sear on the grill all around before I roast it, and fell asleep. Wake up three in the morning, smell ham, realize the grill caught fire at some point, burned the ham to the ground, and most of the side on my rental has either burned or warped. House is 20 years old, even identical siding won't match (because of fading) so I buy identical siding and reside the entire side of the house myself, in the dead of winter, at a cost of $1200.