Please share your recent food fails to make me feel better

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So many! And I am a good cook, but failure is part of the process. I always run into trouble when I get creative to use up ingredients or make huge batches:

-2 loves of honey wheat bread that turned out like bricks
-a big batch of smitten kitchen mac and cheese. I followed the recipe really closely and worked hard on making a smooth sauce, then my kid thought it was "weird" vs my usual slapped together mac and cheese. I think it's okay but don't want or need to eat a pan of it.
-farro and broccoli salad for lunches, was good but reality is I do not want or need to eat farro salad for 5 days
-chicken thighs. I marinated them and really wanted to bake them until they had crispy skin but then the meat was kind of overcooked and stringy

Yes yes. I make a wonderful lentil and grain salad that can be used many different ways. But then no one else eats it and I am so sick of it by day 5

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I followed a crock-pot recipe for chicken bolognese sauce. It came out like ground chicken mixed with diced tomatoes, not like a cohesive sauce. I still ate it, over cauliflower rice with hot sauce. It was fine, but more stew-y and less saucy.

This sounds like prison food.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I cooked a froze pizza without taking it off the cardboard circle.

I cooked one upside-down on the rack.

Hours to clean up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. In an effort to be a smidge healthier, I bought the skim ricotta instead of the whole ricotta. I made a pasta dish with it. It was so big that it didn't fit in the pan, so the little extra went in a smaller pan. I ate a bit Wednesday. Later, I didn't feel well but thought nothing of it. Thursday, I went to eat the rest of what was in the smaller pan and 20-30 minutes later my stomach hurt. I'm sensitive to some types of dairy but ricotta has always been fine. Well, apparently skim ricotta is NOT fine. I just threw out the big pan of the pasta dish, which would have been four meals. I can't handle my stomach hurting for 8-12 hours each time. Guess I will have to find other ways to be more healthy.

2. Tonight, I went to make baked chicken and planned to have a baked potato with it. I have three potatoes. Grabbed one, and it sprouted. So did the other two. Had to throw all three potatoes out. Honestly, if I hadn't already put the chicken in the oven at that point, I'd have just given up and gotten takeout. But no, I will have quinoa and brown rice instead of a baked potato.

You don't have to throw out sprouted potatoes. Just cut the sprout off. The rest of it is fine.

I am still embarrassed about a too-dry, untasty lemon cake that I took to a party Memorial Day weekend of 2014, if that makes you feel better.

[Anonymous]

I was making a roast chicken dish that called for cognac. I grabbed the bottle of Benedictine instead. Happily it didn’t have a big effect on the flavor. Actually smelled pretty good while it was roasting!

Last night I was super tired and poured balsamic vinegar instead of olive oil over some cauliflower I was about to roast.

[Anonymous]

I messed up some Ghirardelli brownies last week. I tried to undercook them slightly for them to be gooey, but they were just horrible. But my kids at them. Then I made a corned beef. My instant pot was acting up, so I had to put it in the crock pot. Was still not ready, so I put it back in the instant pot, and it ended up dry somehow. And then I only put own egg in the cornbread instead of two. Bleh. A family favorite meal was just average all around.

[Anonymous]

I forgot to drain the pot of boiled ziti before running out to pick up my kid from practice.
I came back to a pot full of mushy soggy limp and borderline inedible noodle. And I underestimated how much marinara sauce I had.

Didn't think you could mess up pasta, but I did (sigh).

[Anonymous]

I grabbed a little brown bottle out of the cabinet and ended up putting red food coloring in the chocolate chip cookie dough instead of vanilla.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have FB look up the Italian very popular page ‘cucinaremale’ an amazing and funny photo collection of cooking fails

Nobody uses Facebook.

Go away.

[Anonymous]

I am not a good cook at all.

[Anonymous]

I made a carrot cake. After it had been in the oven 30 minutes, I saw the carrots I had grated for the recipe still sitting in the colander in my sink.

TBH the cake tasted ok. But I was SO irritated!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is shameful and please, nobody laugh at me:

I have lost my brownie mojo. I cannot make a decent pan of brownies anymore.

I've switched up ingredients, recipes, pans, nothing works, it all tastes like blah brownie-colored cardboard.

I love cooking. I've read a million books, taken numerous classes, am constantly cooking but I destroy bacon every time I make it. I can not cook bacon. I've tried it in the oven, skillet etc. It is always over or under done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is shameful and please, nobody laugh at me:

I have lost my brownie mojo. I cannot make a decent pan of brownies anymore.

I've switched up ingredients, recipes, pans, nothing works, it all tastes like blah brownie-colored cardboard.

I love cooking. I've read a million books, taken numerous classes, am constantly cooking but I destroy bacon every time I make it. I can not cook bacon. I've tried it in the oven, skillet etc. It is always over or under done.

The flame needs to be lower than you think. I have an electric stove, and anything over 2 (low) will burn the bacon. You have to baby it. And keep flipping.

[Anonymous]

I once made boxed brownies that called for 1 cup of cooking oil. But I grabbed the wrong measuring cup and added 2 cups instead, then served them to guests.

[Anonymous]

Failure is a part of the process in the kitchen and in the last month alone I have had some misses.

-two baking fails on two attempts of the same recipe: on the first go, I failed to get the beautifully proved/shaped/decorated loaf into the oven and ended up tossing it. I need to get a proper peel and know I will geek out and over analyze the purchase, so have put it off and paid the price. The first loaf was perfect. Round two I added 2 grams of salt more than necessary because I wasn’t being careful. It was too salty for me but DH said it was fine.

-I got the “nicer” noodles that are already soft and come in plastic pouches for yaki soba, but they all snapped and wouldn’t un-clump. It was otherwise delicious and not something in my usual rotation, I missed having long slurpy noodles.

-made something like asparagus chips instead of roasted asparagus. They were skinny and I vastly underestimated how much time they would need in the oven.

-I was humbled by a Basque cheesecake from a bakery (Grace Street — I think it may be NYC only). I made one a couple years ago following Molly Baz’s recipe and the store bought was much better. I think I overbaked.


P.S. no matter how much scratch cooking I do, we always have a box of Ghirardelli double chocolate brownies in the pantry.