What was one of your cooking disaster?

Question

I used a pressure cooker thinking it would be faster. I couldn't open it, finally when I got it opened, the contents hit the ceiling, cabinets, top of cabinets, the floor, the counter and even the screws had beef stew in them..It took forever to clean up that mess. The second time I used it, again it stuck and we never could get it opend, so we threw out dinner and the pressure cooker.

Answer 1

I'm afraid of pressure cookers for those exact reasons!

A long time ago when I was married to my sons father, I was a housewife taking some college classes. One day I put a frozen corned beef in a large pot and covered it with water. I turned the flame on high to boil the water and planned on turning it down before I left for school. But, I forgot.

When I returned home, I opened the door to a smelly house full of yellow smoke! The corned beef water had boiled away leaving the meat to burn in the pot! I called the fire department. They came around the corner with the sirens blasting. They went into the house,brought out the pot with the corned beef in it, and set it on the grass. They were all laughing at me!!!

That night I told my X what happened. In one of his sweetest moments he said that he would eat it anyway. I cut away all the burnt part, leaving a small piece of pretty red corned beef in the middle. He not only ate it, but said it was the most delicious corned beef he ever had!

Answer 2

The first time I made a cake, I was around 19 years old. It was for a church picnic. Since I had never made anything before (except cold cereal from a box), I knew I had to use a cake mix. So, I bought a mix and followed the instructions, etc., and it appeared to turn out OK. However, the instructions did not specify (or I did not read them well) that the layers should cool thoroughy before the frosting is put on. I had chunks of cake falling apart, which I thought I could skillfully "re-plaster" back into place with more frosting, resulting in something that can be described only in two words: a mess.

As for the pressure cooker incidents, I've never had any green-peas-on-ceiling events, but I didn't care for the way the food tasted when cooked in a pressure cooker. So, mine is now used as a big pot for holding utensils -- lots of 'em.

Answer 3

Yes, I had a pressure cooker incident also. To this day, I am not sure what happened. I had started my pressure cooker on my gas stove. Apparently, the pressure cook must have gotten too hot and let off steam that set off my smoke alarms. I was outside mowing, and I see the fire trucks pull up in front of my house. My neighbor had heard the alarms going off and tried to call me before calling the fire department, but I was outside.By, the time I let the fire department into the house, the pressure cooker had exploded onto the ceiling. It was a mess!

Answer 4

LOL, my mother once related an almost duplicate story of
her one and only time using a pressure cooker. She said she
was afraid of them, since one she'd used 'exploded' and the
contents went up and stuck to the ceiling. How ironic I'd find
that same thing has happened to someone else.
I can't recall any actual cooking disaster. But it was a
disaster when I had made an entire dinner and found that the
meat I'd put into the oven wasn't cooked, because I forgot to
turn the oven on. I don't remember now, what I did to supple-
ment. Maybe we just ate the vegitable and the starch portions.
I remember it was a very long time ago and our children were
still living with us.
Another experience was my first at cooking and since I never spent much time watching my mom cook, I didn't know you had to quarter raw potatoes before boiling for mashing them. And I had my boyfriend and a friend of his for dinner. And I put the entire potatoes in whole. I remember we waited
for an hour or so for those potatoes to be cooked. And the
'friend' came in to check on things or see what I was making,
and he said calmly, "I think potatoes should be cut before
you boil them". And smiled wide. So that was my only clue
I wasn't making them right. So I managed to cut them and
we had them done in no time. I remember that the friend,
helped me a bit more on dinner before it was ready to serve.
I don't recall how he knew how to cook, but he didn't want to
embarrass me, until everyone was to the point of starvation.
I guess he felt I really needed someones' help. So he stepped
in to save me LOL.

Answer 5

I thought I would be romantic and make pancakes for my new husband (the first one that is). The directions in my new "Betty Crocker" cookbook said to pour out 1/4 cup batter onto the skillet. I did so, but the pancake looked so small to me. I hadn't had pancakes since I was a small child, and I thought they used to be so BIG. So I added another 1/4 cup, and another, and another. It took two spatulas to turn the thing, and when it was done it was about 1/2 inch thick and as big around as a dinner plate. My dear husband tried to eat it, but after several bites had a terrible stomach ache. He told me to only use the 1/4 cup next time. Oops!

Answer 6

My first day as a line-cook at Palomino's, I found that one of my daily tasks would be to mix pizza dough for the next day. So I'm in the prep kitchen, amongst many co-workers,
getting the ingredients together, including 30 lbs of flour, into a big Hobart mixer. I had prior kitchen experience, and I wanted to show whoever might be watching that I knew my way around. I thought the mixer was on "low" but it was on "high" so when I hit the start button, a cloud of flour went everywhere, covering me and anything or anybody in proximity. It was totally my fault for not checking the speed setting.
Lucy Arnez would have been proud of me.

Answer 7

The first one was putting hot sausages in to cook with sweet sausages, the hot ones flavored the sweet and my 1/2 of the family who only likes sweet could not eat them, I felt like a failure. Second was I made shrimp curry,and I think instead if a tsp of curry I put in a Tbl it was terrible and we took it and put it in a sieve and washed off the sauce and just ate the shrimp. My grandma from the old country made a turkey for the first time for Thanksgiving and we sat down to eat and the bag with the giblets were still in the cavity with the stuffing, noone ate it and we always got a good laugh out of it although she never thought it was funny.

Answer 8

I didn't cook the filling for a lemon meringue pie long enough. It was the first year of marriage so this was one of many really bad cooking experiments. When I tried to cut the pie for my husband it was mostly liquid. It spilled all over the shelf in the fridge. For years after this my husband would ask me to pour him a cup of my homemade pie.
I have heard of pressure cooker disasters but thankfully was never around to see one.

Answer 9

My neighbor the queen of cooking and cleaning and 'candy' gave me her divinity recipe, told me it was fool proof. followed all the instructions, instead of little globs I got shiney hockey pucks that took about 3 minutes and real concentration to get a bite off of. Kids thought it was great while trying to pull their billion dollar dental work out of their mouths. My cranky granny did the stew in the pressure cooker trick and mom wanted her dead.

Answer 10

One that actually turned into a family recipe. I was cooking one of those pressed turkey loafs on a Weber grill. Instead of using liquid margarine to baste it, I got the wrong tub out of the fridge and wound up basting it with terriyaki sauce! But, if you do it that way and add some pineapple rings on top of the loaf for the last 20 minutes or so, you wind up with terriyaki turkey.
It is still known by my children and their spouses as "Dad's Barbecue Mistake".