If you’ve opened this article with a rumbly stomach, you’re in luck - these hors d'oeuvres that you’re about to read about might find you losing your appetite completely and saving your lunch money for something else. Yup, it’s that bad!
But let’s start from the beginning. There’s this awesome little Reddit thread calling for people to list the most horrible foods their parents used to prepare for them. Our working title for it is Food of Parents, but you can figure out your own version, too. And you just wouldn’t believe how tragic preparing a meal can get! Even though terrible recipes are often to blame for the kitchen disasters these people had to eat as kids, it’s also the preparation. Foods served raw when they should've been cooked - check. Foods overcooked to the point of cremation - absolutely. Nasty food combos - yessiree bob. And that’s just the surface of this ocean of tasteless foods, kitchen nightmares, and torturous tarts. We sure are glad we’ve never had to taste any of these edible curiosities, and hopefully, we will never be in a position to try them starting from now on.
You’ll probably never be ready for these horrible foods no matter how long you wait, so let’s just rip the bandaid off and start reading, shall we? The submissions are just a pinch down below, and you should absolutely check them out (at your own risk, that is). We promise you, these bland foods are the absolute worst creations to have even touched anyone’s palate. However, some of them are nastier than others, and when you encounter such a specimen, give it a vote so it’ll find its way to the top of this list. And if you’d like to, share this horror show with your foodie friends, too.
#1
"Boiled ribs and potatoes. That’s it. No seasoning. Just boiled. Ribs. And. Potatoes."
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25points
#2
"My older siblings still tell the story of when my mother was at the hospital for a few weeks and my dad had to cook for them. My dad was a truck driver, and could build anything from a car engine to a house, but couldn't cook to save his life. He decided to make chili and just kept adding cans of food. Corn. Mixed veggies. Yams. He added so much to the chili that he had to keep going up to a bigger pot until he ended up with a cauldron of nearly every canned food and meat they had in the fridge. My siblings wrote my mom a letter saying that she had to come home soon because dad was trying to kill them, and she started crying because she was so emotional. The nurse rushed over because they thought that the kids had written her a nasty letter. Needless to say, my dad hasn't cooked a meal in over 30 years."
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24points
#3
"I grew up during the '80's self-improvement craze when fat-free was blasted on everything. This was when they invented fat-free "cheese", a substance that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike cheese. Imagine melting yellow fisher price plastic over your steamed broccoli and you get the idea."
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23points
#4
"My grandma made this dish called easter egg casserole, which was basically rainbow-colored leftover hard-boiled eggs, mayo, egg noodles, and a little sugar. the foulest thing I have ever had the misfortune of tasting. the devil definitely won that easter."
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22points
#5
"When I was a kid I never understood why people loved steak so much because my mom always cooked it well done and I could only get well done if we went to a restaurant.
When I had my first bite of medium rare, it was magical. It was then I understood why people love steak."
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19points
#6
"I'm a 35 yo American married to a 32 yo Brit, and we live in England. My mother was and is a bad cook, but nothing compares to my wife's mother. She has a glass cutting board. She refuses to sauté anything. She has this enormous WW2-era oven (cooker) that she uses for EVERY meal. Making a roast with broccoli and potatoes? Cook them in water for the same amount of time in the oven until ready to serve. Salt? HA! Garlic? Phhhh!
She poaches fish in skim milk. She serves an over-beaten flour and margarine (yes, not butter) mixture ("roux") and calls it cheese and onion pie (it was edible glue). Her idea of spice is ground pepper. I lived in this woman's house for 4 months of lockdown (I love to cook and do a damn good job, but she is overprotective of her dull knives and 3-year-old spices). I choked it all down for my wife, but I'm aching to tell her how much she s****. ACHING."
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17points
#7
Uknown said:
"My father tried to make sticky rice by replacing the water with Allen's Apple juice. That was..."
"My father tried to make sticky rice by replacing the water with Allen's Apple juice. That was..."
TheFireflies replied:
"I love his logic though. Like, 'Hm, really needs something to help clump it up? The kids are always talking about mango sticky rice... eh, apples will probably work.'"
"I love his logic though. Like, 'Hm, really needs something to help clump it up? The kids are always talking about mango sticky rice... eh, apples will probably work.'"
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16points
#8
androidbear04 said:
"Let's see, take your pick...
Buying the leanest cut of ground beef to make hamburger patties and broiling them until they were about 50 moos past well done. Even she called them hockey pucks. I don't really care for hamburgers to this day. Pressure-cooking unseasoned chicken 3 times as long as it's supposed to be cooked, which leaches the bulk of the flavor into the broth. The broth must have been saved for posterity because we never saw it again; just the skinless, tasteless chicken. Having an unseasoned whole steamed zucchini plopped on your dinner plate 365 days a year. Nothing could fix it. Those are the main offenders."
"Let's see, take your pick...
Buying the leanest cut of ground beef to make hamburger patties and broiling them until they were about 50 moos past well done. Even she called them hockey pucks. I don't really care for hamburgers to this day. Pressure-cooking unseasoned chicken 3 times as long as it's supposed to be cooked, which leaches the bulk of the flavor into the broth. The broth must have been saved for posterity because we never saw it again; just the skinless, tasteless chicken. Having an unseasoned whole steamed zucchini plopped on your dinner plate 365 days a year. Nothing could fix it. Those are the main offenders."
SpiderNoises replied:
"Having an unseasoned whole steamed zucchini plopped on your dinner plate 365 days a year."
"Having an unseasoned whole steamed zucchini plopped on your dinner plate 365 days a year."
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16points
#9
"My mom used to boil asparagus. It would be so tough and chewy you couldn’t swallow it. I taught her how to roast it in the oven a few years ago. She hasn’t gone back."
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16points
#10
"Take a banana, slice it vertically so 2 banana halves, and slather on mayonnaise. Call it a salad. A banana and mayo salad."
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16points
#11
"My ma is from Dublin. Her Irish cuisine isn't bad... that is, she steams/boils everything with MINIMAL seasoning. Wasn't until I dated a Venezuelan girl in college that I learned you could sautee asparagus."
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16points
#12
"My mom left my stepdad instructions to finish her vegetarian chili. It was supposed to get two cups of bulgar wheat, which cooks up nicely like a ground beef substitute. My stepdad was not a cook. He grabbed what he thought was the wheat and instead it was a container of brewer's yeast. Yes, he added two cups of it instead of the bulgar wheat. It was so disgusting and he made my sister and I eat our whole bowl for dinner.
The next day wasn't fun."
The next day wasn't fun."
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16points
#13
writinginwater said:
"Because of the Great Trichinosis Scare of the 70s, you could hammer a nail into oak with her pork chops. Just the blandness and repetition of meals was disheartening."
"Because of the Great Trichinosis Scare of the 70s, you could hammer a nail into oak with her pork chops. Just the blandness and repetition of meals was disheartening."
uncanneyvalley replied:
"If we're ever able to eat in restaurants again, find somewhere known for meat that does a thick bone-in pork chop and get it medium rare. It's a fucking revelation to those of us who grew up with well-trimmed tiny hockey pucks glopped with low-fat condensed soup and sprinkled with skim milk cheese."
"If we're ever able to eat in restaurants again, find somewhere known for meat that does a thick bone-in pork chop and get it medium rare. It's a fucking revelation to those of us who grew up with well-trimmed tiny hockey pucks glopped with low-fat condensed soup and sprinkled with skim milk cheese."
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15points
#14
"Let's just say my grandmother makes a “chicken pot pie” that includes spaghetti and water chestnuts."
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15points
#15
"Sometimes mom would start our meals off with fruit cocktail in a lettuce leaf, with a giant scoop of mayonnaise on top."
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15points
#16
"Haha my great-grandmother was a terrible cook, so my grandma grew up thinking that burgers were supposed to be black crisps. She liked it that way, so my poor mother grew up being forced to eat charcoal briquettes. No one dared tell my grandma that they were burned until she found my mom's stash of old burgers stowed in the closet, covered in ants."
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14points
#17
"My dad thinks all spices are interchangeable. I was teaching him a rice dish I had learned with Mediterranean-inspired flavors. Parmesan cheese, rosemary, thyme, garlic, lemon juice, and maybe throw in some basil. Very simple, and easy to do in a rice cooker without even getting another pot dirty. He said he was going to try to make it right away. Call back a week later, and ask him if he tried it and how it went. He says he did and that it--and he said this with obvious reservations--"okay." I asked him what he had swapped in. He swapped the rosemary for cumin."
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14points
#18
"Italian Pancake.
My Dad is a novice cook but has a good palate. But his most interesting quirk was that he continually tried to create his own fusion.
I love some fusion, be he would just mash two things up randomly and see what it did. And no matter how it tasted, his reaction was always Mmmmmmmm so good! Anyway, Italian Pancake. Buttermilk pancakes Marinara Provolone... Maple syrup is all over the top. Sometimes he'd also add parmesan cheese. Sometimes ham.
Taste pretty much how you think it does. Without the syrup, it was kind of okay. A weird, bit but kinda good if you don't think about it. But the syrup?
As my father would say, 'MMMMMmmmmm!'"
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14points
#19
"Mom's meatballs were just ground turkey rolled into balls and cooked in a pan.
My SO cooked meatballs one day and I let it slip that I hated meatballs. Except she made them with bread crumbs and spices and I loved them."
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14points
#20
"They don't believe in expiration dates and my mom grew up in the snowy north. So she bulk buys canned goods and then stores them in the garage for YEARS and never throws any of them away. She goes through the back of the shelves and just cooks with the oldest thing no matter how it looks or smells. I was always sick as a kid and now that I only visit, she's given me food poisoning 4 times in the last 5 years by cooking with expired food. I don't eat there anymore."
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14points