Kitchens aren't for the faint of heart. Even experts in the culinary arts occasionally make a mistake. These people made some huge mistakes and they've definitely learned their lesson.
One Thanksgivings, Four Turkeys
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“Not me, but my mom. She can’t cook at all. One Thanksgiving we had four turkeys. The first one she left in the sink overnight cat got it. Second she burnt horribly. Third she cooked halfway through but left everything inside. Forth she put in the oven, but never turned it on to cook; We ended up eating at my aunt’s house.”
This Family Should Stay Out Of The Kitcken
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“3 people making crepes in a small kitchen, each one with their own skillet. Avoiding my girlfriend’s head with mine, I burned my face with my own skillet.
Also, my brother once went home to his lonely apartment, drunk, and felt like pizza. He then proceeded to pass out. He was woken up by the fire brigade sometime later. His pizza was burning in the oven, the fire alarm had gone off, was beeping incessantly for a while, and the neighbors called the fire department.”
How A Craving A Hard-Boiled Egg Landed Him In The Doctor’s Office
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“As a kid I was left home alone often, and one night I was craving a hard-boiled egg. I put the egg in the microwave thinking it would be the same as boiling in water, but quicker. Unfortunately, I opened up the microwave expecting a warm, delicious, hard-boiled egg, but instead the egg exploded and fling hot pieces of shell at my face. My parents saw the tiny burn mark below my left eye and took me to the doctor, where I blamed my transformable robot popcap shotgun ‘misfiring’ for the burn. I could tell the doctor was smelling my bullcrap, but he just gave me some ointment to rub on the mark and sent us home.”
When Multi-Tasking Backfires
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“It was my wife’s birthday and she was stuck in class. I decided to surprise her with a cake, but I was also hungry. I figured I could multi-task here and make spaghetti while the cake was baking. I was wrong…
The spaghetti and the cake were done at the same time, so I took the pot of spaghetti off the burner, took the cake out of the oven, and placed the glass cake pan on the conveniently flat electric stove top.
Though I had moved the spaghetti, I had not turned off the burner onto which I had just placed one half of the glass cake pan. When I realized my mistake I flipped off the burner and attempted to move the cake pan…a second too late. As I grabbed the pan, it shattered in my hands. Cake and glass everywhere. Luckily, no blood.
I promptly messaged my wife a picture of the mayhem with the caption, ‘Happy Birthday.'”
She Couldn’t Figure Out Why Her Eyes Stung So Much
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“Made a chili pepper version of tea eggs (simmer hard boiled eggs with cracked shells in tea and soy sauce, basically).
So, set eggs to simmer in water with copious dried chilis plus garlic and salt. Went into the other room and read stuff online for a while. Eventually, eyes start to sting. I don’t make the connection, try some Visine. Eventually, eyes start to STING. Still don’t make the connection. Open door of room.
A wall of pepper spray hits me in the face. Eyes half-shut, I grope my way into the bathroom, wet a washcloth, slap it over my face. Alternating which eye I’m exposing to the evil atmosphere, trying to breathe only through the cloth (my lungs are starting to hurt by this point), I tip the pot upside down into the sink one handed, turn the burner off, open the front windows, drag a fan over to the door and plug it in aimed out, grab a book to read while I wait, and retreat to the front yard to wait for the pepper spray I’ve made to clear out of my apartment.
Took a couple of hours for it to become livable again. Luckily it wasn’t too cold outside.
The eggs were tasty, so there’s that.”
Pressure Cookers Can Be Tricky
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“My stepmother had to cook for five kids and never found it any fun, something that was evidenced by the crummy meals we had to choke down. Dad was always on about the great meals my late mom had made in the pressure cooker, and why couldn’t she use it? After hearing about the glories of the pressure panacea for months, she gave in one afternoon and loaded the cooker with a meal’s worth of coarse meat and veggies. Around six, I heard this great WAP, followed by bellows of, ‘IT BLEW UP! IT BLEW UP!’ I sauntered into the kitchen and dinner was dripping from the ceiling.
‘Didn’t you use the relief valve on the lid?’
‘Nobody showed me anything!’ she wailed. Common sense hadn’t prevented her from cranking the handles apart, either. With much carrying on, she dispatched the cooker to the garbage in perverse triumph. At least we got to eat take-out chicken that night.”
This Is One Kitchen Nightmare That Came Back To Bite Them
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“My wife left the blue, plastic lid on a Pyrex dish when she put it in the oven a few weeks ago. We were having friends over and she decided to make this awesome pasta recipe that she has. When she initially put the dish in, I saw it, but it was one of those moments where you don’t actually think about it because you’re not committing the act. She looked like she knew what she was doing, she looked confident, so I didn’t question her when I saw her put it in the oven that way. While everyone else was in the dining room, I witnessed the monstrosity that she fetched from the the over one hour later. Blue, gooey goop stringing from the the Pyrex dish to the lid, and her face horrified and confused at the unholy abomination that she had created.
The best part is that we completely forgot about the plastic that had actually melted onto the inside of the oven for about a week and, one night, decided to bake something inside of the oven. Needless to say, we had to evacuate the house for a bit after that.”
“We Legitimately Had To Call Poison Control”
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“The first time I cooked for my now wife, we legitimately had to call poison control. Her sister had bleached her hair that day, part of that process used a basting brush; her sister set that brush in the kitchen sink.
I, cooking up some salmon, decided that was the perfect brush for spreading whatever herb/butter situation I whipped up. It wasn’t until after dinner that my wife discovered ‘my’ blunder and she ended up actually getting sick, though it could have been an unrelated illness.
I’d like to point out- who the frick puts chemical brushes in a kitchen sink? Shouldn’t that be a bathroom job or something? I’ll just put this toilet bowl brush next to the kitchen sink too, we can use it for cleaning out the baby bottles- perfect!”
The Cut Was Only The Beginning Of His Troubles
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“So I didn’t know what to make one evening before my girlfriend got back from work, so I decided I’d put together some Asian crap or whatever. Freaking beef and star anise and crap. I couldn’t find the scissors to open up the packet of dried star anise, so I ingeniously decided to stab it with a small serrated knife. Thousands of better option but alas, I am an idiot.
Well, as is tradition for morons like me, I held the bag with my left hand, stabbed through the bag with my right, went too far and put a 1/3 inch cut in my left index finger. I looked at it, thinking how bad could this be, because it wasn’t particularly painful. That thought flew out the window when I realized I was bleeding profusely freaking everywhere. I’m like, ‘Crap.’ So I run upstairs, reddening everything, and wrap my finger in a random towel and drive to the hospital. I’ve had stitches on my face and crap, so I wasn’t not scared or worried. Just got made fun of by the nurses for sucking at cooking. They wrapped it up and sent me off.
The pain doesn’t subside after a few days. I regularly changed the bandages and clean it, but it still really hurt. Few days later, I was in the theater with my gf and something smelled horrible. Never smelt anything like it before. A rancid something. I slowly realized as I kept getting faint whiffs…it was my finger. Super time infected.
Back to the hospital; this time very worried. I mean, I’ve woken up in a hospital before after being hit with a car and been less scared. The doctor grabbed my infected finger, and without any digital numbing injection, he starts literally poking inside the wound unceremoniously. The pain was…just unfair really.
Disease control to see what the heck it was. Hand surgeons to see what’s wrong with it. And three days being pumped full of antibiotics. Being threatened by the crazy doctor that we may have to go in for surgery. I asked my gf to tell him that surgery was only be a final option. I’m a musician, I wasn’t taking any chances until we exhaust treating it medically. It all cleared up and finally started to heal, although the finger is a bit smaller now than its right counterpart. The kitchen can be an incredibly dangerous place and it’s not all about the oven exploding, gas leaks, or hot oil. Sometimes it could just be a small cut that really gets ya.”
Never Leave Unattended Food On The Stove
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“Happened to a neighbor from a flat next to mine, but still a disaster: He left his stew on the stove and went to the store, but it took him longer than expected. About half an hour later, black smoke starts coming out of the window he fortunately left open and firemen soon come. Fully equipped, they rush inside, break his door down with an axe and flood his apartment. Now, the best thing about it is that there was no fire at all, the smoke was just coming from the stew. Then he comes back and sees his apartment trashed, flooded and still partially full of smoke, and as he stands there, speechless, the firemen leave apologizing for the inconvenience. He even had to pay for the damage caused.”
Anyone Know How To Put Out A Grease Fire?
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“I was preparing Easter dinner. I was going to make roast potatoes and had a pan with oil heating in the oven when my mother phoned. I had a cold and was a little dippy because of it and forgot about the pan until it caught fire. The flames were gigantic when I opened the oven door and I couldn’t get near the pan to put a lid on so I closed it up again. I asked my mother how to put out a grease fire and she said, ‘I’ll let you go, dear.’ So I phoned 911 and asked how to put it out and they said they’d send a couple guys over. I ran around opening windows and getting my family outside. And then came sirens. Next thing, there’s two fire trucks, plus another SUV, in front of my house and a slew of men in all their gear running in with their equipment. I guess they were having a slow day. One guy with a fire extinguisher had the fire out in seconds. But these guys in their boots made a mess of my silver grey carpet. It was a beautiful spring day and the whole neighborhood was outside to view my humiliation. The smoke undid all the spring cleaning I had done that week. And my stove was toast. However, insurance paid to have everything cleaned and for a new stove.”
“Sadly, My Efforts To Save The Pan Failed”
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“I’d just finished making a whole heap of pappadums by frying them in a saucepan in hot peanut oil.
I wanted the saucepan to cool down quickly to stop the pan smoking, so I turned a frypan upside down, laid it on the range (which was off), and stood the saucepan on the base of the frypan, so the base of the saucepan could be a heatsink for the pappadum pan to cool it down. So far so good, I’ve done this many times before.
However, somehow, I knocked the frypan and the pappadum pan, full of hot oil, began to slide off. I lifted up the frypan, trying to steady the hot pappadum pan, and juggled the two pans for about two seconds. Sadly, my efforts to save the pappadum pan failed, and it fell off the bench, getting hot oil on my arms in the process.
I tried to catch it, but when it fell on the floor, hot oil spilled all over the floor really quickly, because hot oil has about the same viscosity as water. I then stepped in the hot oil, which is, of course, very slippery, and my feet flew out from under me and I landed on my elbow in the oil on the floor. My father-in-law and his new partner looked on in horror.”
Mixing Up Spoons And Cups Is A Rookie Mistake
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“When my daughter was 9, she made chocolate chip cookies all by herself. I was really impressed – they looked amazing! I took a giant bite of one, only to discover that instead of using 1/4 teaspoon of salt, she’d used 1/4 CUP! There’s not enough milk in the universe to wash that taste out of my mouth. There was no way I could pretend they were good because there were 3 dozen of them and we all wanted to eat cookies. I just pointed out the difference between cups and spoons, and cleaned everything up for her (which I wouldn’t normally do) so she could start over. The second batch really was good. And then the whole family regaled her with stories of our own cooking disasters – like the time my sister set the oven on fire baking tostada shells. Good times.”
Caramel Is A Tough Beast To Tame
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“When I was a kid, I decided to make caramel. I knew it had to do with melted sugar, so when I was home alone, I poured about half a bag of it in a huge pot and set it on high on the stove and went to watch tv. When I went to check on it, as I lifted the lid a huge plume of black smoke came out, and it smelled like something was eating a rotting corpse and choked to death on it. Not knowing what to do, I grabbed pot holders and sprinted outside, leaving a trail of sugary charcoal behind me. I took the hose and sprayed it all over the pot while it screeched in agony. I then covered it and left it outside for about an hour ‘to soak,’ because leaving it alone worked so well in the first place.
I used about three bottles of Febreze to get rid of the smell. My parents still discovered the pot, and I was grounded. Made for good practice on hiding pots as I grew up.”
Baking Bread Can Cause A Bit Of Chaos
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“One day, I decided to bake bread… no real reason to it, just because.
To my surprise, when I threw the bread in the oven, it started rising almost immediately. This is when I started having doubts about my measuring of ingredients.
I went to check again how much I was supposed to put in and found I had put in 10X the baking powder what the recipe said.
Glancing back, I could see the bread still visibly rising straight up like a gigantic mushroom almost touching the grill above it. At this point, I was getting pretty worried and decided to pull the bread out. BUT I COULDN’T FIND THE DAMN MITTS!
Now I am panicking. The bread and rack above it had become one at this point, BUT IT WAS STILL RISING. I turned off the oven and hoped to god that this thing would slow its ascent soon.
Unfortunately for me, instead of turning off the stove like I had intended, in my panic I turned it on to broil! Yet all I could see inside was that the bread had begun to slowly descend from the top finally and was feeling more secure about the situation.
Just as I was thinking things were looking alright, I noticed that BROIL WAS STILL ON. An instant later, the bread took on the form of a burning marshmallow on steroids.
I somehow managed to think to turn off the broiler and grabbed a salad bowl in a pretty calm fashion, considering how mangled my nerves were at this point.
I went to the sink to fill the bowl with water to throw on the inferno that was now my oven to find that water out of the sink is EXCRUCIATINGLY slow to fill things.
A good 30 seconds later, I had just barely enough water to do the deed so I opened the oven to throw the water in to find it had already burned itself out…”
She Just Couldn’t Get The Gravy Thick Enough
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“Making gravy right after I moved in with my boyfriend, I went to get flour and noticed he had dumped it all into a canister on the counter. Awesome! So I went along with my gravy-making when I realized it’s not getting thick. I added more flour… then some more…then some more…Finally I gave up and served the thin, soupy gravy.
We’re chomping down on our biscuits and gravy when the bf asked why the gravy was so sweet. I told him about how it wouldn’t get thick and the flour we bought must be bad. I told him I used the flour he put in the canister on the counter.
‘You mean the powdered sugar?'”
She Almost Ruined Thanksgiving For Everyone
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“I was making Thanksgiving dinner once and was working on the pumpkin pie. Working quickly, I just grabbed the spice I wanted by sight and shook it into the pumpkin mix. I was three shakes in when I noticed the label said ‘garlic’ and not ‘ginger.’ My husband burst into the room at the horrified sound I made, which was a bit between a gasp and a shriek. We were able to scoop it out, but my husband still delights in telling people I made a garlic pumpkin pie one year.
Then there was the time I was learning to make wine sauce and I put in the ingredients in the wrong order. I managed to explode red wine and flour all over my kitchen (which at the time had 12-foot ceilings, so that was fun to clean up).
And then there was the time, after moving to Denmark from the US and was still learning the language, I was terrified to use a spice my husband kept on his spice rack because it was the same word as a psychoactive drug where I am from (sage/salvia). It sat unopened on the shelf for about a month before he asked me why I never used it. I explained why and he laughed and I felt dumb for a minute.”
“It’s Pasta And Cheese Sauce, How Hard Can It Be?”
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“I really like cooking and often make a lot of dishes from scratch.
Anyway, I decided to make myself mac and cheese, but I had never made it before. My dad used to make it when I was a kid, but I’d never done it myself. Didn’t look up any recipe, cause I thought, it’s pasta and cheese sauce, how hard can it be? I made a super cheesy sauce, diced and fried some bacon bits, mixed it in with the pasta, and added bread crumbs, herbs and more cheese to the top and baked it, super excited.
Except I didn’t realize you had to boil the pasta first. I tried adding water later and cooking it for ages at a lower temp before finally giving up and binning the crunchy, inedible mess. Still bitter about the amount of wasted cheese and bacon.”
“By The Time I Realized Why, It Was Far Too Late”
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“One time, I was trying to impress a guy I liked and all his friends by making a signature pie recipe of mine. I’d made it tons of times and it was always a hit. I didn’t do my crust from scratch because they didn’t have any butter in the house though, but it wouldn’t make much of a difference.
This time…it tasted weird. I couldn’t put my finger on why so I looked over the counter where the apple peels, flour, box of pie crust mix, etc. were. Wait…does that box of pie crust mix say pie crust? Nope. That was pancake mix. Oops. By the time I realized why, it was far too late and pieces of pie had already been distributed.”
All They Could Do Was Watch
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“I was in 7th grade Home Ec. I put some cookies in the oven. When they were almost done, I accidentally started the self-cleaning cycle, locking the oven. All we could do was watch through the little window as the fire started.”
“So…Where Do The Extra Egg Yolks Go?”
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“My friend and I decided to experiment with our newly-acquired liqueurs and make a white chocolate baked cheesecake with a berry liqueur sauce on top. I’d only ever done a baked cheesecake once in my life and it turned out delicious, yet my friend had never done so before. So we’re in the kitchen together following a recipe online, and we’re mixing away with the ingredients and everything, when my mate asks me if we put the egg yolks into the berry sauce which is cooking on the stove. No, no we don’t. Crisis averted.
Everything is going according to plan and we end up with it looking absolutely amazing. When the oven is at the right temperature, I put it in and let it do its magic. A few minutes in, when we’re clearing everything up and celebrating with a glass of wine, my friend suddenly asks, ‘So… where do the extra egg yolks go?’
Turns out, when I told her we weren’t going to use the egg yolks in the sauce, she took it to mean that we didn’t use them in the recipe. We could only look through the oven and hope everything would be fine… and it seemed to be doing okay, as the cheesecake was rising perfectly and it had a good color to it.
While we were waiting, we were just drinking and watching a movie. So as soon as the timer goes off, I turn off the oven and immediately take the cheesecake out and place it on the bench, forgetting to let it settle. 10 minutes later, I decided to check up on it…it had turned into a sunken, lumpy pit.
I tried to salvage it with the berry sauce (which tasted delicious by the way) yet it ended up looking (and tasting) like something from hades.”
