What is some of the worst food you've ever made?

bread that came out of the oven rock hard.

Made split pea soup, it had the consistency and flavor of old paste.

I made a jam tart when I was at school that could have been used to tile a roof. The pastry was pretty bad. I made a chocolate slice that was too thick and you couldn’t bite through. That’s the worst I have ever made I think.

M&M sandwich, should never have attempted to toast it…..big mistake.

Last Thanksgiving Day, I decided to add chopped smoked oysters to the bread stuffing. I love bread stuffing, I love smoked oysters. I gagged at the smell of the concoction and we quickly made up a batch of stove top to take it’s place.

At the height of my first infatuation with garlic, I once made, and tried to eat – garlic porridge.

Yuk!
I shudder thinking back.

We bought some fresh venison one time, and I made a stew. The problem was that the meat was covered in small hairs. I thought I got all of it out by washing each piece by hand, but when the stew was done, more showed up. The SO about passed out when he discovered more than one. The whole darned dish, which took several hours to prepare, got chucked in the bin.

I once used dry white northern beans instead of from a jar for bean and ham soup. Apparently I either didn’t soak them long enough or cook them long enough. Nobody broke any teeth, but it was a near thing.

I honestly cannot remember

@Trillian I soak my beans over night, before I cook them the next day. Then you simmer them down once or twice. It can be an all day or all-two day process, but normally it’s well worth it!

This was so depressing because I’ve made it a thousand times and it’s always been soooo good. I don’t know what happened. I put extra onion in it, because I wanted to use up the onions that we had, but I figured I love onions. No such thing as too much onion, right? I figured it would be like onion soup with beans! Could that have been what jacked it up? I usually use just one. I used 3 this time.

@Neizvestnaya Isn’t it kind of depressing when you think you’re adding something that’s going to just make something magnificent and it turns into…Alpo.

@Dutchess_III: Exactly. There were several of us present excited to taste the best stuffing ever.

:( Did the dogs like it?

Now this makes me laugh – I just got the Feeding Frenzy award for my answer in this question!

@Dutchess_III: Nah, we tossed it. I figured it would give the dogs the runs which would punish us even more than the bad smell in the house.

Does a beverage count? I made an oatmeal stout that was almost undrinkable. almost.

Back when we still ate meat, had a French street market a block away, and no kids, we used to try some ridiculously difficult stuff just for adventure’s sake. The markets in France sell whole game animals close to Christmas, and we splurged on a wild rabbit with the intention of making a pâté out of it. We liked domestic rabbit and ate it fairly often.

It was an unbelievable amount of work. We had to remove all the meat, trim away all of the fascia, put it all through a fine grinder, then press it through a fine sieve, and that was just to get the rabbit component of the recipe. It was an all-day project. Then we had to let the pâté settle for a couple of days before finally tasting it.

Absolutely inedible. That rabbit was so freaking gamey. One bite and we just couldn’t go on. I mourned the waste both of that poor rabbit and all that labor.

I made these brownies…I don’t know if they were all that bad…they were hard as a rock, and impossible to bite through, so I have no idea what they tasted like haha.

I heartily do NOT recommend veal chops and Brussels sprouts. Pulled in my creative tendencies after _that- one.
@thorninmud. I agree with you about feeling bad when you use a whole critter and it doesn’t come out well. Oh dear. I’ve ruined this creature’s end of life. Badly cooked hamburger is easier to accept.
@all you bean lovers Don’t add salt before you cook dried beans. It can make them harden instead of get soft. I read that somewhere.

I made enchiladas one time. Mine was fine. My s/o ate two bites and stopped. I asked how it was and got an avoiding answer. I tried a bite of hers. Think week old road kill in the summer. I wish it was that good. No idea what happened. That was the foulest thing I have ever tasted.

I tried making polenta just once. My family is usually very forgiving, but nobody managed to smile and keep swallowing.

My husband made one batch of English muffins. We still refer to the experience as the time he made hockey pucks.

I made a day long chili once, but when I added the meat I had to throw the whole thing out because the meat had been in the refrigerator too long and was spoiled. I didn’t catch it until it was already dumped in the pot.

I made a batch of double chocolate-chip brownies from scratch and I was so excited and proud of myself for making a “real” dessert, not from a box. I kept checking them obsessively to make sure they were done. Then “Good Eats” came on TV and I got distracted by all the quirky humor and cooking trivia. By the time I got the brownies, they had the consistency of a flagstone. Like, I stuck a knife in to check them and the whole thing came out in one piece. So… I actually messed up a dish because I was watching a cooking show. Damn you, Alton Brown!

Another time I made a frozen pizza in my aunt’s oven, exactly according to instructions. But she hadn’t cleaned or used her oven in ages and the whole thing caught fire. Foiled again.

Are we counting utter disasters? Twice I’ve burned hard-boiled eggs. Don’t do this.

I agree @Jeruba. I have walked away and forgotten boiled eggs on the stove a couple of times. Not good.

poor little eggies

Oh crap, not eggs boiled dry.

My sister’s first dessert was some kind of rhubarb bar, our dog took it out behind the shed and buried it. I can’t tell you what they tasted like, I am allergic to rhubarb, but that dog would eat anything.

My wife is a wonderful cook, when she is in the mood, but she tries to come up with original ideas, and that can be awful. Her worst was Hamburger Soup.

My worst was probably a bbq steak, that I added too much anise to. Ugh. That’s why I pronounce it Anus.

During the summer that I was 17, I lived with and traveled with a group of 18 French and Americans along the Loire valley and into Normandy and Brittany. Each night two of us were expected to cook for the group over a campfire.

When my turn came, I turned a large pot of rice into wallpaper paste.

I haven’t had any real disasters in the kitchen, but in the vein of egg stories, I have one to offer.

When my grandparents first married, my grandmother, never a virtuoso in the kitchen, decided to boil some eggs. She put the egg in a pot of water, turned up the gas, and let it cook. She then realized she needed to go run an errand, and left, forgetting she had the egg cooking in the kitchen.

Naturally, the heat evaporated the water totally, and the egg exploded straight up and stuck to the kitchen ceiling. She came home to an empty pot and a new decoration on the ceiling. It was so glommed onto the ceiling she couldn’t get it off.

My grandfather never let her forget this particular incident.

My first 3 years out of college, I must’ve killed 20 or 30 dishes… but since then, nary a one :)

The worst I can remember—I tried to cook fried okra and ended up with something that tasted like breaded snot, tried to cook rice and beans and got crispy rice and soggy beans, tried to cook a stew and ended up with a grotesque brown mess…

I made a pumpkin loaf with a honey buttercream frosting. It was so dry and so sweet I couldn’t eat it. I actually threw the recipe out. Usually I can save a recipe and make some tweaks, but there was nothing to do.

I once over-salted a steak so badly that we had to dunk each bite into a bowl of water before eating it.

We probably should have just tossed it out. But, hey, we were in college.

I make really good pecan pies. Usually. My mother-in-law, however, is the freaking queen of pies. She’d sent us home from dinner at her house with an apple pie, and it was delicious. Thanksgiving comes, and I decide to return the favor by making her a pecan pie, in her pie plate. I’d made two, because we had two houses to visit that day. We never cut into the one at her house before we left.

We go on to my best friend’s house for dessert and coffee, try to cut into the second pie and it was solid as a rock. Completely inedible. Now I know the other pie is being consumed by the in-laws, and am utterly miserable about it. My husband assures me that his mother will never mention it, and that I should just let it go. I say, “I can’t! She’ll think that I think it was a good pie!”

Against his advice, I apologized profusely for the pecan rock pie. I have never heard the end of it. I should have let it go! :D

I decided that I should start using whole wheat flour in my cooking, since it’s supposed to be so much healthier. I tried to make some gingerbread cake, but I might as well have been making construction material. Apparently I do not know the secret for using whole wheat flour. I’ve been told that you should never use all whole wheat flour and that you should use half regular and half whole wheat, which is what I did, but so far I’ve never made anything with whole wheat flour that has turned out edible.

I buy things at the grocery store and at restaurants that are made with whole wheat flour and they’re fine. Anyone have any hints for me?

Yes. I do have a faint memory of homemade bread as a good substitute for a door stop.

When my sister was young and living at home she decided to make some cookies while Mom was at work. So she did. Mom came home and said, “Yum! Cookies!” Mom ate one. She said, “Well, these are pretty good but…what it that there?”
My sister told her that the recipe called for an egg, and the only egg in the house was a hard boiled one!

@Kardamom Your answers are usually chock full of wonderful links, so I’m surprised you haven’t already turned to the internet for help. There are dozens of sites with great tips for using whole wheat flour vs white flour.

@Kardamom- hilarious because when I was a kid, my mom would make me “playdough” from her whole wheat hippie flour and that stuff was dangerous! If some of the wetter glop got on your hair then that clump of hair was impossible to detangle. Same with clothes, once it dropped and dried onto denim, it fused to the weave. <<< looked like boogers.

@YARNLADY Oh, believe me I have tried all the tricks and tips. So far, I’ve still never been able to turn out a whole wheat anything that was worth using for anything other than a paper weight. I finally gave a huge bag of whole wheat flour to a friend of mine who apparently doesn’t have any problems with it. She makes killer chocolate chip cookies with it and they don’t taste earthy at all. I’ve followed her instructions, to no avail.

The last time I tried to make a full Sunday roast with all the trimmings – the beef was dry and chewy, the broccoli was overcooked and mushy and the gravy was like lumpy wallpaper paste. The only part of the meal I got right was the potatoes.

@Bent You must give me some cooking tips, last time I attempted sunday dinner a charred scar filled the vacancy where once an oven stood.

@ucme I’m not THAT bad. Best tip I can give though, invite your sister round for lunch and suggest that she cooks it too.

I have no sister, but the wife makes do in that regard.
She did only let me loose in the kitchen that one time, a wise move.

@ucme but there wasn’t a kitchen left, after that!