Cooking for yourself is a basic life skill because everyone needs to eat and takeout or eating out all the time is not an option for everyone. You can find really simple recipes, but when you start wanting variety, that’s when it becomes more complicated. It is even more likely to make a mistake and create a disaster when you feel confident enough to experiment, change up recipes or invent your own.
Playing in the kitchen is fun, but as mentioned, it may not end in success, so if you want to avoid the mistakes other people have already gone through, you can read through this list in which people reveal their worst cooking blunders as they thought their ideas would be praised by Michelin Star chefs.
More info: Reddit
#1

Baking thanksgiving turkey upside down… it was an accident but it was also the juiciest turkey I’ve had, makes sense if you think about it. The brown fatty meat on top cooks and drips down to the dryer white meat essentially basting itself
159points
#2

OK so had chicken breasts but had nothing to coat them in at all. Realized I had Wasabi peas so I made them into a powder and coated the chicken breasts. It did not taste like Wasabi deliciousness. It was heinous and tasted/looked like a Shrek s**t.
Report
124points
#3

I once made a truly deliciously looking butternut squash soup, it was bright orange. Then I thought I'll make it healthier by adding spinach, but it made it look like diarrhoea. I had to get my kids to taste it with their eyes closed. Once they opened them they weren't so keen. In fact we all ate it with our eyes closed. It was delicious but gross 😝
114points
#4

When I was first living off campus in college, I had to learn how to cook for myself well, and how to balance my budget and cook interesting food for my meals.
I once decided to be adventurous, and cook a middle eastern dish that sounded amazing. I had all the ingredients except a big one - plain, whole fat yogurt.
That was the day I learned that when a middle eastern recipe calls for yogurt (or any recipe really), Yoplait flavored yogurts are NOT an appropriate substitute.
Instead of lasting 3 days of lunches, like it was supposed to, it went into the trash after 2 and a half spoonfuls.
Report
106points
#5

When I was just starting to learn how to cook, I had a big piece of pork that I didn't know what to do with. Knowing that mint is a flavor used with pork sometimes and that alcohol can tenderize meat, I took the logical step of making peppermint schnapps pork. Recipe: pork into crock pot, pour peppermint schnapps on it, cook for a few hours.
Peppermint Schnapps doesn't go with pork. At least, not when your recipe consists solely of schnapps, pork, and heat.
*ETA:* I used like half a bottle of schnapps on it.
Report
105points
#6

Not a cooking one, but a cleaning one.
I made pasta sauce and was being lazy/thinking I could save time cleaning a few of the dishes. Pasta sauce is oily right, so I wanted to soak the plate in hot water to make it easier to scrub.
Big brain idea... I am about to have a shower anyway.. shampoo removes oil, and the water is hot. I can let the dishes soak by my feet like a pre rinse cycle or something and then it will be super simple to finish in the sink. So smart!
Anyway the sauce did not really come off the plates, the oil made it a bit slippery and I almost fell on the plates, the splashing water made it so I had to clean sauce marks off the bathtub. I had to spend extra time scrubbing the tub, my feet and washing the dishes anyway.
104points
#7

First time cooking a ham, thought fresh pineapple would be better than canned. BIG mistake. Turns out fresh has an enzyme that turns ham to literal mush with no flavor and the consistency of fat you want to spit out. Canning somehow eliminates the effect.
Who would have thought? Lucky I even looked it up, or would have attributed the phenomenon to a bad ham or something, and made the same mistake the next time.
So only use canned pineapple on ham!
Report
94points
#8

Making mint pesto using only mint plants out of my garden… apparently you’re supposed to use 90% spinach and 10% mint, not 100% mint. Oops.
Report
82points
#9

Not mine, but my partner was cooking roast beef (I think, maybe some other beef dish) shirtless while I was at work and mentioned through text that he “burned himself a little.” He didn’t make it out to be a big deal so I figured it was like his fingertip, whatever. Came home and the man had a huge grease burn on his chest, his arms, his hands, and bit on his cheek. He ended up being fine, and was pretty unfazed by his injuries despite some rough blistering. He was only hung up on how sad his roast beef tasted lol. Months later he still has the scars to remind him what not to do when cooking beef, and has become quite the grill master.
Report
80points
#10

In high school, my friend and I thought it would be amazing to make a chocolate and peanut butter omelet. Mixed cocoa powder into the eggs, filled it with skippy and chocolate chips. Was not amazing.
Report
78points
#11
I spent a ton of time and money on a standing rib roast prime rib. Had friends over…I couldn’t get the au jus dark enough so I added just a little blue food coloring dye…Smurf blue is what came out. Everyone said I “blew the jus” it looked horrific
Report
72points
#12

Making brownies from a boxed mix and didn't have any vegetable oil. Thought sesame oil would be okay. They were the most foul brownies I've ever tasted.
Report
70points
#13

Hotdog in homemade bun? Great! Fried dough? Great! Hotdog wrapped in dough and deep fried? Explodes!
Report
68points
#14

In a college drunken stooper I thought it would be great to make chicken breast with some cheese and a wine sauce.
Chicken breast. Done.
Don't have any parm? Mozzarella will be just fine.
No white wine? This $3 bottle of merlot should suffice.
Fast forward 30 minutes and I have overcooked chicken and a disgusting looking lump of mozzarella that is purple due to the wine.
Maybe it'll taste good? No. It tasted like Satan's a*****e.
Dumped in the garbage. Guess I'm getting Chipotle delivered.
Report
65points
#15

Made taco beef mac n cheese. A staple I lived off of in college. One night I was starving and craving it, but had no beef. So I substituted beef for salmon. Threw some taco seasoning on that salmon and hoped for the best. Turned out f*****g terrible.
In my defense, I had never had a fish taco before that and thought fish and taco seasoning worked together. They..uh...
They do not.
Report
65points
#16

You can't make 'pumpkin fries' by deep frying...slices of raw pumpkin -- discovered age 19ish
You *shouldn't* fry watermelon unless you like fryer flavored pink slime -- discovered age 22
Sharper knives *aren't* safer than dull ones when you're scooping a julienned onion up into a 40qt tub and the knife hits the tub with the dull size and your opposite palm with the *razor sharp* side -- discovered age 31
Report
64points
#17

Biggest one that comes to mind is combining the directions of “salt your steak a day before cooking” and “let rest on the counter before cooking.” Yes, you’re supposed to do both of those things… But you ARENT supposed to let it rest on the counter for a day before cooking lmao. I left a nice piece of meat out overnight, and when I woke up I instantly was like “how tf did I think this was correct?”
Report
62points
#18

I made a blunder yesterday! Was making sponge cake for the first time and the recipe called for using a skewer in a zig zag pattern to free large bubbles. I did that, then had the bright idea to get rid of as many bubbles as possible by tapping the pan on the table multiple times
Guess who ended up with an overly dense cake instead?
Report
60points
#19

Mixing Gatorade powder with milk to make an awesome milkshake. I almost puked.
Report
60points
#20

I had pre-shredded beets and I had this idea to fry them as a unit like a big hashbrown. I knew for hashbrowns shredded potatoes are we ften squeezed to get excess water out to encourage browning and get the hashbrown to cook through without turning to mush, so I did that to the beets. Squeezed SO much juice out of them their color started to fade- should have been my first clue.
Finally go to fry it and while they are taking on some color, they really aren't getting crispy at all, so I just keep cooking.
When I was satisfied I removed it from the pan. A faintly pink, barely crispy blob of shredded beets. Go in for a taste, completely flavorless. I salted the s**t out of it too, all I could taste was the salt. The texture was awful too. Any semblance of crisp was overcome by the chewy, leathery, stringy sensation of munching through a damp piece of paper.
I realized after the fact that beets are mostly sugar and have very little starch. The lack if starch meant it wouldn't crisp up, and the high sugar probably meant most of the flavor was locked into the juice that I squeezed out of it. 10/10 would not try again.
Report
54points


