There's some new show on the FOOD CHANNEL about WORST COOKS........Have you ever made something REALLY AWFUL and want to share it here?I have to admit I made two meals (in 22 years of cooking for Mr. Z, that's not too bad, eh?) which we always laughed about. One was making lamb curry thinking I had plain yogurt and finding out I only had a couple of small lime yogurts and deciding to use it. Lime green colored lamb curry with that lime flavor is something I'd leave out of your recipe files were I you! Another was some fish that just wouldn't cook no matter what I did to it...and we had guests from Maryland in that night!
You have one or two WORST COOK moments? See that picture up there? The caption on Google Image was "Attempt at pancakes". I'd say that would rate 'worst cook', wouldn't you? !!
17 comments:
Z, I have to say, my pancakes never looked like that!
Moving ahead, I once used a recipe from a neighbor. She marinated steak in wine (I think it was). I tried it. It was so long ago, and I've tried to forget it. It had to be the worst tasting thing I ever served. I had to throw it out. So help me, I think my neighbor sabotaged me. Yech!
Pris
Ugh. I could write an entire post about cooking horror stories.
I remember the first time I tried to fry okra. First, I got the grease so hot that it started smoking. Next, I dumped a huge, frozen chunk of battered okra into the blazing hot grease. Yes. Grease exploded, popped, spewed, all over my tiny kitchen. I ran.
Other than that? I've had a love-hate relationship with pot roast for nearly 10 years. I think I've got it figured out now. But I've made a few that would've made good doorstops.
I have another but this one is just funny.
My mother-in-law was visiting us and I was making fried chicken and chicken gravy. I must say, my family loves my chicken gravy on their mashed potatoes. It's no secret recipe or anything. I flour the chicken, let it catch a little while it's cooking, and only use the flour I used for the chicken, for the gravy.
I make it with milk, a little garlic salt and pepper, and keep stirring it until it cooks down to just right.
Anyway my mother-in-law wanted to help and insisted on making the gravy. But, she added water instead of milk and more flour, which I don't do.
When we began eating Mr. Pris said, with a puzzled look in his eyes, "did you buy this gravy at MacDonald's?" I shot him a 'don't say anymore look', and said, very nicely, "no, your Mom made it". His Mom said nothing thank God, and he said "oh". We escaped with nary a word from his Mom (for a change).
His Mom was such a critic of the way I did everything, it was all we could do from bursting out laughing but of course we knew better and behaved ourselves.
Pris
Oh darn, I meant to say, did you buy this gravy at KFC.
Pris
Oh, great comments, thanks!
Jen, maybe somebody'll give you a fool proof easy and delicious pot roast recipe! Hockey pucks for dinner, huh?
Pris, I wonder why that was so bad! Sure does sound like it was HORRID!!
No, my pancakes never looked like that, either! I'd have run from the kitchen like Jen did from her snapping cracklin' okra!!
Hi, Pris..what's "let it catch a little while it's cooking.." ?? What do you mean?
That is one FUNNY STORY! Particularly because you've mentioned how the mother-in-law was!!
Oh, man, is there ANYTHING as delicious as a good gravy over mashed potatoes?
At high school, they had little bowls of just mashed potatoes with a well of gravy on top....that was the Z SPECIAL almost every day for lunch!
I think I've got it down now, Z. I've done everything from cook roast on the stovetop to the crock pot, to the pressure cooker. The pressure cooker worked surprisingly well, and made a wonderful gravy, too! They've turned out really good for a few years now. Those early years were rough....
But no, I wouldn't say hockey pucks, more like a big, heavy football! ;-)
Well, to let meat "catch a little", means to catch on the skillet, but not burn the meat. It leaves a crustiness, (it sticks to the pan) from the skin on the chicken in the skillet. When your making the gravy you scrape that into it. It adds to the flavor of the gravy.
I do the same thing when I'm browning meat for pot roast, or stew doesn't everybody? You just have to watch it, so it doesn't burn. At least that's what my Mom called it, she'd say, "let it catch", before adding the water to stew or pot roast.
Pris
Pris, that's what I thought...that little bit that sticks and is so delicious when you do scrape it up...thanks.
I like that, I'd never heard the expression "let it CATCH" but I know exactly what you mean and it's a very good way to phrase it. If you douse it with liquids too early, you never get that nice brown thing going or the wonderful bits on the bottom that are still there to incorporate into the liquid once you add it; I got it! ?
Jen, glad it's good now!! mmm
In forty years of cooking, there must be many recipes that have gone wrong. But I can't forget the night when we had company and I was baking chicken breasts. When the time came for them to be done, I discovered that the oven had never been turned on.
We ate late that night.
I goof a meal at least once a week I think, overcook something, burn something, get something so stuck to the pan I can only get it out by mangling it. Or I put too much cayenne in it, or tried a spice combo that didn't work.
But then I live alone so I just lump it. Funny, though, when my daughter is here, just about my only guest these days, I have fewer of these mishaps. Having someone to cook for must make the difference.
Faith, i'm so going to miss cooking for Mr Z..he was such a great fan of my cooking. Well, I'll be eating tons of salads now and I could stand to lose 10 pounds, so, what the heck. Dinner won't be the fun it used to be, or the satisfying feeling it used to be.....(he wouldn't eat salads..'no leaves'! tho he did like cukes and tomatoes, etc.)
Sue...I have an oven that doesn't go on sometimes and I have to remember to check that it has or move the food down to the lower oven which always goes on. Am considering getting a new one but I won't be doing that much cooking anymore.
I LOVE this post!! I'm not a bad cook - pretty darned good, actually, when I put my mind to it. In the first 3 months of marriage, though, I made this thing called 'Curried Chicken.' My darling husband (who must have been newlywed drunk) ate it, but...it was green!!! I mean green - with no lime yogurt to blame...ugh!!
17.5 years later & he still reminds me -laughing- of that meal. Poor, sweet, longsuffering man of mine!
Maybe it's something about curry... ;)
z - I know exactly what you mean about cooking being different without Mr. Z. Before my husband retired last February, he travelled a lot. The first night I would grill a ribeye with sauteed vegetables, then the rest of the week I would more or less forage. I think when you live alone you have to be careful about getting a balanced diet. I didn't have to worry since it was just a week, but if it were longer I would have to be careful.
Every now and then it hits me what you must be going through, Z, and I really feel for you. Little things all day, right? Meal time, watching the news, wanting to say something to him, just everything. Must be awfully hard.
I don't like "leaves" either, to be honest, except iceberg lettuce -- which is incidentally also very good for heartburn. But I do like vegie salads, with a mix of all kinds of stuff starting with bite-size cubes of tomatoes and cukes, green and red peppers, cauliflower, carrots sliced or grated, celery. Add olive oil with vinegar and garlic, maybe some Italian herbs, s&p. It's work but I don't mind I like it so much.
1. I tried to make a desert consisting of several ingredients melted in a pan and then poured over peanuts. The main ingredient was butterscotch chips--meaning the baking chips, similar to chocolate chips. Not the individually wrapped hard candies I was trying to melt. Even after I realized my mistake, I was stubborn enough to take a half minute to consider if they would work if I just cooked them long enough.
2. When my brother was ten or twelve years old, he decided to make chocolate chip cookies. I'm not sure if he was too impatient to form individual cookies, or just couldn't find a cookie sheet. He decided to put all the dough in a bread pan and cook it that way. I don't think the middle ever got done. The term "cookie loaf" has been in the family lexicon ever since.
3. More recently, my brother picked up the wrong container of dark red powder while making a pot of chili, thus substituting cinnomin for chili powder. He wasn't about to waste a perfectly bad pot of chili and spent the rest of the week eating it.
tio
Sue, I think you're right about eating a balanced diet when you cook for yourself; we tend to grab for anything. I have to remember that.
Susannah, you had green curry, too? Maybe it IS the curry!!! Glad you're here.
Faith, Mr. Z WOULD eat those chopped salads you described here...just NO LEAVES! I love iceberg, too...a wedge with blue cheese on it..mmmm! Retro salad! I didn't know it's good for heartburn. I hate to admit it, but I could use help with that these last few months.
Tio...your brother made a kind of 'molay' (i'm writing it phoentically because I don't remember how many l's the Mexicans put in it and MOLE wouldn't be right!)...cinnamon in chili and some chocolate powder and it might not have been so bad. Have you had chicken molay for example? it's delicious...but you have to probably have less cinnamon than your brother did.
I like your family's spunk; make a mistake and go for it, anyway!!
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