What Are Your Kitchen Failure Stories?

[Elmo_Lincoln]

I will admit freely that I am not terribly skilled when it comes to cooking. I'm pretty good with the microwave, and I can do basic things like baking a chicken breast or frying up a burger. But when it comes to adding ingredients, and doing various other things as part of a recipe, that's where I find that the wheels come off.

Here's my most recent example. I saw this video on Facebook last week where someone took four large tomatoes, cut the tops of them, and cored them out. Then they put a raw egg into each, along with oregano, salt and seasoning, then mixed it all together inside of each tomato. Then they topped them with some mozzarella cheese. They were then baked for about 18 minutes at 375 degrees F. When they came out, the person sliced one of the tomatoes in half, and you had the egg all nicely cooked, with the cheese on top.

I thought that looked pretty good, so this past Saturday during my grocery run I picked up four large beefsteak tomatoes, along with some mozzarella cheese. I had the eggs and seasonings already, so I was good to go. Yesterday, I went ahead and gave it a try. I sliced the tops off of the tomatoes and cored them out. Then put the eggs in each. I didn't have a particular seasoning, so I used seasoned salt, and didn't add any regular salt. I mixed them up, put the tops back on, securing them with toothpicks. I pre-heated the oven to 375, put them in on a pan, laid out on wax paper, put them into the oven and set the timer.

18 minutes passes and the timer goes off. I take them out, and they look similar to what was in the video. So I take one of the tomatoes and put it onto a plate. I take a sharp knife, one I just sharpened to make sure it had an edge, and sliced into it.

Then the inside just pours out, nothing but liquid, except for the cheese, which was just a blob. I cut a little piece and taste it, and it's like.. meh!

Okay, maybe it didn't get done enough. So I put the remaining three back in for another ten minutes. I take them out, put another of the tomatoes onto the plate (I had disposed of the previous tomato), and sliced into it, and the inside pours out of this one just like the other one.

So at this point, I decide to cut my losses, I turn up the oven to 450, and throw in a frozen pizza. That's more my speed in cooking. And that's what I ate for supper last night.

So what other horror stories from the kitchen do you have that you can share? Or perhaps point out an error in the recipe that I followed (it worked in the video, but how trustworthy is Facebook anyways)? I'd like to know if there is anyone else on Lit who is as helpless in the kitchen as I am.

 

[Unquoted]

To get the same result as the video you need the walls of the tomatoes to be the same thickness. If you left more of the flesh
inside the skin you had more insulation against the heat in the oven. The juiciness of the flesh and the spacing between tomatoes
will also effect how much they insulate.
I don't mean to imply that you did it wrong, only offering a possible explanation of why it didn't work as it was supposed. As you
pointed out, there's no telling how much the video was edited.

 

[Jada59]

I made a soba noodle salad. The soba noodles were hard as rocks! Inedible.

Company's Coming Beef and Peaches. Ex liked beef and peaches but not this dish.

Scrambled eggs boiled in a bag. Took far longer than it said and there were still uncooked spots.

Pupusas. I can make these with my eyes closed. But I bought a comal and it was my first time using it. They burned on the outside and were raw on the inside. Back to using the trusty griddle!

Pecan fudge pie. Made it many times before. No prob. Then someone paid me to make one for them. The filling never set up. She told me to give it to her anyway. Between the two of us, we cooked it for about 8 hours. Amazingly the crust was just fine but the filling was runny. They scooped it into bowls and ate it. Said it was good.

And just now... I have no enchilada sauce and wanted a wet burrito. Why I didn't use the open jar of salsa, I don't know. Instead, I used Sofrito. The taste is fine but it's rather thick. It's a cooking sauce. Should have thought to thin it with water.

 

[AlpineFresco]

Well, let's see...

I've followed bad recipes and ended up with swampy shakshuka, with weird inedible coffee-mozzarella burgers, and with tasteless froga tat-tarja.

On my own? I've had a some bad experiences on the way to learning how to make carbonara (scrambled so many...), yoghurt curries (not easy, but I've screwed up every which way with it splitting), custard (I use eggless recipes now, 'cause fuck me mine keep on... yep, splitting), and I've struggled with bread n butter pudding (burning the outside and having the inside raw, 'cause I didn't then know to cover with foil; having it spill over the sides when I included mushrooms but didn't pre-cook them so all the water came out...).

I've also burned everything imaginable. I've had biscuits come out too hard, spread waaay too far, and lack the flavour I wanted. I've had scones be utterly tasteless (out of season cherries, ugh, never again).

I've nearly set my old house on fire with one particularly fiery half-walnut and an absent mind. Foot-high flames off that motherfucker. The others? They behaved.

I've had to throw out countless dressings and sauces 'cause I messed up the seasoning or experimented in a way that went bad.

I mean... I'm not bad in the kitchen. I still have my screw-ups, but good lord it's taken some howlers to get to this point.

And that's just all off the top of my head. I'm quite certain there's much more.

 

[AWonkyDonkey]

I've had a few but the worst one that comes to mind was me making the most simple thing possible... Toast.

I put two slices in and left them for a minute whilst I went to go answer the phone. Walking back to the kitchen, phone in hand, i saw flames shooting out of the top of the toaster and the cupboard above it had set alight too.

Cue lots of swearing and me beating the flames with a towel which caught fire too. Eventually I switched the toaster off at the wall and started throwing water left, right and centre which did the job before any more of the kitchen went up.

 

[TTawhere]

Christmas Dinner.

An absolutely beautiful peeled butt tenderloin of beef that had been rubbed with seasonings and put in a Pyrex dish to roast.

Sitting in the living room exchanging gifts while the roast is in the oven, I hear a loud, but muffled snapping noise along with sizzling sound from the kitchen.

I went into the kitchen, but didn't see anything obvious. Opening the oven, I saw the sad sight - the Pyrex dish must have had a flaw or damage that I hadn't seen because it went off like a bomb. The roast was sitting on some of the shattered glass on the rack and the juices were sizzling on the elements and the bottom of the oven along with tiny chunks of glass.

Beautiful roast - straight into the trash.

 

[jasonmason]

Christmas Dinner.

An absolutely beautiful peeled butt tenderloin of beef that had been rubbed with seasonings and put in a Pyrex dish to roast.

Sitting in the living room exchanging gifts while the roast is in the oven, I hear a loud, but muffled snapping noise along with sizzling sound from the kitchen.

I went into the kitchen, but didn't see anything obvious. Opening the oven, I saw the sad sight - the Pyrex dish must have had a flaw or damage that I hadn't seen because it went off like a bomb. The roast was sitting on some of the shattered glass on the rack and the juices were sizzling on the elements and the bottom of the oven along with tiny chunks of glass.

Beautiful roast - straight into the trash.

I had something like that happen with a Pyrex dish and Cornish Game Hens. Pyrex is usually safe. But not that time. Pyrex 4 Stuffed Cornish Hens 0. JM pissed at the results.

 

[JustAnotherFlower]

My husband wanted to surprise me with Oreo balls for Valentine's day several years ago. He crushed the oreos and put them all into my pedestal mixer and flipped it on full blast... Oreos were slung out all over the kitchen at a highrate of speed. He tried his best to hide what happened by vacuuming and scrubbing the kitchen counters but he didn't think to look unside the toaster... I went to toast a bagel the next day and found it half full of crushed Oreos. Bless him, it took four years before he tried to use my mixer again.

 

[jeff_is_smiling]

We had a bunch of high school friends over and staying at the house. They were in sleeping bags and on the couch, etc. We decided to take a caravan trip of cars to the beach for a few hours. We talked about what to get for dinner when we got back, but my wife said she had it covered.

I was the last one out of the house and was locking the door when I went back inside to get sunglasses. I noticed we forgot to turn off the oven, so being a safety-minded guy, I turned it off.

Beach was great and when we got back we were all hungry. We walked into the house where my wife had planned a surprise turkey dinner for us as a treat. Only the surprise was on her, it seems.

Taco Bell it was that night.

 

[Elmo_Lincoln]

To get the same result as the video you need the walls of the tomatoes to be the same thickness. If you left more of the flesh
inside the skin you had more insulation against the heat in the oven. The juiciness of the flesh and the spacing between tomatoes
will also effect how much they insulate.
I don't mean to imply that you did it wrong, only offering a possible explanation of why it didn't work as it was supposed. As you
pointed out, there's no telling how much the video was edited.

I certainly could have done something wrong. I tried to cut the tomatoes uniform. They probably had about a quarter inch of wall, plus or minus a bit. The tomatoes themselves were about two inches apart from each other on the pan I used.

I tried to find the video that I saw (it was one of those sponsored things that pop up on Facebook), but I haven't been able to find it yet, and I can't remember the site it was from. I am getting a ton of fitness equipment videos for not-so-cheap exercise systems!

I'll check on Youtube and see if I can find something similar. The final product looked really good, and I would like to try it again, with hopefully better results.