Worst meal YOU have ever cooked

[Frizbee]

Or will admit to anyway....Sinced we have bashed our Mother's and Father's..LOL
I'll Start....
Many years ago, I decided to try a new type of sauce....Green is such a pretty color, so I went with the pre packaged Knorr pesto variety, many years before I learned how to cook properly.
I am not sure what I did to it, but it was like green paste on the pasta. My husband (still my boyfriend at the time) was a champ and we bravely stuck in the fork to try it. It was just as bad as it looked.
Obviously we ordered pizza and now if something doesn’t come out just right (and this is like 12 years later) we remind each other of the dreadful pesto experience.
I am also the worst baker in the world, and couldn’t begin to explain just how bad. I tried in school to overcome this issue, but alas, a baker I will never be. I do try and try with lots of enthusiasm, trying rosemary bread (was a brick shaped loaf), a chocolate cream pie (ended up with about 10#'s of runny chocolate sauce, it was really bad math I suspect), tired even to make fondant icing for my wedding cake (it was totally not pliable, many cracks and tasted awful I also placed it on an angel food cake, and well it was like a heavy clay pancake this was the test run and a pastry chef friend hearing of my disaster made me a delicious cake with icing...LOL). If I remark I will bake something to my family they have told me in no uncertain terms they will disown me.
Obviously I stay out of the bake shop and on the hotline personally and professionally.
So what's your worst culinary disaster?
Frizbee

[kuan]

I think it's when I tried to cook camel shank.

[chrose]

Quite obviously I have none now! Actually I can only think of one that could be considered a "disaster" (though there were a few near misses)
When I was about 11/12 perhaps, hard to say now......I was interested in cooking. My parents were going out for the evening so I convinced my mother to allow me to make a recipe I had seen somewhere. It was for "Stuffed hamburgers". If done correctly you would have had a broiled burger stuffed inside with a tomato sauce and mushrooms. Sounded good. I took probably 1/2# or a little more of ground meat, made a big mound and plopped in a small can of tomato paste. I then opened a small can of sliced mushrooms, I may or may not have drained it and put that on top. Into the oven it went. I had no notion that the oven had different temperature settings, I just turned it on. Whatever it was set at (and I think it was in the 200-low 300 range) is what it was. I popped in my creation and watched it for the next hour not do much of anything. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and I took it out and attempted to eat my semi raw, tomato pasty, wet mushroomy "thing" Yeccchhhh.....................oh it was nasty. Right then and there I realized I had either better give it up or get a clue if I was to ever cook again! Thank god for Graham Kerr, "The Galloping Gourmet"!

[KeeperOfTheGood]

My first try at chutney. Lets just say, the euphemism would have to be "up chutney".

[Kerryclan]

I made shrimp scampi the dumb way. Trying to impress a new boyfriend, and without the proper ingredients, I used small frozen pre-cooked shrimp, dredged them in too much flour, didn't use enough liquid, etc., etc.

I served him a plate of shrimp plaster. The moment I tasted it, I got up, took both plates away and made us some hamburgers.

[chrose]

I will have to post for a friend of mine. Bob and I were housemates back in our very (very) early 20's. I cooked for myself, mostly heat and eat mind you, but I did have the ability to shop and cook. Bob lived on pizza and subs. One day he asked me to do some shopping for him so he could save some money and try cooking simple things for himself. So I did. I tried to make it as simple as I could, some pot pies and things like that. I also bought him a pound of ground meat and a box of Hamburger Helper.
Well I went out one night, came back late and went into the kitchen. It looked like somebody had gotten sick in the sink.
The next morning I saw him and he said "Man, that Hamburger Helper stuff sucked!" So I asked him to tell me what he did.
He said:

• I cooked the meat and added the seasoning packet.
• I cooked the noodles.
• I mixed them together.

Remembering what the sink looked like I asked him "Did you drain the noodles"? He said "No. Was I supposed to"?
Mmm Mmm Hamburger Helper soup! And that was the end of Bobs' attempt at cooking for himself.
Lucky for Bob, he went to Brazil and met a wonderful woman who is a fantastic cook!

[Mezzaluna]

Okay, one time I'd been up pulling an all-nighter in college, then tried to cook dinner. I had some kind of fish (a block of cod, I think). I cut it in chunks, dredged in flour (still frozen) and tried to brown it in my wok. I didn't have it hot enough, and the flour turned to glue. Trying to save it, I added chicken broth and sliced tomatoes. Oh, man.....

My youngest brother (not the one who's a chef!) wanted to impress his buddies on Superbowl Sunday while he was in college. He bought a 15 pound turkey to roast for sandwiches and snacks. (Why he didn't just buy deli meat, I'll never know!) After three hours he called Mom to ask her why it smelled funny. Could have been the plastic thingy that holds the legs together, or the bag of innards in the breast and cavity..... he never thawed the bird, just put it in the oven frozen solid. Determined not to waste his investment, he removed the offending items and finished roasting according to my mom's directions. He still had to throw it out because it tasted like plastic.

[Harpua]

BAck in the day before I knew anything, my boyfriend and I cubed up some beef, put it in a bag and filled the bag with beer to marinade. We left it in there for about 2 days because we were taking it camping. We thought, "It's a marinade, the more time, the better."

We took it out to skewer it over the fire, and it was all bloated, and it was chewy and tasted terrible!!! If I still ate beef, I wouldn't cook it like that every again! (However, the chicken that we had marinaded in soy ginger scallion sauce was divine!)

[redace1960]

1968..a dish called 'slumgullion' which was something like sloppy joes. didn't drain the hamburger, didnt have onions so used extra green bell pepper and just hove in it with the narsty burger...add a can of tomato sauce-ran out of tomato paste- and voila! so bad the dog wouldn't eat it. so bad i buried it in the back yard and still the dog wouldnt eat it. yeeegh.

[Rocio]

Not long ago, in my first little reunion with friends as a wife, I tried to make some falafel. Not only my blender broke down (since I don´t have a food processor) while I was trying to make the chickpea paste, but also when I made the patties and put them in oil, they became a greenish something floating and sizzling in the skillet....I almost got away with it, but our guest of honor showed up early and saw my kitchen in complet disarray and my look of hopelessness about the falafel. Fortunately, I had some chickpea left and made a really nice hummus...I´ve made other bad things, but I think this is the worse...
Rocio

[faith leche]

Ok great story... kind of. when me and my vegetarian fiance were dating, i tried to be creative, and attempt a pastry that i ate at a west indian restauraunt. it was a pastry stuffed with sweetened black beans. ok so i puree black beans and added way too much sugar. i ruined the dough ,so i tried to rig it with pancake batter, used to much oil to fry it...CANOLA OIL.
long story short , my fiance asked if i was trying to do one of the following


.poison him
.clog his arteries
.give him diabetes
.or create a west indian laxative