The dorm I stayed in freshman and sophomore year had actual mini kitchens in the rooms, including an oven and a stove. It was one of the fancier places. As a result, it held a disproportionate share of more wealthy kids from the northern Chicago 'burbs. (Think Cameron from Ferris Buehler). Jen was one such kid. Very sweet girl, but quite sheltered. One evening, she decided that rather than fish nuggets and tater tots in the cafeteria, she was going to make herself a frozen pizza. She set the oven for 400F, took the pizza, still wrapped in plastic and atop its round cardboard base, and put it directly on the oven rack.
Needless to say, the plastic immediately melted, the paper label curled, smoke alarms went off, and there was a lot of suppressed (and not-so-suppressed) laughter. She claimed she thought it was like microwave meals where you left the plastic on.
I don’t believe she tried cooking anything else the rest of the year.
The most egregious errors were from college days when I tried to branch out to cook anything more than the few things I grew up making at home (e.g., rice, Chinese greens and simple stir-fries - the occasional spaghetti too). I tried to make soup once when I was in college, because I really wanted soup. No concept about developing flavor and how long that really took. I did cheat with chicken broth, but I threw some corn and managed to find dry mushrooms (like low quality dried shiitake) to throw in. It was a weird savory chicken “broth” with a bit of corn and mushroom flavor. Wasn’t inedible, but hardly what I wanted.
And then a roommate decided to invite a friend over for dinner. We attempted to make a beef stew, which neither of us had tried before. To be fair, it wasn’t bad on taste. We just didn’t understand how to thicken the dish, and again, we needed to develop way more flavor in the liquids. It was more like a chunky beef soup that had way too much black pepper in it.
I’ve made far stupider mistakes as an adult home cook when I knew better. At least I can blame youth, lack of experience, and lack of budget for those early ones.
A friend of mine once related that she and her roommates had done the same thing. But as a result, she never tried to make beef stew again, and “doesn’t like it”.
don’t remember how old i was, but my parents were out and i wanted to make brownies. i knew you had to melt the chocolate over water, so i put some water in the big yellow pyrex mixing bowl and set in on the burner.
well, you can imagine… when my mother got back and saw what happened, she explained the difference between pyrex and corning ware.
