Since we’re all such accomplished home cooks here, I thought it might be fun to share some of our initial culinary fails when we were first starting out.
I remember cooking spaghetti at a confirmation retreat at the age of 13 with other newbs. We cooked the poor pasta so long it basically came out in loaf form, and you could cut it into slices. The tomato sauce was probably from a kit. It was terrible
Then there was the time when I made dinner for my two besties from HS, chicken legs in curry sauce. I’d recently discovered Mondamin Fix Soßenbinder, which is a German product that binds sauces (it’s basically potato starch), and stirred in some generous shakes.… unaware that one had to let the sauce come to a boil to properly dissolve the stuff and thicken the sauce
I ended up with a sauce that had lots of powdery lumps in it. Chicken legs came out ok, tho
Also, my sis once made a bday cake for my mom when she was 13 or 14 using salt instead of sugar by accident. It was inedible, but both my mom and I managed to choke down a few bites.
Care to share your early cooking disasters or mishaps?
Recently out of college and trying to impress a potential beau, I made a NYT recipe for shrimp cakes. Oh, look, here it is. You will note the absence of anything that could serve as a binder (as do the comments, but too late pour moi!). Desperate to get the not-cakes to hold together, I tried throwing in a beaten egg, some breadcrumbs, whatever I could find.
We had shrimp hash. His praise and enjoyment of it was convincing. We didn’t work out as a couple - he ended up marrying two other people (consecutively, not concurrently) - but we’re still friends.
In my early 20s, I organized a ski trip for some co-workers and SOs (about 12 in all), and I planned to make crab pasta. Hard to say that I actually planned, because planning requires some forethought, and I hadn’t taken into consideration that boiling pasta at altitude takes a LOT longer than at sea level. In my haste, the pasta was practically still crunchy, although the sauce and crab were fine. I learned that providing a lot of wine will cover a multitude of sins!
There used to be a restaurant called Tony’s on the pier in Rockland, Maine that served a deconstructed crab cake that was my go-to order. You could have it as "hash"as you called it or as a pasta “sauce”. Divine in any incarnation.
Senior year in college, BF and eventual husband and I joined a co-op small dorm. Much better lodging, smaller setting, cheaper room and board, we each had to cook a meal for up to 20 or 25 people every 3 weeks, and also bake bread for that many people every three weeks.
I planned a soup, salad, pasta, and dessert menu. Fortunately the soup and salad were prepared and ready to go. I had no idea how long it would take the then (1976) commercial electric stove to boil enough water to cook pasta for 20 people. Much, much longer than I thought! Like…well over an hour.
Everyone was kind and understanding. They demolished the soup, salad, and dessert and then the pasta was finally ready. They demolished that, too.
Never cooked pasta again in the co-op.
Got the best Challah recipe ever, which I still use today.
Home from college for a break. Mom’s out somewhere and I decided to be helpful and empty and clean the large pot of dirty looking liquid that was on the stove. WRONG!!! It’s hard to make chicken soup when your son has thrown out all the broth.
That sounds like the time I put a large Pyrex bowl (the largest of those sets of 4) that had all the lovely strained homemade chicken stock into a stainless steel sink so I could clean up the counter.
Warm/hot Pyrex bowl + cold stainless sink =
All of that gorgeous stock…down the drain…and on the counter, floor, on me. And Pyrex shards everywhere. I had to lock the 2 cats I had at the time in the bedroom so they didn’t hurt their paws while I cleaned up.
Also had to be very careful walking in my kitchen for a couple of days, even after scrubbing the floor a couple of times, as it remained a bit slippery! I’d walk in to the kitchen days later and find one of the cats licking the floor.
Reminds me of when the adult male my age in our household dropped a gallon mason jar of duck confit I’d carefully prepared into shatters and it took a long time to clean it up. He cleaned up.
I have arthritis everywhere and three joint replacements and couldn’t help clean up.
I lived in cooperative housing in undergrad (early 90s) and all the coops in the system at the time cooked their own dinners. All the houses were small enough that it was a two-or -three person job every night to make dinner, but I happened to live at the only big house where we employed a cook to coordinate the meals (ordered all the supplies and directed six or so residents every evening.) I wasn’t as much of a foodie then, but I still remember anytime I had dinner at any of the other houses , the food was …. Something else.
We had generally good meals in academic year 1976-1977. Some co op members were actually assigned to go the new england produce market to pick up requested vegetables and fruits. And the homemade bread was really good, except for the weeks when the baker was really overstressed and made soda bread that dried out in a day.
The dining hall food across the street was atrocious and borderline inedible back then. So the co-op was a big improvement, and cost less both for room and for board.
EDIT: It was particular time and place that didn’t last long. Feminism was percolating, so was vegetarianism. We cooked a lot from Moosewood and the Vegetarian Epicure in the co-op (both were published a few years before 1976) and there were vegetarian options in restaurants in Harvard Square available that disappeared soon and didn’t reappear for decades.
And Pyrex shards everywhere. I had to lock the 2 cats I had at the time in the bedroom so they didn’t hurt their paws while I cleaned up.
