What’s the worst dish your Mother cooked?

My mother was a gourmet cook. One time she had a dinner party, but unfortunately she had misplaced her reading glasses. She knew the recipe by heart, but couldn’t read the spices she was using. The dish was supposed to be Veal Paprika. But instead of grabbing the Paprika, she grabbed the Cayenne. We figured out the problem halfway through dinner. The tragedy was that one of our dinner guests had an ulcer. I don’t think the poor man slept well that night.

Egg plant, liver, and okra.
My wife makes the first two, and they are very good.

My mom cooked a lot, and most of it was pretty good. But every once in a while we’d be out at a restaurant or eating takeout, and she would decide “I could make this!” It rarely went well, but the worst was always when she would try to make pizza.

We didn’t have a pizza stone, she insisted on using whatever tomato sauce we had (which was always some chunky pasta sauce instead of pizza sauce), she never used enough mozzarella, and she always overcooked it.

Like you, we never complained. I really didn’t like it, so I would grab the smallest piece and not go back for more. But my brother will eat anything, even if he hates it, so he always finished it off. And since it all got eaten, mom figured she must be doing it right.

Years after my siblings and I moved out, mom bought a pizza stone and used some actual pizza sauce because she was out of pasta sauce and had to borrow from a neighbor. When she told me about it on the phone, she said “once you try my new recipe, you’ll never be able to remember why you liked my old one so much.” To which I dutifully responded, “wow, then the new one must be really something!” Since then, however, she has never once made it while I’m visiting.

I was really thinking hard about this one, because my mom was a great cook. She’d have parties and holiday dinners and cook every single thing from scratch, except maybe the dinner rolls (she’d pop the tube for those). She didn’t brag about it, she didn’t post on Facebook about it, she didn’t announce “I made everything from scratch,” she just did it and she did it well. From when I was little, she was a good cook – nothing too fancy for every day dinners, but she’d find cool recipes from the NY Times and other places and she’d do more fancy stuff for parties and holiday dinners. She had a few specialties – mac and cheese, fried chicken, jambalaya, guacamole, lasagna, beef stew. I could go on.

The only thing I could think of was sometimes she would cut the sugar down in cake recipes because she felt like they were too sweet. Sometimes, to me, the cakes seemed like they needed the amount of sugar in the recipe. That was just my opinion. Nobody complained and everybody ate the cakes.

My mom cooked all meat very well done. I didn’t know until I was in high school that hamburgers were not black on the outside.
Other than that, most of her cooking was pretty good.

My mom was a good cook but she also tended to the well done side. I love med rare. But I knew better than to say anything.

To my mother’s credit, I really don’t remember her “worst” dish. I’m sure she had her failures in the kitchen, but I seem to remember her successes a lot more. That’s probably because if our family hated a dish, my mom probably would have thrown the recipe away and not looked back.

Similarly, my mother hated to cook. She did it four nights a week out of a sense of obligation. Friday nights dad “cooked”.

It’s easier to say which of her dishes were good. Her Mac & Cheese was good. Everything else was honestly horrible.

Overcooked, dry, mushy, tasteless. I didn’t even realize certain foods were edible until I met my wife and her family years later.

My Mom was also a good cook and I liked most of her meals but around Passover she’s make gufilte fish and thesmell of it cooking literally made me nauseous. I’ve never been able to bring myself to taste it. Also, chopped liver.

Stews that contained once-baked potatoes.

@janbb It was disgusting and supposedly I had the best MN has to offer.

My grandmother was a domestic during the Depression, and taught my mother to cook a wide variety of dishes. When I went to college, I was shocked at how limited the menu was at many friend’s homes.

And, to credit my mom, she was always willing to learn a new dish or technique, which is why she had over a hundred cook books.

While I hate liver and onions, those who appreciate it said my mom prepared it well.

The worst thing we got was because of mid-century vegetable preparation: my mom boiled most vegetables and they became water-logged mush.

She loved to serve calabacita, a Mexican sauteed squash dish, but often overcooked it into a mushy mess. When I bought her a vegetable steamer in the 1970s, my mom’s cooking improved dramtically.

@janbb Jewish cuisine is sublime, but gufilte is one that should have stayed with the Pharaoh. I too feel nauseous when I’ve eaten it on the occasions I’ve been invited to the Passover Seder.

My mom made pretty good food usually. But my step-father gave her salted ham and didn’t tell her how to prepare it. She directly fried it up and served it. Tasted like solid salt! I think she was supposed to soak it in water overnight to allow most of the salt to dissolve away, and allow the meat to re-hydrate.

Chopped liver, or maybe liver and onions is more accurate. It wasn’t as fine as a pate. She never made us eat it. I think she made it twice and it wasn’t served as the main meal. I tasted it, and hated it.

She bought tongue sometimes, which I didn’t like. That wasn’t cooking, it was just deli meat she put on a sandwich.

She made a lot of Italian food, which I loved. Also, basics like steak and potatoes. Breaded pork chops. All good.

Liver and onions. I always hated it and she loved it. Liver always tasted like burned plastic to me.

^I always thought it tasted rubbery. Yuk.

My mom’s liver and onions had a pasty texture. Not desirable but not inedible.

My mom was a great cook too.
A Christmas at 1990’s my mom and stepdad made homemade decorations. Using flour, salt, and water. The measurements might have been off because they would explode after being on the tree for a couple of hours. Was hilarious.

Lol. So funny so many jellies have a liver and onions experience.