Dinner disasters

[SobaAddict70]

This is a companion thread to the Worst meal in someone's home thread in the Adventures In Eating forum.

I remember the first time I had Swedish meatballs at a friend's parents' home. The recipe seemed fairly simple for something that seemed complicated to me at the time. To one lb. of browned ground beef or pork (shaped into meatballs), add a sauce composed of one jar of melted grape jelly and a third of a cup of Tabasco.

Now, I might have gotten some things lost in the translation because when I attempted this, the result was beyond vile.

Memory sure does have a way of sugar-coating your disaster stories.

Post your dinner disasters here.

Soba

[Jake]

First time I ever made osso bucco was for a bf and I had personally never eaten it so I had no idea what to look for in a recipe. Anyway, the recipe I used called for 1/3 cup of orange peel in the braise, not just peel for the gremolata. So I put it in, cooked as supposed to, tasted it and screamed!!! It was vile. bf thought if was vile. If I recall correctly dog thought it was vile.

Didn't actually try osso bucco for a few years after that.....

[snowangel]

My Lamb Curry from the cook off. Yuck.

[NancyH]

Before I learned anything about cooking - had to try my fiance's wok to make a stir fry becuase we both loved Chinese food and I thought "how hard could it be"?

I figured that the 5 spice powder I found in the cupboard would make it spicy, so I dumped a bunch in. Well, as you might guess, it took what would have at least been an edible meal and made it horrible! I think we wound up getting take out (Chinese) that night!

[emmapeel]

I was showing off for my fiance and invited a friend of his over and decided to cook lasanga. It was more like Lasanga Cheese Soup. I'd used far too much ricotta. Another time I left fresh Angel Hair pasta to boil for about....20 min. Mmmm...mush. One of the guest said to her boyfriend "Honey, is the pasta too soft for you?"

[Luckylies]

ick some sort of spaghetti squash scallop thing with ginger...trying to cut carbs. never again.

[handmc]

Made meatloaf for the 1st time, for my GF, now wife. I came out soupy, that's right soupy! How it even could have happened is beyond me.

She still laughs at me for that one.

[SuzySushi]

When I was young and living at home with my parents, I came across a recipe for a "Brazilian" beef stew made with brewed coffee, and offered to make it for dinner. The recipe called for the beef to be floured before browning. The floured beef stuck to the bottom of the pot and began burning. So I used my mother's spatula to scrape it into another pot, added the coffee and other ingredients, and simmered it the required time.

Came time to eat, I began dishing out the stew, and saw, to my horror, shreds of pale blue plastic floating throughout the pot. I'd scraped so vigorously that the plastic coating had come off the spatula!

We all had pb&j sandwiches for dinner that night.

[Lone Star]

Soba - mix a jar of grape jelly and a jar of Heinz chili sauce for the secret ingredient and I'll bet it will be just like you remembered. That recipe is one of my mothers old standbys.

Worst recent dinner disaster involved my daughter. She is 15, a good student and able to understand the complexities of softball, football and all of the social drama that swirls around teenaged girls, so I felt certain she could follow some simple directions to get dinner started for me .

1. Turn oven on to 325

2. Place ham in pan and cover with foil

I get home around six, peek in the oven and see the ham cooking away under the foil. I merrily go about the rest of the meal and sip some wine, mash potatoes etc.. I take the ham out of the oven at dinner time and lift off the foil. There it sat, completely wrapped in its plastic casing, including the webbing with the charred price tag dangling off the end.

The smell of hammy melted plastic stayed in my kitchen for days.

I just don't know anymore.

[DeVeaux]

I worked summers as a cook in a hotel restaurant in Niagara Falls while in high school - we were an Italian/steakhouse sort of place. The Chef left a huge pot of his red sauce simmering for the evening's service, and went home. Some one said they must have bumped the controls on the range while we were working, and turned the fire up to to high. When we finally smelled somthing and turned it down, black flakes came up when we stirred it, and it tasted really nasty.

The night cook asked the front desk who we had in the house that night, and the front desk said "two busloads of Japanese tourists". So we were directed to strain out the black stuff, put it in a new pot and use it.

All the Japanese guests ordered "Italian spaghetti and Budweiser" for dinner, and they loved it! The waiters kept coming into the kitchen to tell us they all were thrilled with how "zesty" the sauce was.

[tejon]

Years ago I was making Ropas Viejas in a big pot on the stove. All kinds of good smells emitted from the kitchen as it slowly cooked away. Somewhere along the line I decided to take a quick trip to the store.

(cue in ominous music here)

When I returned, the first thing I noticed was the smell. An acrid, horrible smell of things turning to charcoal. Wisps of smoke drifted from the front door as I ran to the stove to assess the damage. All that remained of the meat was a charred, black lump. The smell lasted for almost a week, despite airing the house and tuning on every fan I could find. Never left the house while cooking again unless there was someone present to keep watch.

[lexy]

lasagna - one of the first meals I ever made for myself, and of course I didn't need a recipe, I'd seen my mother make it a hundred times. it didn't occur to me that you might need to cook the lasagna before layering it in the pan, and I'd never made a white sauce before, so I threw an egg in for some reason. when the egg started to scramble I panicked (I knew this wasn't how the sauce was supposed to look!) and just threw in into the pan with everything else. net result: crunchy lasagna with semi-raw egg 'béchamel' sauce -ugh

[Tess]

Ah, burning stuff. Last Halloween I had a lot more trick-or-treaters than expected. At the end of one long rush, one of the kids commented, "Your house smells nice." It did-- although I have no idea why burning turnips (put in the oven to roast) and a saucepan with an inch of burned red wine (set on the stove to reduce for my beef stew) should make such a very delightful smell. Luckily I had more wine, but the turnips were useless and I almost had to throw the saucepan out.

[mizducky]

Well, it would have been a total disaster if I hadn't managed to rescue the situation almost in spite of myself, but my first attempt at cooking for a crowd was at least a disaster to my nerves and stomach lining. I volunteered to supervise the end-of-season recognition dinner for a community chorus I used to sing with. The church hall they regularly used for this dinner as well as rehearsals had a big kitchen equiped with big restaurant-quality appliances, so I figured no sweat--even though I had little experience in using them. I was also blissfully naive about the logistics of scaling up for large groups--like, how large quanities of food can take exponentially loooooonger to heat up and to cook. (All you pros out there can feel free to snicker at me now... )

Anyway, I'd had what I thought was this brilliant idea of serving a baked potato bar with various toppings, and of course was totally blind-sided by the physics of getting all these potatoes baked off in time. I think I naively assumed that restaurant-grade ovens would have the muscle and BTUs to come up to temp and deal with it, but no ... (okay, pros, you don't have to snicker quite that loud ... )

Fortunately, the compulsive streak that makes me always show up hyper-early for things rescued my naive ol' butt--I got to the kitchen early, put in all those taters, noticed pretty soon that the ovens were taking forever, and began with increasing anxiety to jack up the temp. I did succeed in getting the taters all just *barely* cooked enough to serve the dinner only a tiny bit late, and managed to not submit anyone to either an under-cooked or over-scorched potato. But man, was I ever a gibbering basket-case by the time that evening was over.

I've cooked large-group dinners since then, but thankfully have gotten a whole lot smarter about the matter.

[winesonoma]

Made a Beef Carbonades with Lambic in unseasoned cast iron. Eat that and you will never have to take iron in your diet. Lucky it was just for me in my early days as a cook.

[rooftop1000]

Has anyone ever seen or used Visions cookware?.....has anyone ever noticed Emeril say never leave cream on the stove unless you want to remodel?.....

Well visions cookware gets about as hot as hell really fast and when you are a 23yr old culinary student you obviously know it all

Well my first shot at fettucini alfredo was cooked in a glass visions pot and while trying to heat cream and assemble all the rest of the ingrediants it boiled over ....a few times but hey once I got the cheese and the (eggs)? in there it was "looking good"....about 2 min into eating, as it cooled it began to congeal...we ate faster... it took on a life of its own lumps flecks creapy nasty yuchy

oh yeah fast forward 10 yrs while we were eating 20 oysters in the dining room I managed to forget that I was giving the last 4 oysters another min or two or 15 on the heat......I did throw that pot out

T

[Grub]

One of the first dishes I felt I had gotten a good handle on was Sole Veronique. I hadn't, of course... I got too confident and didn't do much in the way of planning, just casually grabbed some fillets, cream and grapes, and realized at the last moment hey -- no white wine!? Waddaya do? Oh lookie here, rose cooking wine. That'll do the trick, right?

Auugh!

[wattacetti]

An old (and ex-) girlfriend wanted to hold a dinner party for some friends and asked me to cook for her. Okay, fine. At least that's what I kept telling myself even when she hands me her menu which listed seafood crepes with bechamel. At the time I'd never made crepes before so I went and hunted down a recipe, gave her the ingredient list and showed up to find… pancake mix.

Also only pots; no pans and certainly no crepe pan. Gave up after making a couple of coasters.

[Greatbigsea]

ummm, let me preface this by saying it was MANY years ago.... I had been dating my B/F (now Hubby) for some time and was finally making the three hour drive to meet his parents. We were leaving early in the morning, and I thought it would be nice to have some sustenance for the trip, so pulled out my hot pocket sandwich maker, feeling like a true gourmet, I might add. It was about 5am, and I buttered my fluffy white bread, readying my processed sheese for the grill. At that age, the idea of grilled cheese sandwiches was VERY appealing, even with Kraft singles.

I got everything ready, with a thermos of cocoa for me, coffee for him and we hit the trail. I couldnt wait to dig into my breakfast, but wanting to be generous, I offered my honey the first one. As I merrily chewed on my cold, greasy sandwich, I realized there were strange noises coming from the drivers seat. I looked over and realized that he was having a hard time steering and chewing, which I thought was rather strange....until I realized that I had forgotten to take the plastic wrapper from his slice of cheese prior to putting it in the sandwich maker, so he was wrestling with a cold, greasy piece of plastic in the middle of his sandwich . Needless to say, I was MORTIFIED, and to this day I have to smile when I think of grilled cheese sandwiches...

[SuzySushi]

I realized that I had forgotten to take the plastic wrapper from his slice of cheese prior to putting it in the sandwich maker

←

ROFL!!! Ah, yes, the "forgetting to take off the plastic" mistake...

That and the strange odors coming from the kitchen remind me, if I may mention a friend's dinner disaster....

The first time he attempted to roast a chicken, he didn't realize there was a plastic bag of giblets inside. 'Nuff said?

[Chris Amirault]

My inauspicious first attempt to make "Chinese food" for guests was known for years among the sufferers as chicken with corn starch.

[Mayhaw Man]

Ok. I didn't do this one, but I was a victim.

Many of you who follow my little chronicles of growing up in the house of a great, perhaps world class home cook know that my mom doesn't make too many mistakes. Well, this story is about a mistake she made, a bad one, and one that caused her whole family to suffer great trauma, not to mention hunger previously unknown by the Hamaker boys.

My mom went on a short trip when I was in high school. She planned well and cooked some stuff for us to eat while she was gone. For the first night of her absence she left a Seafood Casserole. This, my jaded friends, is not Tuna Hot Dish. This thing consists of crabmeat, shrimp, really, really good cheese and an assortment of onions and various colored bell peppers (yes, I will be happy to put in recipe gullet when it finally rears it's glorius head) and a pyrex full of it costs about $75 bucks. It ain't cheap and it ain't your grandma's casserole.

Anyway, we all love this stuff. It's pretty amazing and we usually only saw it for Sunday company lunch (while you occasionally see people here talking about "the Old South" and having the preacher for lunch they are just speaking in hyperbole-we actually did this regularly), so it was a pretty big deal having it on a regular night. Well, my brothers and I all rode to and from school together (in my bad ass 1972 Ford Bronco, but that's another story for another website) and as we all had sports in the afternoon we usually didn't get home until 6:30 or so.

My dad, knowing this was a great deal for us and that this would be maybe the only chance that we would ever have to eat something this good while sitting in the den (we NEVER ate in there-EVERYBODY at the table, together, every night) watching manly TV (this would be the era of Mr T, JR, and Farrah), came home from his office promptly at 5 and put it in the oven so that it would be ready when we hit the door. About 6:30 all of these stinky teens show up and smell the stuff and head in to clean up and chow down.

Pretty soon, we are all standing around the kitchen waiting on my Dad to pull this thing from the oven. One of my brothers, the youngest one, mentioned that there was an unusual smell eminating from the oven. We passed it off as something on the bottom of the oven. My dad, who was as excited as we were, and into a couple of cocktails at that point, decided that we could wait no longer. He put on the mitts (which was funny enough, as he can't cook a lick-I mean none-not an egg-not boil water-nada, nothing) and opened the oven. As soon as he opened the door, we knew something was horribly wrong inside of that oven. My father, knowing at that point that there was a problem, uttered a profanity that I don't think, up to that point, I had ever heard him use except for the time that I got, well, nevermind that. Let's just say that he didn't use the big words much. He pulled the casserole out of the oven and we immediately could see what was wrong. We didn't need to know whether to laugh or cry.

My father, in his excited hurry to get this thing in the oven before we got home, had failed to take of the THREE layers of Saran wrap that COMPLETELY encircled the pyrex dish. What we had at that point was a sort of free form sculpture of plastic wrap and fabulously expensive seafood in heatproof glass. It was very, very sad-but really funny. My dad just started mumbling something about, "Brooksie left the instructions, but they didn't say anything about unwrapping it!"

Well, we ended up hitting the magic freezer (so called because there is a seemingly bottomless amount of good things to eat in that freezer) and pulling our some filets and whomping them onto the grill. We couldn't wait (we being my brothers and I) for my Mom to call and check in. We ratted out my Dad as fast as we could laugh our way through it. She gave my Dad a bunch of crap, and then he finally started laughing about it.

To this day, everytime we eat one of those things (they are still a pretty special treat), that story gets retold. Usually with gross exageration, nothing like the completely accurate story that I am telling here.

So, my mother's biggest mistake in the kitchen, in 70 years, is a single night of letting my dad cook. It hasn't happened since.

[snowangel]

Wonderful story, Brooks. I can still remember the Farah poster!

And, your mom must have felt guilty as hell for leaving you guys if she left you with a seafood casserole! When I leave, I leave a grocery list!

[dmede]

For a few years in grad school, I lived with three other guys. We'd split the cooking, so that each of us would prepare dinner one night a week. I was very much a beginner cook at that point, and, for reasons I don't quite recall, I decided I was going to make Welsh rarebit one night. Note to self: when they say, "add cheese slowly," they mean, "add cheese slowly."

Being an impatient grad student, I pretty much dumped all the cheese in at once. In the end, I wound up with what can best be described as a cheese frisbee. Totally inedidble, but I bet NASA might have been able to find some application for the substance I created.

[markk]

Many years ago, a very dear younger friend of mine got married. I was invited to the wedding, but as it worked out, one branch of our friends got overlooked by the bride's 'orthodox' parents and was not invited to the wedding - well, these things cost dearly, and obviously you have to draw the line somewhere, and everybody understood. Still, everybody in that bunch was great friends with the younger bride and groom and wanted to celebrate the happy event, and so, feeling flush, I decided to throw the "party to end all parties" for us all the night before the wedding in my high-rise apartment overlooking the Manhattan skyline. It was a Saturday night.

There were 18 people in all. I had caviar, and whole sides of smoked salmon (and salmon knives to slice it to order), and gargantuan cocktail shrimp (and tons of them), and I enlisted the help of the very upscale Chinese restaurant in the lobby of my building to help me out with some of the food as well. At the beginning of the evening, with ice-buckets of Champagne everywhere (including out in the hallway by the elevator, to set the mood for the arriving guests), the Chinese restaurant sent up waitresses to circulate with platters of dim-sum that they steamed in my kitchen. I had set up a station with the caviar, salmon, and all kinds of smoked fish, and every other luxury item I could find.

A while later, the restaurant sent up a tuxedoed waiter and chef, who stood at my butcher-block cart in the dining room and carved several Peking ducks. And throughout, great wines flowed.

The party started at 8 with champagne and wound on till the wee hours.

I'm not trying to be pretentious here, (really!) but I am trying to set the stage for my greatest dinner disaster. As for the expense of the extravagance, I figured well, if you can't splurge on a wedding, what's the point. And I loved doing it. The bride and groom came for a while (although I should point out that the groom had been living with me for about ten years at that point, and eventually came to sleep his last single-night in my house, around midnight or 1, with the party in full-swing.)

For the main courses, I had roasted a 7-bone Prime Rib, and the Chinese restaurant had gotten me two 7-pound lobsters, whose meat they cooked in various fashions and served on platters with the lobster heads and empty tail-shells at either end, to re-create the size of the lobsters, and everything was served buffet-style. Of course, it wasn't the perfect pairings of food as you can tell, but the theme was "extravagance and festivity" and everybody certainly caught the mood! People were having the time of their lives, and in fact the few people who were going to the official wedding the next day were hard-pressed to get there, as my own party ended at 4 in the morning.

Well at one point a few hours into the party, with the main courses yet to come, I heard "hello?... hello?" coming, at first faintly, and then louder, from down the hallway in my apartment that leads from the living room and the front of the house, to the bedrooms in the back. When I investigated, I heard that it was one of my guests, who was calling out from the bathroom with the door cracked open. When I asked if everything was alright, she asked, "um, is there any toilet paper?"

And so I checked the storage closet, and there was not.

Nor was there any in the other bathroom.

There were cases of Champagne and fine Bordeaux, caviar and lobster, and Peking Duck carved to order. But toilet paper? Well, it was inevitable that I'd forget something !!!