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35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
Funny,Food,FailsAUG 22, 2022

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online

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Cooking can be an incredibly rewarding experience… most of the time. Whether you’re just starting out, perpetually stuck at the level of a beginner (hi!) or you’re a gastronomic veteran with your own TV show (“It’s fudgin’ RAW!"), nobody’s truly immune from making mistakes in the kitchen.
The size of those mistakes, however, can vary quite a bit. On one side of the kitchen scale, you have silly blunders that you tell your friends whenever you have them over for dinner—they make for a lighthearted story. On the other side, you’ve got Fails with a capital ‘F’ that are so big, recounting the tale of how you messed up is akin to a horror story.
We’ve collected a bunch of tasty posts from a thread on r/Cooking where people opened up about the dishes that they cooked “so amazingly wrong” that they still cringe to this very day. Scroll down, upvote the tales that really got you salivating, and if you’re feeling up to it, tell us about your own cooking fails in the comments.
Meanwhile, be sure to scroll down for Bored Panda’s chat with talented pie artist Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin about how to embrace failure in the kitchen, and the biggest fail that she’s ever personally experienced!

#1

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
First time I tried to make chocolate chip cookies. To this day I still don't know what the hell I did wrong but they came out the size of dinner plates and were just as hard.
My kids decided it would be fun to throw them like frisbees and ended up breaking the front window....
Those inedible, harder than rock cookies cost us about $500 in the end lol
Report
238points

#2

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
While making stir fry noodles I somehow forgot that water exists and kept adding soy sauce when the liquid in the pan had evaporated. It had my wife googling "how much salt can kill you?"
209points

#3

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
My wife made something called Porcupine Balls. She rolled up ground beef with dry rice and baked them. The rice didn't cook.
155points

World-renowned pie artist Jessica, the author of ‘Pies Are Awesome,’ told Bored Panda that mistakes are a part of life. And working in the kitchen is no different. Learning from your failures is about embracing the blunders, even if you might not feel like doing it.

“I’m a huge proponent of celebrating failure and learning from mistakes,” she said. “But, man, in the moment, it sure can suck!”

According to baking and cooking expert Jessica, having a lighthearted approach, learning to laugh with and at yourself, can help turn mistakes into learning experiences.

“Having a sense of humor definitely helps when things are going pear-shaped on you!” she said that life gets easier when you allow yourself to laugh during difficult moments.

#4

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
When I first lived by myself I was really craving pierogies and the s**tty grocery store walking distance from my house didn't have Mrs. T's. Decided I would make them from scratch instead with 0 knowledge of how to make any type of dough or assemble anything resembling a dumpling.
Spent hours making these little lumps of sadness only to watch them all promptly fall apart in the water. Tried to eat the super thick dough and weird boiled filling anyways and it was unfathomingly bad. I also found out a week later that the grocery store did have Mrs. T's and I was just looking in the wrong section.
Luckily now I am pretty good at baking, making various doughs, and make my own pasta and dumplings regularly so it was a nice teaching moment. Still haven't tried pierogies again so maybe I will have to give it a go now that I actually know what the f**k I'm doing.
148points

#5

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
Box of white rice had a recipe for rice pudding on the side. This was before I knew about egg tempering and the directions assumed you knew about it.
Just cracked the eggs right into the pot and stirred.
It was the texture of disappointment.
146points

#6

First time grilling as a new wife. I bought horrible steaks (eye of round) because I had no clue. I put them on a hot charcoal grill and burned them to old boot leather. Needless to say no amount of A-1 could hide that. But he ate it and even went back for seconds to spare my feelings. They were terrible and I’ve never bought eye of round again.
I will say I make a mean steak now. On both gas and charcoal grills and cast iron skillets. I’ve overheard my husband telling his buddies I make the best steak in town. He doesn’t know I’ve heard him and it’s so sweet. I still remember his face on that first grill attempt though. He was miserable throughout that meal but did everything he could to lie to my face and tell me it was terrific
144points

The pie artist was happy to open up to Bored Panda about one of the worst kitchen experiences that she’s ever had.

“My worst ever baking fail came from a fancy lemon meringue pie with a stained glass flower design that I was making for the Food Network,” she said.

“I had to make that pie five times before I got it right. On the second to last attempt I was so frazzled, I actually dropped the pie taking it out of the oven and it exploded all over the floor,” Jessica told Bored Panda.

However, when that happened, the pie artist didn’t panic! “I could have freaked out at that point, but things had just gotten so absurd I just burst out laughing. Oddly enough, I found that rather cathartic and was able to refocus afterward and finish the project.”

#7

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
First time I cooked bolognese. Said to use 3 cloves garlic. I thought a bulb was a clove. Took me hours to cut it all up. U can imagine how garlicky it was lol
135points

#8

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
My husband and I once made homemade Mac and cheese - but used condensed milk instead of evaporated milk. Canned milk is all the same, right?? Yeah, no.
134points

#9

I did that thing that people joke about. I spent about 4 hours making trotter soup (aka bone broth aka paya soup) and then decided to get fancy and strain out the meat and bones. So I strained all my soup into the sink and exactly when I was done, I realized I had strained the soup into the sink instead of a container.
123points

While it’s great if you want to improve your cooking skills, at the same time, it’s important to remember that ‘perfection’ exists neither in the kitchen nor anywhere else in life.

Professor Suzanne Degges-White, from Northern Illinois University, recently shared with Bored Panda that having a sense of humor and being flexible are two things that will definitely help you be successful in adulthood.

“No one likes to 'lose face,' and that is engrained to varying degrees across cultures. Unfortunately, our brains may be especially prone to catastrophizing events and so we might make something more out of something no one else really noticed and no one else will recall later on," she said about embarrassment and failure.

#10

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
My cousin and I once served lemonade to our extended family by mixing water with yellow paint
123points

#11

Red Velvet cake… the Yanks use a different name for something than we do in the UK… so this thing I made was so bad it got thrown out for the birds… a week later us was still outside and intact. Even the birds thought it was s**t.
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119points

#12

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
Cooking while high.
Usually turn out really delicious stuff.
Was making Pasta Salad and got the big idea to add BANANAS...
It was one of the very worst things I have ever done.
This was over a decade ago and my family who were served this atrocity still bring it up.LOL
115points

“When our personalities are wired to feel that we must be 'perfect' in all that we do, we internalize negative feelings about the mistake we made and mistakenly assume that everyone else is judging us due to that one moment," the professor said.

"Fortunately, our brains are designed to protect us from pain and many of us may suffer horrible humiliation at some point in our lives, but we can benefit from a brain that allows us to 'selectively forget' the incident or else we're able to rationalize it by reminding ourselves that 'everyone makes mistakes,' 'it was just one time and no one will remember it,' or similar healthy responses."

#13

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
A few years ago I lived with a guy from the Czech Republic. One day he starts making traditional Czech sourdough which has caraway seeds in it. He spends a few days making a starter and then quite suddenly the house starts to smell strongly of curry. I come home that evening to the guy looking very dejected telling me he had messed up his bread and had to throw it away.
You see, the Czech word for caraway seeds is “Kmin” and this guy had added quite a lot of Cumin to his bread thinking they were the same thing.
113points

#14

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
When I was 4 or 5 I wanted to make lemonade, so I put lemon juice in water and added some white powder to it like my grandma would. It didn’t taste the same, so I added more white powder, still no. I persisted tho. After a while my dad entered and told me I was using salt.
106points

#15

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
Early 20s. I had cooked some but I was not an experienced cook. Tried to make fried chicken. No instructions or recipe just winged it. Crispy rare chicken. Looked good on the outside, salmonella on the inside.
103points

The professor noted that some people become perfectionists because of the way their parents raised them. "For those people, making mistakes throughout adulthood may be experienced as something that would provoke punishment and that brings on even more humilation," she said.

"The best way to embrace our mistakes is to acknowledge we've made one—or else no learning can take place. Then remind ourselves that everyone makes mistakes—that's totally normal behavior! Then figure out a way to laugh at yourself before allowing someone else to laugh at you first. When you laugh at yourself, others laugh WITH you, not AT you."

#16

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
The recent one that springs to mind was my snickerdoodle cookie disaster. Apparently butter can be TOO warm for baking, leading to cookies turning into pancakes of greasy melted butter. They were disgusting and inedible. Everything went into the trash.
After some research I discovered the bit about butter being too warm, so the next time I tried snickerdoodles, I kept the butter quite cool. They turned out perfectly. The more you know…and knowing is half the battle.
98points

#17

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
I made mulled wine this Christmas and somehow added cumin instead of cardamom. It tasted like barf.
94points

#18

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
I managed to gloriously screw up heating a frozen pizza once. I'm not quite sure how the thermodynamics of this worked, but the edges were stuck to the tray and the middle had risen far enough for the cheese to glue itself to shelf above it. I had to take the whole thing out and prise it off on the counter, scarcely avoiding burning my arms in the process.
The worst part was that this wasn't long after I absolutely nailed making a souffle for the first time.
88points

#19

From 18-22ish I didn't realize what a massive difference there was between butter and margarine. I used margarine to cook and bake everything and when I discovered "real" butter my life changed forever.
88points

#20

35 Things People Cooked So ‘Amazingly Wrong’ That They Just Had To Share Their Horrible Experiences Online
Not me - but my sister made an Indian dish (can’t remember what exactly it was) and used vanilla yogurt rather than plain yogurt. It was awful
87points
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