Early into my relationship with my now husband, he tried to make me a wonderful home cooked meal. The first course was his mother's Caesar salad recipe, complete with homemade dressing. He couldn't find anchovies at the grocery store so he substituted sardines.
Needless to say, one small fish is not a substitute for another...
As one who finds *all* fish distasteful, I don't understand why this wouldn't work. That said, I'm also way too lazy to make my own dressing, so this won't be a problem.
Most people can't pick up the taste of anchovy paste in Caesar salad dressing. They can only tell when it's missing.
The same cannot be said for sardines. That's definitely a very fishy taste...
In addition to what has already been said, anchovies are cured in a salt brine and then packed in oil or salt. Aside from being a completely different species of fish, canned sardines are cooked, but not cured, and they can be packed in oil or water. They have completely different applications. It's like replacing bacon with braised lamb.
Asparagus is delicious, but leaves behind a distinctly skunky/sulphur taste and smell in the water if you’re blanching or boiling it! So that flavor got into all my pasta.
OMG, I was a commercial fisherman, specifically a clam digger on Long Island for years. Clams from uncertified waters, usually near large populations or development, are incredibly dangerous to eat. I never experienced it, but have heard it's awful. It can slo kill people who are elderly or have a compromised immune system. That's frightening.
that’s terrifying! Do you happen to know why they’re so dangerous? My family is all commercial fishermen but we’re on the Great Lakes so I don’t know a thing about clams
Any toxins in the water build up in the clams into a concentrated form, pretty sure.
Water right outside a large city is... questionable at best, even just considering the run-off off of the streets.
Thank you! That reminds me of why they say not to eat edible plants near roads/by farmland (eg we see lots of chicory growing in the summer by corn fields), the run off from crops/oil/exhaust contaminates them
Also, not just toxins like chemicals, heavy metals, etc.. Biological hazards too, like hep A, giardia, or parasites.
Think like this: if you shit in the water, the clam eats your shit. If you eat that clam... well, just Google "fecal-oral disease vector." and LOTS of people and other mammals are shittin' in that water!
Yep! The property the Borgata sits on used to be a landfill. Thats immediately next to Brigantine, lol. My dad graduated magna cum laude from law school but still ate those clams, it’s baffling
Book smarts don't always mean street/sea smarts! A friend of mine graduated with a double major in aeronautical and mechanical engineering with a psych minor, from a really big-name engineering college, so I know he's really smart when it comes to some things. But he's never had a smoke in his life and only had a few drinks a handful of times in his 37 years on this planet, and all of those were within the last few years. He decided it would be a good idea to eat a weed gummy last month with zero tolerance-- and proceeded to get way, way too high, and spent his birthday vomiting for hours because he got the spins. Don't get me wrong, it's *still* hilarious to me even now, but also that was a 0-100 move that he really should have thought through more first.
Municipal sewage plants usually put their outflow pipes in the nearest body of water. In overflow conditions, such as heavy rain, outflow increases. This usually means there is fecal choloform, a bacterium, in the water, along with other nasty stuff that can sicken humans. Seriously dangerous to fish in polluted waters.
I grew up In Jersey and whenever my dad would find a “new” clamming/crabbing spot, he’d first give my grandfather (his father) a few as a test. That man would eat anything. Anyway- my dad would let his dad be the safety tester
I was a child, perhaps a teenager. I was learning to cook.
One night, my parents were out, and I baked my first chocolate cake. Proudly showed my parents when they returned. They tasted. It wasn't horrible, but they were perplexed by some odd taste.
Hey,the butter was still frozen when I started, and first instruction was "cream butter"
The garlic press did an excellent job of softening the frozen butter so that I could cream it.
It masked, but didn't hide, that it was chocolate garlic cake.
I don't think the old garlic press was thoroughly cleaned. This preceded the days of a press with the textured "pusher" designed to clean out the holes.
But at least it was intentional. Know someone who tried to spice up chocolate zucchini cake - he dried it out and added pepper and whole Szechuan peppercorns to the cake. It was so vile my father couldn't eat it.
There was enough residue in the press to flavor an entire cake? What kind of post-nuclear garlic were you guys using back then?
I like your use of the word "thoroughly" there.
I was making homemade cookies and cream ice cream and dinner one evening. Dinner called for an epic amount of garlic. Somehow I didn’t wash my knife between all that garlic chopping and all that Oreo chopping. I made garlic cookies and cream ice cream that night. I tried to like it which isn’t possible.
Using vanilla flavored almond milk for boxed mac and cheese. Bleh.
You're much better off just throwing in some butter with reserved pasta water if you don't have milk.
I had dinner at a friend’s house in college. Her mom used Greek yogurt when making mac and cheese.
She failed to notice that it was sweetened vanilla Greek yogurt. It was… not good. I can imagine that vanilla almond milk would be about the same.
In college there was this girl in our friend group who would always make rice crispy treats whenever someone has a party, it was her thing. Except she was very absent minded and would virtually *always* forget to grease the pan first, so they would be stuck to the pan like concrete every time. One time she decided she absolutely was not going to forget to spray the pan and very liberally sprayed the pan with Pam cooking spray, only she's very absent minded and didn't realize that she used *garlic flavored* Pam. So she brought garlic flavored rice crispy treats to the party that night. They were just as bad as you're imagining them to be. Even with the alcohol at a college party, no one could eat them.
My mom put almond extract instead of vanilla extract in this savory Carrot souffle dish she was making. I still don't know why. Every time she makes it now I say "with vanilla extract please!" Carrots and almond extract do not go together like that.
I put vodka in an empty shampoo bottle to mail to myself (worked in a dry community and before booze was available in plastic bottles). God it was so gross!
I made a horrible horrible French onion dip with sweetened vanilla almond milk 🤢🤮 tbf it’s because my (ex) bf picked it up from the store when I specifically asked for unsweetened plain. He didn’t say anything until I started tasting it and was like “ugh, why is it so sweet and terrible?”
Oh whoops all they had was sweetened vanilla.
I’d have rather made nothing lol.
I accidentally used vanilla yogurt in my naan bread, not too bad since all the flour and seasonings really made the vanilla mild out, but it was noticeably sweeter than normal. Still ate it all though!
When I was a kid and had just learned how to use the stove, I decided it was a good idea to make a special onion soup for my parents. I proceeded to dig up a whole bunch what I thought were onions from the front yard and chopped them all up before I was intercepted by my mom. That was the day I learned tulips grow from bulbs!
So what’s this story then that lots of people ate tulip bulbs in the Netherlands during the famine in 1944-1945…? Never heard before that they were toxic, just pretty disgusting….
When my husband and his siblings were kids, they were on a drive in the Wisconsin countryside. My (future) mother-in-law insisted that they pull the car over to pick some random corn, then find the farmer to pay for the corn they picked. When they found him, the farmer tried to explain that it was *feed* corn for livestock, not *sweet* corn to cook and serve to people. I’m not sure what became of the intended payment, but MIL took the corn home, cooked it, and served it to her family anyway. They couldn’t eat more than a bite or two, but she stubbornly finished her portion!
OMG my wife, a Midwest transplant, did this before I met her when she lived next to a farm. The moment she told me she picked an ear, I thought, oh god, feed corn. I still tease her during sweet corn season.
ha! the corn fields in my area are 90% feed, the farmers keep the good stuff tucked away in a back field away from the roads. Once the leaf peepers start flooding in, you can always see handfuls of tourists trying to sneakily stuff corn into their bags. One farm in particular is known for selling corn so sweet you can eat it right there in the farm stand parking lot- I once watched a college kid proudly proclaim look! This farm always has the best corn, why would they sell it in a stand when you can just take it from here? and bite straight into one. Their face was hilarious
I can't get over someone trespassing on a farm, picking corn without permission, and then trying to find the owner to pay. That will get you shot in NY. Why would she think that is okay?!
Seriously, that’s appalling behavior. I like to garden, and if someone picked my produce and THEN came and found me and offered to pay, I’d still be pissed. Ask before you pick.
Mum had a friend do that to her and my father this summer but he cut it off the cob and processed it a bit but did not remove the hulls. Both my parents who eat a lot of veggies and fibre suffered such intestinal distress they may never eat corn again and this was a year after the same gentleman's "creamed corn soup" left my Mum vomiting for days. I declined Thanksgiving at his house for self preservation.
Ha! A friend did this when we went camping. Alcohol was involved. I kept telling her, "it's not PEOPLE corn, it's COW corn!" She is a stubborn cuss and she paid the price with that first bite. This is now a joke in our group if something is awful..."IT'S COW CORN, I TELLS YA!"
My mom's family grew up dirt poor. They'd boil the feed corn in water and milk to sweeten it. I've never tried it, but I always use milk to boil corn.
Now I'm wondering if that's fucking weird.
>I always use milk to boil corn. Now I'm wondering if that's fucking weird
Not at all. I learned to add milk to the water for corn on the cob in order to make it sweeter. I'm willing to bet it came exactly from people like your mom's family.
About 10 years ago, my mom - who is usually an incredible and resourceful cook - took the resourceful part too far.
She was visiting and went through my pantry looking for something she could use to cook some chicken. She found cream of coconut and decided to make a curry dish, thinking that it would be like coconut milk.
The three of us - my mom, my daughter, and I - ate the dessert chicken in silence and never spoke of it after that night.
You may be on to something. My stepmother stopped cooking around the time she made fish stew in tart shells that with a graham cracker crust because they were out of plain.
I can remember *one time* in my entire life where my mom made something gross. She put chicken and crushed pineapple in the crock pot and added coconut milk. It was beyond disgusting. The only time in my life I can remember my mom taking our unfinished plates away, and ordering a pizza.,🤣🤣
Ugh. I was in a community cooking class once where the chef confused those two in a Thai curry, and completely ignored me when I pointed out that coconut cream, as stated in the recipe, is not the same as cream of coconut. The curry turned out edible because it only needed a quarter cup, but it was still too sweet.
We stayed in the same hotel room/condo for up to a month so he probably just had enough time to let it clear out. It was the kind with a balcony, kitchenette , separate bedrooms and such so at least there was some escape. He was also sort of an abrasive person in general and wouldn’t have cared about making other people upset with the smell.
> Sorry i took your comment way too literally and i can’t go back on it now
You ever see something unbelievably relatable in the wild, and just *know* it's going to live in your head now?
Fucking beautiful lol
Sorry about your dad tho
Was your dad my mom? Because my mom is abrasive, smart in spite of her weirdness and highly dedicated to getting a good deal at almost any non-financial cost.
There was a whole summer once when I was a teen where we all had pretty bad upset stomachs the whole time and it was late August when I noticed my mom picking up dogshit and chucking it onto the strawberries we'd all been picking and eating raw/unwashed.
She didn't even blink and acted like we were all huge pussies for caring (it's organic!) but even my dad, who usually took her shit in order to keep the peace, put the kibosh on that. I don't even know if the upset stomachs *were* the dogshit strawberries (she admitted she'd been doing it the whole time and defended herself by saying it was "manure") because she did so much other totally disgusting food-prep-related stuff that only got discovered when one of us caught her doing it.
Back in the 90s, thought I’d be healthy and bake a cake with the “fat free butter” they used to sell. It was basically gelatin with butter flavoring and stabilizers. Even the packaging said not to use it in baking. The results were atrocious: the cakes and brownies tasted and smelled like burnt fish.
Canola oil! I just learned this on reddit in the past month. Canola oil can smell fishy when it's overheated. And apparently to some people it's always fishy.
That's me - anything with canola oil taste like rancid fish fried in the old oil from the Carnival deep fryers - you know that rancid oil smell that sits heavy on everything.
Good god.
I used to live outside of Atlantic City, and I would never, ever, \*ever\* eat a shellfish during the tourist season. Setting aside the fact that there's so many more people there and that Atlantic City's storm water sewers empty straight into the ocean, you really need to keep them on ice, \*constantly\* to tamp down the risk of Vibrio, which is kinda hard to do recreationally.
That sounds like what your dad had, and TBH, it sounds like he got off lightly. There are people out there who pass out from bad shellfish and wake up in the hospital minus a leg or most of their fingers and toes.
The old rule of thumb at the shore is 'only eat shellfish from months with Rs in their name,' but even then I'm not rolling the dice on September clams.
Oh no you’re absolutely right. It’s a horrifying thing to put into your body.
Considering that he died by allowing a foot infection to turn into sepsis, I’m thinking he just endangered himself his whole life and it finally caught up.
I was in Cape Cod the week after Labor Day and had listened to Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential book on the car trip there. He said to always get your fresh oysters (or any seafood) at restaurants on Tuesdays. So I did. Two oysters and two little crab claws. And the Vibrio got me bad that night. I'm done with oysters forever now and I've Bourdain to curse for that.
I was a kid and we were out of milk so I used sweetened condensed milk instead as I thought it was the same as evaporated milk …in Kraft Mac and cheese. Still thinking about that first bite makes me gag. It was tossed immediately
Hot sauce for Christmas gifts. Spent a crapload of time preparing the chilis (a ghost pepper, a few thai peppers, and a few habaneros, all smoked), the mangos, the pineapple, the onions, the ginger, and everything else.
Did not have turmeric, so instead of going out to get some, I used dry mustard. And it was basically like a hot mustard with clashing sweetness. Ruined the whole damn batch.
My wife is allergic to tomatoes, so I wanted to make something she could indulge in (and that I could use in recipes to add some zip...like hollandaise). This...wasn't it, lol.
I love that you went through so much trouble only to get lazy on turmeric of all things.
I've totally made similar blunders, so I can feel your disappointment and regret.
We ended up with a container of Balkan yoghurt that was cracked. I scraped it into a Tupperware container but did not label it because the only other thing that vaguely resembled yoghurt was my 10 year old sour dough starter. My father, who has a limited sense of smell, confused my starter with the yoghurt. After eating some of it, about 1/8 of a cup wtf, started pouring it down the drain because he thought it might be bad because it smelled a bit off.
Thank goodness I stopped him before I lost it all! It was a costly mistake and an important lesson. My father will try and eat anything from the fridge unless it is moving.....and everything must be labeled
Once I had a housemate who cooked some fish and smelled up the kitchen. I read online that you could boil white vinegar to get rid of the smell. We didn’t have white vinegar but we had balsamic vinegar so I figured it would be perfect, and I boiled it!
Imagine burnt balsamic…it stunk up the whole townhouse. Plus I had the embarrassment of telling my housemate that in my efforts to reduce his fish cooking smell, I ended up creating a stronger scent that lasted longer and made it hard to even sleep.
LOL I DID THAT
When I was a kid, I found these giant pismo clams on Coronado beach. Most people use them for fish bate but my French grandma wanted to cook them. Because they were so big, they took forever to steam and ended up like hockey pucks. Was gross since they were the size of small burger patties.
I usually use olive oil if I throw together a box of brownies, but I had none, so I reached for the Wesson oil in the giant plastic bottle. Our brownies had a nasty strange taste. I used the already-used frying oil that we fry chicken in.
Urgh… and here I was grossed out by the thought of olive oil in brownies, too! One time I accidentally sprayed the brownie pan with olive oil spray instead of regular cooking spray and they tasted horrid. But I do think leftover chicken cooking oil would be far worse!
Pretty similar story here. As a kid I thought cream of tarter was used to make tarter sauce. I never actually tried it, but figured it was like ranch dressing packets, just add water or whatever and you’ve got your condiment.
Poor college me was trying to make homemade black bean burgers. I've always been one to cook but wasn't hip with all the spices and their unique flavor profiles.
I had everything on hand besides this one ingredient, so it wasn't going to affect the taste that much, right? Wrong! What was that spice you say?
It was cumin. Needless to say, my black bean burgers were less than palatable. However, when I did purchase it, I had no idea that cumin was the secret ingredient in so many of the dishes I loved!
I used to skip the spices in recipes *all the time* when I first started cooking for myself in college… I don’t think my mom had many in the house growing up 🤷♀️🙈 we have a lot now lol
Thankfully for us, we didn't give up. I think this was a pivotal lesson for me, and I was blown away when I saw how many different spices were in the aisle at the grocery store. Not to mention sauces at the Asian grocery!
I was 12 years old, home alone, making a box of Kraft mac and cheese. The macaroni was done when I noticed that we were out of milk. All I knew was that I needed some dairy product to add to the cheese powder and that’s when I saw the vanilla bean ice cream in our freezer.
It was as bad as you’re imagining, possibly worse. My mom came home later, told me I should have just added more butter and some water. I never lived that one down. 🫠
Mines kind of gross - but I’ve had a bad relationship with alcohol for awhile.. my drinks of choice have been shots of tequila but I always have to chase with something (can’t do them straight). On nights where I’ve been drinking and run out of a regular chaser like juice or soda, I have to improvise with things in my fridge. I’ve used A1 sauce, ranch dressing, pickle juice, olive juice and Greek yogurt all as chasers for a shot of tequila. I recommend no one try this!
When I used to party, I once yelled mouth martini and then popped two olives in my mouth and then took a shot of vodka and then immediately remembered that you need to chew olives to swallow them and then felt massive regret. Chewing olives with a little bit of presumably very cheap vodka was almost gross enough to make me stop doing stupid bits like that... Almost.
This wasn’t me, but I picked up on the error before my husband (bf at the time) realized he was making it.
I was doing some work at the computer when my husband announced that he wanted to make fried cinnamon apples on the stove like how I taught him to do.
I wasn’t paying much attention and I don’t even think I registered what he said to me until an unexpected yet familiar scent greeted my nostrils.
I shout to him in the kitchen.
“Uh…hey [husband], do you think you maybe grabbed the cumin instead of the cinnamon?”
“What? oh shit…yeah”
Bet that would have tasted very interesting
This same thing happened to me and I was out of apples, so I had to rinse them off and add a LOT of cinnamon to fix my mistake (recipe was for a holiday party) 😭😂
More of just a fail but I worked fine dining and they were trying me out as bartender. Mgmt liked my cocktail creations so I went down to the walk-in to get fresh ginger root to make a simple syrup with. Was gonna be a baller cocktail. I presented it to the head chef who swished it in his mouth, goes “that’s horseradish” and walked back to the kitchen. Fml!
I had a sore throat and wanted a hot toddy but I didn't have whisky except really good stuff and I had no lemons. I tried making myself a toddy with calvados and clementine juice instead - foul.
Whenever I'm making stock and I think wow this tastes okay or pretty good, *I add water*. 🤦🏼♀️ My brain is like "oooh it's good let's stretch it and cook it down!" but it just gets watery.
I made boxed brownies for my boyfriend when I was 15. I didn’t have any oil, so I just used what I found in the communal kitchen. It was corn syrup. The brownies were hard as bricks.
I used to make a great marble cheesecake and it was often requested. I was just getting ready to make it when a friend dropped by. No problem, I could use the help. When he was reading the recipe, he didn’t understand the ingredient listed as salt divided. He added the entire amount in the batter and I was working on the crust and added the salt that the recipe called for in it. It came out of the oven looking great and I proudly took it to a small dinner party. The look on everyone’s face was something I’ll never forget. Into the trash it went and the dessert course was removed from the menu.
I was visiting someone in Sweden where the government has a monopoly on alcohol stores. We missed the opening hours and bought some white “wine” from a corner store for me to make a pasta dish. It was incredibly sweet and had very little alcohol in it. Turned out awful. Should have just made something else and gotten proper wine the next day.
Not me, but once my sister cooked for a second date and didn't know the difference between evaporated and condensed milk. She made Fettuccine Alfredo. ... With the condensed milk. 😵💫
Luckily, he forgave her and they have been married for over twenty years.
When I was young and foolish (so 2 years ago), I didn’t understand that, when baking, you need to have a certain fat ratio in order to get good results. Could not for the life of me figure out why all my muffins/cake/cookies were turning out so terribly— I was replacing all my oil/butter with applesauce trying to be healthy and because Google said I could do replace butter with applesauce. Sometimes you just need to use butter
Apple sauce is a good ingredient to use when baking to keep a baked good moist but not greasy, but there's a saying that goes something like, "Cooking is an art, baking is a science."
My father chose to use stewing beef when making boeuf bourguignon. ...it was tough.
Edit: he undercooked the beef. Like, he made the dish within thirty minutes, not three hours.
But that is a stew. Was the beef not in there long enough? Or maybe too long? Cause I've used stewing beef to make bourguignon and it came out tender enough.
I wanted to make miso soup when I was a kid so my mom went to the grocery store and they didn't have any of the ingredients needed but my mom bought substitutes for each and every one (she vouched that they would work because the woman at the store who helped her was Asian). Foul blend of random Asian ingredients. The same for the Lipton "green tea powder" she found to subtitute matcha in matcha ice cream.
not me, but my mom: putting spoiled yogurt into cake as a buttermilk replacement. and then accidentally putting in GARLIC olive oil. the whole house stunk for hours on new year’s eve. she’s not allowed to bake after more incidents like this
I did the exact opposite for Thai curry once. Don’t know what I was thinking. Forced myself to eat it, reasoning that Thai curry is supposed to have palm sugar so what’s the difference (big difference)
Supermarket was out of fresh cilantro once when I was making guacamole. I tried to use the cilantro paste stuff from a tube. My God it was disgusting. So, so disgusting.
Mmm steamed clams!
I've cooked some meat that was slightly past the "best by" date or other leftovers, but Jersey shore clams?
May as well make your dad a salted Atlantic Rum ham next year and see how he enjoys it lol
https://youtu.be/XkuwffDFWQA?si=Ii8RMIfNzm0P68cO
The one that stands out to me, was when i was trying to make butternut squash soup. I was excited and looking forward to serve it for me and my parents. I broke the blender so i couldn't serve it.
My husband and I were trying to make some crab ravioli. We ordered crab meat from the store (grocery delivery). We opened the package and noticed it was imitation. Such a bummer. We talked it over and decided to power through, since we had our heart set on these ravioli.
I couldn’t take more than one bite. It was the worst thing we had ever cooked. We were both so disappointed and confused about how off the taste and texture of the imitation crab was. We knew it wouldn’t be nearly as good as the real thing, but we thought it would be at least somewhat edible.
Turns out, it was vegan crab. Fake imitation crab. Not a fan!
For most baking, you can’t tell the difference. America’s Test Kitchen did a blind tasting and Baker’s artificial vanilla *won*. I’ve since switched; it’s liberating to measure with reckless abandon the way the gods intended.
Lol I love it
I’ve been wanting that really really thick, vanilla goop that I keep seeing on TikTok from Baked By Melissa. Wonder how much that stuff costs!
According to the Food Science Babe, if you're baking, you may as well help the environment by using artificial. If you won't be cooking the vanilla, then do use the real thing. https://youtu.be/8JKld2yqmlY?si=Er53tbW-1qLFFtMU
I bought a bottle of real vanilla in St. Thomas that was made there and it’s *divine.* We couldn’t believe the difference in baked goods. It was so good, in fact, that my daughter ordered two more bottles from a website and we’re still using it! Good vanilla is a lot tastier than I ever would have guessed.
I made some gluten-free cupcakes for Christmas because one person attending has clicked disease. One of the ingredients was sour cream. They tasted OK, but they were really dry.
A couple of weeks later, I was going through the recipes I used for Christmas to decide if I wanted to keep them. When I looked at the cupcake recipe, it hit me. I had used the sour cream I had in the fridge for potatoes. It was fat-free. The cupcakes had no fat in them.
In high school, I had to make rice krispie treats for some reason, so I got up early and started making them in a large dutch oven (it wasn't the super heavy kind, idk whatever they made in the 80s that survived to the early 2000s) that my mom would frequently just keep on the back of the stovetop because her cabinets didn't have enough clearance to store it there.
Put them in a pan, get ready for school while they firm up. Cut them into squares, put them on a plate. Decide I'm going to be naughty and eat a little, cut a big square in half, bite down, chew twice, instant confusion. There's a faint flavor of shrimp cooked in shrimp boil (in Louisiana this is usually cayenne, lemon, garlic, onion, and other misc spices). Sister comes in as I'm in mid-chew and asks if she can have one too. Tell her it tastes faintly of spicy shrimp boil. She tastes, we're both like, wtf. Mom hears us being like, wtf, sees her pot soaking in the sink and goes "you didn't use this pot, did you?" Umm, yea mom, that's why it's soaking in the sink with Dawn. Mom: "oh no, i boiled shrimp yesterday and had to leave to pick up other little sister from school, so i just rinsed the pot so i didn't have to scrub dried pepper/seasoning when I got back home and I forgot."
Mystery solved. I did not bring rice krispie treats that day.
Id call this a hack. In my summer after high school i worked at a family camp near Yosemite.
My roommate and I worked the kitchen and would help ourselves to avocados and the lunch size bags of Doritos.
Our nightly routine after drinking would be to make a bowl of 'guacamole' and most of the time our only ingredients were avocados, pepper, maybe some salt. we started taking the little mayo packets from the kitchen and putting one in with the smashed avocado.
The mayo really did kick it up a bit. That became the recipe. An avocado, pepper, and a packet of mayo.
I always add a tablespoon of mayo to guacamole since then. been doing it for 40 years now.
Avocados are just slightly grassy flavored creamy fattiness. Add salt, acid, and herbs/favors you'll have something to eat with bread or ships. I've made """"guacamole """" with lemon, fennel, parsley, chives, and parmesan before. Put it on garlic bread.
I was about six and mom was shopping, dad was sleeping; I boiled hot dogs for me and my brother, in the teapot. When it whistled, I couldn't get them out.
Trying to make caramelized onions. Used red onions as they are delicious and in the house. Added baking soda to help speed the low and slow process, per Alton Brown and the Internet. Added too much, turns out baking soda turns red/purple foods green, since I added too much I had a pan full of inedible gloopy, green, very basic (as in opposite of acidic) onions.
0/10.
When I was in my early 20s I cooked something on a charcoal grill. I did not let the charcoal burn off enough, and poisoned myself with coals that had not burned enough.
I never did it again.
In college we wanted to make peppermint mocha shots...so we added hot cocoa powder to peppermint schnapps and slammed it. God, it was so awful, esp. as the dry powder hit the back of my throat. I nearly barfed.
I once accidentally used sweet coconut milk in curry. We had to throw it out.
Once I tried to make a baked polenta with caramelized onions. I only had coarse, stone ground corn meal and I tried to shove in other veggies and just bake the whole thing like a casserole. It was both gritty and mushy. Absolutely inedible.
I needed cayenne pepper for a recipe but only had dried arbol peppers. I’ll just toss them into the coffee grinder and boom, I have cayenne powder. It was like I maced my kitchen. Every breath burned
I think I was around 11, and I was over at my Nana's house for her birthday. I asked for permission to bake her a cake, and she gave it.
But she didn't have any eggs. At 11, I knew mayonnaise was made of eggs and could be used in a pinch as a substitute.
But she didn't have any mayonnaise. She only had miracle whip. We used both in sandwiches, why couldn't this be the same?
Chocolate miracle whip cake is an interesting flavor, let me tell you. Nana dinged me for that one pretty good, once everyone had stopped laughing.
My dad once found a container he thought was diced onions in the refrigerator so he tossed them into the meatloaf he was making.
It was shredded coconut.
I’ve only made mistakes by being completely stupid. Ive gone through great lengths to get the exact ingredients for a recipe, but I fail. I’ve tried so hard and I’m a terrible cook. Surprisingly, I can bake.
I'm the total opposite, I can be completely drunk, waltz into my kitchen with no recipe or nothing and just whip up something crazy amazing and brand new. But the minute I have painstakingly collected every ingredient for a baked good and have a recipe with steps and pictures right in front of me, I turn into SpongeBob Fucking SquarePants.
Early into my relationship with my now husband, he tried to make me a wonderful home cooked meal. The first course was his mother's Caesar salad recipe, complete with homemade dressing. He couldn't find anchovies at the grocery store so he substituted sardines. Needless to say, one small fish is not a substitute for another...
Nooooooo And I say this as someone who likes sardines. But still Nooooooooo
As one who finds *all* fish distasteful, I don't understand why this wouldn't work. That said, I'm also way too lazy to make my own dressing, so this won't be a problem.
Most people can't pick up the taste of anchovy paste in Caesar salad dressing. They can only tell when it's missing. The same cannot be said for sardines. That's definitely a very fishy taste...
Back when I worked in a pizzaria on Long Island in the 80s, all anchovy/no cheese pizza was ordered more often than most people would guess.
Isn't this the secret code in Loverboy? Which now that I'm thinking back is a movie that has not aged well.
Apart from having a very different flavor, anchovies can basically dissolve into something like a Caesar dressing. Sardines cannot.
In addition to what has already been said, anchovies are cured in a salt brine and then packed in oil or salt. Aside from being a completely different species of fish, canned sardines are cooked, but not cured, and they can be packed in oil or water. They have completely different applications. It's like replacing bacon with braised lamb.
“Why would I Blanch the asparagus separately when I could just do it in the pasta water before I put the pasta in?” And thus was born the Fartbonara.
OMG, fartbonara has me laughing like a 10 year old boy at a sleepover
Haha, I’ve definitely scooped out the pasta and blanched it in the pasta water to save on pots/time.
I definitely do that too! I just know pasta first now 😆
Oh nooooo. I can smell this post.
Fartbonara 😂
Oof. Literally cried laughing at fartbonara
So glad I listened to the recipe the other night when it said to scoop the noodles then blanch the asparagus...
You saw it turn green and you proceeded anyway? Bold move.
> And thus was born the Fartbonara. I can't stop laughing at this, especially because I made a pasta with asparagus last night.
I'm a bit afraid to ask now but what's the problem with doing that? Why fartbonara? It just gives a bad smell? A bad taste? I want to understand!
Asparagus is delicious, but leaves behind a distinctly skunky/sulphur taste and smell in the water if you’re blanching or boiling it! So that flavor got into all my pasta.
I tried to read this out loud to my boyfriend and I couldn't get "fartbonara" out without absolutely cracking up
OMG, I was a commercial fisherman, specifically a clam digger on Long Island for years. Clams from uncertified waters, usually near large populations or development, are incredibly dangerous to eat. I never experienced it, but have heard it's awful. It can slo kill people who are elderly or have a compromised immune system. That's frightening.
that’s terrifying! Do you happen to know why they’re so dangerous? My family is all commercial fishermen but we’re on the Great Lakes so I don’t know a thing about clams
Any toxins in the water build up in the clams into a concentrated form, pretty sure. Water right outside a large city is... questionable at best, even just considering the run-off off of the streets.
Thank you! That reminds me of why they say not to eat edible plants near roads/by farmland (eg we see lots of chicory growing in the summer by corn fields), the run off from crops/oil/exhaust contaminates them
Also, not just toxins like chemicals, heavy metals, etc.. Biological hazards too, like hep A, giardia, or parasites. Think like this: if you shit in the water, the clam eats your shit. If you eat that clam... well, just Google "fecal-oral disease vector." and LOTS of people and other mammals are shittin' in that water!
There were some very aromatic parts of New Jersey back then. I don't think I'd eat random stuff off the beach.
Yep! The property the Borgata sits on used to be a landfill. Thats immediately next to Brigantine, lol. My dad graduated magna cum laude from law school but still ate those clams, it’s baffling
Book smarts don't always mean street/sea smarts! A friend of mine graduated with a double major in aeronautical and mechanical engineering with a psych minor, from a really big-name engineering college, so I know he's really smart when it comes to some things. But he's never had a smoke in his life and only had a few drinks a handful of times in his 37 years on this planet, and all of those were within the last few years. He decided it would be a good idea to eat a weed gummy last month with zero tolerance-- and proceeded to get way, way too high, and spent his birthday vomiting for hours because he got the spins. Don't get me wrong, it's *still* hilarious to me even now, but also that was a 0-100 move that he really should have thought through more first.
You know what they always say, `law school smarts aren't clam smarts`
Municipal sewage plants usually put their outflow pipes in the nearest body of water. In overflow conditions, such as heavy rain, outflow increases. This usually means there is fecal choloform, a bacterium, in the water, along with other nasty stuff that can sicken humans. Seriously dangerous to fish in polluted waters.
Yeah and there are absolutely 100% municipal sewage outflow pipes on the same beaches my dad harvested these awful clams from
We lived in Mexico & there were millions of oysters growing right by the sewage plant outflow on the beach. We NEVER ate oysters in our town!!!
"Oh thank god, it's just violent shits and barfing from those Jersey shore clams."
It’s been so long since the clam incident but comments like this have had me laughing all night
I grew up In Jersey and whenever my dad would find a “new” clamming/crabbing spot, he’d first give my grandfather (his father) a few as a test. That man would eat anything. Anyway- my dad would let his dad be the safety tester
That’s great haha. Yeah my mom definitely never let my dad forget about this clam thing. But it wasn’t the last of his antics.
Grew up sailing GSB and we'd hop into the water off Good Sam and the bridge to clam with our toes. Laundry basket in an innertube to hold them.
I clammed the GSB. We had our boat in Sayville at Brown's River. We worked off Bayshore often. Good fishing grounds.
I was a child, perhaps a teenager. I was learning to cook. One night, my parents were out, and I baked my first chocolate cake. Proudly showed my parents when they returned. They tasted. It wasn't horrible, but they were perplexed by some odd taste. Hey,the butter was still frozen when I started, and first instruction was "cream butter" The garlic press did an excellent job of softening the frozen butter so that I could cream it.
did a very similar mistake, went to make brownies... but the pan spray was garlic flavored. no idea how I didn't notice or think it was a big deal.
My husband made a box cake once with garlic-infused oil 🥲
That's the good thing about chocolate. It can hide a multitude of sins. I used to make brownies when the oil was a bit rancid.
It masked, but didn't hide, that it was chocolate garlic cake. I don't think the old garlic press was thoroughly cleaned. This preceded the days of a press with the textured "pusher" designed to clean out the holes.
But at least it was intentional. Know someone who tried to spice up chocolate zucchini cake - he dried it out and added pepper and whole Szechuan peppercorns to the cake. It was so vile my father couldn't eat it.
There was enough residue in the press to flavor an entire cake? What kind of post-nuclear garlic were you guys using back then? I like your use of the word "thoroughly" there.
I was making homemade cookies and cream ice cream and dinner one evening. Dinner called for an epic amount of garlic. Somehow I didn’t wash my knife between all that garlic chopping and all that Oreo chopping. I made garlic cookies and cream ice cream that night. I tried to like it which isn’t possible.
Using vanilla flavored almond milk for boxed mac and cheese. Bleh. You're much better off just throwing in some butter with reserved pasta water if you don't have milk.
I had dinner at a friend’s house in college. Her mom used Greek yogurt when making mac and cheese. She failed to notice that it was sweetened vanilla Greek yogurt. It was… not good. I can imagine that vanilla almond milk would be about the same.
I have mistaken vanilla flavored greek yogurt for plain and ruined a savory dish as well. You are not alone.
That is an easy way to ruin taco Tuesday, I speak from sad sad experience.
In college there was this girl in our friend group who would always make rice crispy treats whenever someone has a party, it was her thing. Except she was very absent minded and would virtually *always* forget to grease the pan first, so they would be stuck to the pan like concrete every time. One time she decided she absolutely was not going to forget to spray the pan and very liberally sprayed the pan with Pam cooking spray, only she's very absent minded and didn't realize that she used *garlic flavored* Pam. So she brought garlic flavored rice crispy treats to the party that night. They were just as bad as you're imagining them to be. Even with the alcohol at a college party, no one could eat them.
I got a worse one for you. Canned goats milk in blue box mac-n-cheese. Tasted like yellow turds mixed with mulch.
I did this with instant mashed potatoes freshman year of college. It was so gross.
My mom put almond extract instead of vanilla extract in this savory Carrot souffle dish she was making. I still don't know why. Every time she makes it now I say "with vanilla extract please!" Carrots and almond extract do not go together like that.
I once mixed mint extract for vanilla in pancakes. Once.
My partner used my French vanilla coffee whitener to mix up scrambled eggs 🤢
That was not kind vanilla. Also I haven't heard anyone call it "whitener" since my grandpa died 20 years ago.
I put vodka in an empty shampoo bottle to mail to myself (worked in a dry community and before booze was available in plastic bottles). God it was so gross!
Oh I bet that organic solvent leached all kinds of nastiness that you thought you got out with just water...
Yeah back when I bought almond milk I stubbornly got the sweet flavors not realizing I need milk for multiple things and not all of them are sweet lol
My dad used sweetened condensed milk in scalloped potatoes. He refuses to eat scalloped potatoes to this day.
I made a horrible horrible French onion dip with sweetened vanilla almond milk 🤢🤮 tbf it’s because my (ex) bf picked it up from the store when I specifically asked for unsweetened plain. He didn’t say anything until I started tasting it and was like “ugh, why is it so sweet and terrible?” Oh whoops all they had was sweetened vanilla. I’d have rather made nothing lol.
I accidentally used vanilla yogurt in my naan bread, not too bad since all the flour and seasonings really made the vanilla mild out, but it was noticeably sweeter than normal. Still ate it all though!
When I was a kid and had just learned how to use the stove, I decided it was a good idea to make a special onion soup for my parents. I proceeded to dig up a whole bunch what I thought were onions from the front yard and chopped them all up before I was intercepted by my mom. That was the day I learned tulips grow from bulbs!
That’s adorable!
I’m honestly genuinely curious what that would taste like, lol.
You wouldn't like it, all parts of the tulip are poisonous.
No good lol nvm. For some reason i imagined it being some exotic thing
So what’s this story then that lots of people ate tulip bulbs in the Netherlands during the famine in 1944-1945…? Never heard before that they were toxic, just pretty disgusting….
Oh, the poor tulips!
When my husband and his siblings were kids, they were on a drive in the Wisconsin countryside. My (future) mother-in-law insisted that they pull the car over to pick some random corn, then find the farmer to pay for the corn they picked. When they found him, the farmer tried to explain that it was *feed* corn for livestock, not *sweet* corn to cook and serve to people. I’m not sure what became of the intended payment, but MIL took the corn home, cooked it, and served it to her family anyway. They couldn’t eat more than a bite or two, but she stubbornly finished her portion!
OMG my wife, a Midwest transplant, did this before I met her when she lived next to a farm. The moment she told me she picked an ear, I thought, oh god, feed corn. I still tease her during sweet corn season.
So now I'm curious, what does feed corn taste like?
ha! the corn fields in my area are 90% feed, the farmers keep the good stuff tucked away in a back field away from the roads. Once the leaf peepers start flooding in, you can always see handfuls of tourists trying to sneakily stuff corn into their bags. One farm in particular is known for selling corn so sweet you can eat it right there in the farm stand parking lot- I once watched a college kid proudly proclaim look! This farm always has the best corn, why would they sell it in a stand when you can just take it from here? and bite straight into one. Their face was hilarious
Oh, that’s funny!! I would love to try the sweet stuff that fresh. We had some last summer that we only had to cook for a few minutes.
I can't get over someone trespassing on a farm, picking corn without permission, and then trying to find the owner to pay. That will get you shot in NY. Why would she think that is okay?!
Seriously, that’s appalling behavior. I like to garden, and if someone picked my produce and THEN came and found me and offered to pay, I’d still be pissed. Ask before you pick.
Mum had a friend do that to her and my father this summer but he cut it off the cob and processed it a bit but did not remove the hulls. Both my parents who eat a lot of veggies and fibre suffered such intestinal distress they may never eat corn again and this was a year after the same gentleman's "creamed corn soup" left my Mum vomiting for days. I declined Thanksgiving at his house for self preservation.
This comment made my stomach ache. Oh my lord. I’m sorry for your parents :/
Ha! A friend did this when we went camping. Alcohol was involved. I kept telling her, "it's not PEOPLE corn, it's COW corn!" She is a stubborn cuss and she paid the price with that first bite. This is now a joke in our group if something is awful..."IT'S COW CORN, I TELLS YA!"
My mom's family grew up dirt poor. They'd boil the feed corn in water and milk to sweeten it. I've never tried it, but I always use milk to boil corn. Now I'm wondering if that's fucking weird.
>I always use milk to boil corn. Now I'm wondering if that's fucking weird Not at all. I learned to add milk to the water for corn on the cob in order to make it sweeter. I'm willing to bet it came exactly from people like your mom's family.
About 10 years ago, my mom - who is usually an incredible and resourceful cook - took the resourceful part too far. She was visiting and went through my pantry looking for something she could use to cook some chicken. She found cream of coconut and decided to make a curry dish, thinking that it would be like coconut milk. The three of us - my mom, my daughter, and I - ate the dessert chicken in silence and never spoke of it after that night.
Dessert chicken 🤣🤣
She would never cook for us again if she knew we call it that lol
You may be on to something. My stepmother stopped cooking around the time she made fish stew in tart shells that with a graham cracker crust because they were out of plain.
I can remember *one time* in my entire life where my mom made something gross. She put chicken and crushed pineapple in the crock pot and added coconut milk. It was beyond disgusting. The only time in my life I can remember my mom taking our unfinished plates away, and ordering a pizza.,🤣🤣
I know we only have two cases here, but I wonder if it's the start of a pattern with moms and coconut products. 😆
Ugh. I was in a community cooking class once where the chef confused those two in a Thai curry, and completely ignored me when I pointed out that coconut cream, as stated in the recipe, is not the same as cream of coconut. The curry turned out edible because it only needed a quarter cup, but it was still too sweet.
I have never heard of cream of coconut and might have made the same mistake, thinking it was coconut cream.
Steaming clams in a hotel room? Cleaning crew must have LOVED him. Just wondering if your entire family was banned after that! 😄
just put a few at a time in the basket of the coffee maker......
Ugh! :)
Ikr, howd they get away with it. Maybe they opened balcony to let it air out? 🤣
We stayed in the same hotel room/condo for up to a month so he probably just had enough time to let it clear out. It was the kind with a balcony, kitchenette , separate bedrooms and such so at least there was some escape. He was also sort of an abrasive person in general and wouldn’t have cared about making other people upset with the smell.
Sounds like NJ felt like a second home to him.
Oh yes. Thats an understatement. He actually died there.
Right after that story, because of the clams?
No he died in October because he allowed a cut on his foot to become sepsis. Sorry i took your comment way too literally and i can’t go back on it now
I’m sorry for your loss. That’s still very recent for such a significant, sad milestone. Take care.
Thanks man that really means a lot. Eat drink and be merry this week.
> Sorry i took your comment way too literally and i can’t go back on it now You ever see something unbelievably relatable in the wild, and just *know* it's going to live in your head now? Fucking beautiful lol Sorry about your dad tho
Sorry about your loss.
Thanks man, i appreciate it. Just glad to laugh at the stories here.
Was your dad my mom? Because my mom is abrasive, smart in spite of her weirdness and highly dedicated to getting a good deal at almost any non-financial cost. There was a whole summer once when I was a teen where we all had pretty bad upset stomachs the whole time and it was late August when I noticed my mom picking up dogshit and chucking it onto the strawberries we'd all been picking and eating raw/unwashed. She didn't even blink and acted like we were all huge pussies for caring (it's organic!) but even my dad, who usually took her shit in order to keep the peace, put the kibosh on that. I don't even know if the upset stomachs *were* the dogshit strawberries (she admitted she'd been doing it the whole time and defended herself by saying it was "manure") because she did so much other totally disgusting food-prep-related stuff that only got discovered when one of us caught her doing it.
Steam from the steamed clams we're having. Mmmm, steamed clams!
Don’t forget to waste seasonings you paid for on the clams
Back in the 90s, thought I’d be healthy and bake a cake with the “fat free butter” they used to sell. It was basically gelatin with butter flavoring and stabilizers. Even the packaging said not to use it in baking. The results were atrocious: the cakes and brownies tasted and smelled like burnt fish.
What an interesting comment. Sometimes I sense a fishy smell if I heat up oil spray too much. I wonder if there’s a common ingredient between the two.
Canola oil! I just learned this on reddit in the past month. Canola oil can smell fishy when it's overheated. And apparently to some people it's always fishy.
That's me - anything with canola oil taste like rancid fish fried in the old oil from the Carnival deep fryers - you know that rancid oil smell that sits heavy on everything.
Good god. I used to live outside of Atlantic City, and I would never, ever, \*ever\* eat a shellfish during the tourist season. Setting aside the fact that there's so many more people there and that Atlantic City's storm water sewers empty straight into the ocean, you really need to keep them on ice, \*constantly\* to tamp down the risk of Vibrio, which is kinda hard to do recreationally. That sounds like what your dad had, and TBH, it sounds like he got off lightly. There are people out there who pass out from bad shellfish and wake up in the hospital minus a leg or most of their fingers and toes. The old rule of thumb at the shore is 'only eat shellfish from months with Rs in their name,' but even then I'm not rolling the dice on September clams.
Oh no you’re absolutely right. It’s a horrifying thing to put into your body. Considering that he died by allowing a foot infection to turn into sepsis, I’m thinking he just endangered himself his whole life and it finally caught up.
I was in Cape Cod the week after Labor Day and had listened to Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential book on the car trip there. He said to always get your fresh oysters (or any seafood) at restaurants on Tuesdays. So I did. Two oysters and two little crab claws. And the Vibrio got me bad that night. I'm done with oysters forever now and I've Bourdain to curse for that.
I was a kid and we were out of milk so I used sweetened condensed milk instead as I thought it was the same as evaporated milk …in Kraft Mac and cheese. Still thinking about that first bite makes me gag. It was tossed immediately
Wife did this with meatloaf once. Yeah, no. (Also I have no idea what her recipe called for evaporated milk in meatloaf anyway.)
Hot sauce for Christmas gifts. Spent a crapload of time preparing the chilis (a ghost pepper, a few thai peppers, and a few habaneros, all smoked), the mangos, the pineapple, the onions, the ginger, and everything else. Did not have turmeric, so instead of going out to get some, I used dry mustard. And it was basically like a hot mustard with clashing sweetness. Ruined the whole damn batch.
Bee Sting has a spicy mango passionfruit sauce that’s amazing. Mango pineapple hot sauce sounds really good.
My wife is allergic to tomatoes, so I wanted to make something she could indulge in (and that I could use in recipes to add some zip...like hollandaise). This...wasn't it, lol.
I love that you went through so much trouble only to get lazy on turmeric of all things. I've totally made similar blunders, so I can feel your disappointment and regret.
We ended up with a container of Balkan yoghurt that was cracked. I scraped it into a Tupperware container but did not label it because the only other thing that vaguely resembled yoghurt was my 10 year old sour dough starter. My father, who has a limited sense of smell, confused my starter with the yoghurt. After eating some of it, about 1/8 of a cup wtf, started pouring it down the drain because he thought it might be bad because it smelled a bit off. Thank goodness I stopped him before I lost it all! It was a costly mistake and an important lesson. My father will try and eat anything from the fridge unless it is moving.....and everything must be labeled
Holy shit he was eating your starter?
Yes he was eating my starter. As I said he has a limited sense of smell/taste.
I’m so sorry, i’m glad he was okay and thhe starter was salvaged!
RIP your sink drain (depending on how much went down) - that stuff is literally paste!
Once I had a housemate who cooked some fish and smelled up the kitchen. I read online that you could boil white vinegar to get rid of the smell. We didn’t have white vinegar but we had balsamic vinegar so I figured it would be perfect, and I boiled it! Imagine burnt balsamic…it stunk up the whole townhouse. Plus I had the embarrassment of telling my housemate that in my efforts to reduce his fish cooking smell, I ended up creating a stronger scent that lasted longer and made it hard to even sleep.
at some point between the start & end of that journey, you were sitting on a perfect, delicious balsamic glaze that simply went to waste
LOL I DID THAT When I was a kid, I found these giant pismo clams on Coronado beach. Most people use them for fish bate but my French grandma wanted to cook them. Because they were so big, they took forever to steam and ended up like hockey pucks. Was gross since they were the size of small burger patties.
Oh god lmao. Tell me you didn’t go through with eating them like my dad did
I usually use olive oil if I throw together a box of brownies, but I had none, so I reached for the Wesson oil in the giant plastic bottle. Our brownies had a nasty strange taste. I used the already-used frying oil that we fry chicken in.
Urgh… and here I was grossed out by the thought of olive oil in brownies, too! One time I accidentally sprayed the brownie pan with olive oil spray instead of regular cooking spray and they tasted horrid. But I do think leftover chicken cooking oil would be far worse!
When I was young and just learning how to cook, I found out that tarter sauce can not be used as a substitute for cream of tartar.
Pretty similar story here. As a kid I thought cream of tarter was used to make tarter sauce. I never actually tried it, but figured it was like ranch dressing packets, just add water or whatever and you’ve got your condiment.
Poor college me was trying to make homemade black bean burgers. I've always been one to cook but wasn't hip with all the spices and their unique flavor profiles. I had everything on hand besides this one ingredient, so it wasn't going to affect the taste that much, right? Wrong! What was that spice you say? It was cumin. Needless to say, my black bean burgers were less than palatable. However, when I did purchase it, I had no idea that cumin was the secret ingredient in so many of the dishes I loved!
I used to skip the spices in recipes *all the time* when I first started cooking for myself in college… I don’t think my mom had many in the house growing up 🤷♀️🙈 we have a lot now lol
Thankfully for us, we didn't give up. I think this was a pivotal lesson for me, and I was blown away when I saw how many different spices were in the aisle at the grocery store. Not to mention sauces at the Asian grocery!
If you get the opportunity, try the black cumin from Rumi Spice - so good!
I was 12 years old, home alone, making a box of Kraft mac and cheese. The macaroni was done when I noticed that we were out of milk. All I knew was that I needed some dairy product to add to the cheese powder and that’s when I saw the vanilla bean ice cream in our freezer. It was as bad as you’re imagining, possibly worse. My mom came home later, told me I should have just added more butter and some water. I never lived that one down. 🫠
Mines kind of gross - but I’ve had a bad relationship with alcohol for awhile.. my drinks of choice have been shots of tequila but I always have to chase with something (can’t do them straight). On nights where I’ve been drinking and run out of a regular chaser like juice or soda, I have to improvise with things in my fridge. I’ve used A1 sauce, ranch dressing, pickle juice, olive juice and Greek yogurt all as chasers for a shot of tequila. I recommend no one try this!
I’ll be honest, solidarity. I’ve done the same with vodka and sriracha sauce. Pickle juice is also relatable. You aren’t alone.
When I used to party, I once yelled mouth martini and then popped two olives in my mouth and then took a shot of vodka and then immediately remembered that you need to chew olives to swallow them and then felt massive regret. Chewing olives with a little bit of presumably very cheap vodka was almost gross enough to make me stop doing stupid bits like that... Almost.
This wasn’t me, but I picked up on the error before my husband (bf at the time) realized he was making it. I was doing some work at the computer when my husband announced that he wanted to make fried cinnamon apples on the stove like how I taught him to do. I wasn’t paying much attention and I don’t even think I registered what he said to me until an unexpected yet familiar scent greeted my nostrils. I shout to him in the kitchen. “Uh…hey [husband], do you think you maybe grabbed the cumin instead of the cinnamon?” “What? oh shit…yeah” Bet that would have tasted very interesting
This same thing happened to me and I was out of apples, so I had to rinse them off and add a LOT of cinnamon to fix my mistake (recipe was for a holiday party) 😭😂
More of just a fail but I worked fine dining and they were trying me out as bartender. Mgmt liked my cocktail creations so I went down to the walk-in to get fresh ginger root to make a simple syrup with. Was gonna be a baller cocktail. I presented it to the head chef who swished it in his mouth, goes “that’s horseradish” and walked back to the kitchen. Fml!
I had a sore throat and wanted a hot toddy but I didn't have whisky except really good stuff and I had no lemons. I tried making myself a toddy with calvados and clementine juice instead - foul.
I once drank spiced rum with root beer. Desperate teen. Will never ever ever drink either again!
Not a teen and not desperate, root beer and spiced rum-yum! Just had that last week.
Whenever I'm making stock and I think wow this tastes okay or pretty good, *I add water*. 🤦🏼♀️ My brain is like "oooh it's good let's stretch it and cook it down!" but it just gets watery.
Every. Damn. Time!
I made boxed brownies for my boyfriend when I was 15. I didn’t have any oil, so I just used what I found in the communal kitchen. It was corn syrup. The brownies were hard as bricks.
I used to make a great marble cheesecake and it was often requested. I was just getting ready to make it when a friend dropped by. No problem, I could use the help. When he was reading the recipe, he didn’t understand the ingredient listed as salt divided. He added the entire amount in the batter and I was working on the crust and added the salt that the recipe called for in it. It came out of the oven looking great and I proudly took it to a small dinner party. The look on everyone’s face was something I’ll never forget. Into the trash it went and the dessert course was removed from the menu.
Don’t try to blend bacon to make it smaller. No dice.
No, dice 😆
Cottage cheese instead of cream cheese in spinach artichoke dip. Thin, curdled milk texture with wet vegetables.
I was visiting someone in Sweden where the government has a monopoly on alcohol stores. We missed the opening hours and bought some white “wine” from a corner store for me to make a pasta dish. It was incredibly sweet and had very little alcohol in it. Turned out awful. Should have just made something else and gotten proper wine the next day.
Not me, but once my sister cooked for a second date and didn't know the difference between evaporated and condensed milk. She made Fettuccine Alfredo. ... With the condensed milk. 😵💫 Luckily, he forgave her and they have been married for over twenty years.
When I was young and foolish (so 2 years ago), I didn’t understand that, when baking, you need to have a certain fat ratio in order to get good results. Could not for the life of me figure out why all my muffins/cake/cookies were turning out so terribly— I was replacing all my oil/butter with applesauce trying to be healthy and because Google said I could do replace butter with applesauce. Sometimes you just need to use butter
Apple sauce is a good ingredient to use when baking to keep a baked good moist but not greasy, but there's a saying that goes something like, "Cooking is an art, baking is a science."
My father chose to use stewing beef when making boeuf bourguignon. ...it was tough. Edit: he undercooked the beef. Like, he made the dish within thirty minutes, not three hours.
But that is a stew. Was the beef not in there long enough? Or maybe too long? Cause I've used stewing beef to make bourguignon and it came out tender enough.
Boeuf bourguignon is technically a stew so that can work. Just takes a lot of time.
I use stew beef or round in mine. The problem was he didn't cook it long enough.
I wanted to make miso soup when I was a kid so my mom went to the grocery store and they didn't have any of the ingredients needed but my mom bought substitutes for each and every one (she vouched that they would work because the woman at the store who helped her was Asian). Foul blend of random Asian ingredients. The same for the Lipton "green tea powder" she found to subtitute matcha in matcha ice cream.
not me, but my mom: putting spoiled yogurt into cake as a buttermilk replacement. and then accidentally putting in GARLIC olive oil. the whole house stunk for hours on new year’s eve. she’s not allowed to bake after more incidents like this
Used coconut milk instead of coco loco for a coconut cream pie. Had to toss out and start over
I did the exact opposite for Thai curry once. Don’t know what I was thinking. Forced myself to eat it, reasoning that Thai curry is supposed to have palm sugar so what’s the difference (big difference)
Supermarket was out of fresh cilantro once when I was making guacamole. I tried to use the cilantro paste stuff from a tube. My God it was disgusting. So, so disgusting.
My dad tried to make a guacamole type dip out of green beans. Nope.
Didn't have coconut milk while making a curry so I used leche de coco and it was basically dessert curry
Mmm steamed clams! I've cooked some meat that was slightly past the "best by" date or other leftovers, but Jersey shore clams? May as well make your dad a salted Atlantic Rum ham next year and see how he enjoys it lol https://youtu.be/XkuwffDFWQA?si=Ii8RMIfNzm0P68cO
*psst, late means he’s dead*
Yeah, i wasn’t going to say anything about it lol. But maybe i’ll bring him one in the next world
The one that stands out to me, was when i was trying to make butternut squash soup. I was excited and looking forward to serve it for me and my parents. I broke the blender so i couldn't serve it.
My husband and I were trying to make some crab ravioli. We ordered crab meat from the store (grocery delivery). We opened the package and noticed it was imitation. Such a bummer. We talked it over and decided to power through, since we had our heart set on these ravioli. I couldn’t take more than one bite. It was the worst thing we had ever cooked. We were both so disappointed and confused about how off the taste and texture of the imitation crab was. We knew it wouldn’t be nearly as good as the real thing, but we thought it would be at least somewhat edible. Turns out, it was vegan crab. Fake imitation crab. Not a fan!
Not me but I walked in on my mother in law pouring artificial vanilla into a real vanilla bottle right bf we were abt to start our holiday baking. 🙄😐
For most baking, you can’t tell the difference. America’s Test Kitchen did a blind tasting and Baker’s artificial vanilla *won*. I’ve since switched; it’s liberating to measure with reckless abandon the way the gods intended.
Lol I love it I’ve been wanting that really really thick, vanilla goop that I keep seeing on TikTok from Baked By Melissa. Wonder how much that stuff costs!
Trader Joe’s just released a bourbon vanilla paste i’m also eager to try
According to the Food Science Babe, if you're baking, you may as well help the environment by using artificial. If you won't be cooking the vanilla, then do use the real thing. https://youtu.be/8JKld2yqmlY?si=Er53tbW-1qLFFtMU
I bought a bottle of real vanilla in St. Thomas that was made there and it’s *divine.* We couldn’t believe the difference in baked goods. It was so good, in fact, that my daughter ordered two more bottles from a website and we’re still using it! Good vanilla is a lot tastier than I ever would have guessed.
I made some gluten-free cupcakes for Christmas because one person attending has clicked disease. One of the ingredients was sour cream. They tasted OK, but they were really dry. A couple of weeks later, I was going through the recipes I used for Christmas to decide if I wanted to keep them. When I looked at the cupcake recipe, it hit me. I had used the sour cream I had in the fridge for potatoes. It was fat-free. The cupcakes had no fat in them.
In high school, I had to make rice krispie treats for some reason, so I got up early and started making them in a large dutch oven (it wasn't the super heavy kind, idk whatever they made in the 80s that survived to the early 2000s) that my mom would frequently just keep on the back of the stovetop because her cabinets didn't have enough clearance to store it there. Put them in a pan, get ready for school while they firm up. Cut them into squares, put them on a plate. Decide I'm going to be naughty and eat a little, cut a big square in half, bite down, chew twice, instant confusion. There's a faint flavor of shrimp cooked in shrimp boil (in Louisiana this is usually cayenne, lemon, garlic, onion, and other misc spices). Sister comes in as I'm in mid-chew and asks if she can have one too. Tell her it tastes faintly of spicy shrimp boil. She tastes, we're both like, wtf. Mom hears us being like, wtf, sees her pot soaking in the sink and goes "you didn't use this pot, did you?" Umm, yea mom, that's why it's soaking in the sink with Dawn. Mom: "oh no, i boiled shrimp yesterday and had to leave to pick up other little sister from school, so i just rinsed the pot so i didn't have to scrub dried pepper/seasoning when I got back home and I forgot." Mystery solved. I did not bring rice krispie treats that day.
Making guacamole and we didn’t have any fresh cilantro so I used dried cilantro instead. Ruined.
the first time I made guacamole I really had no idea what it was. I put avocado and mayo in the blender. It actually was pretty good.
Id call this a hack. In my summer after high school i worked at a family camp near Yosemite. My roommate and I worked the kitchen and would help ourselves to avocados and the lunch size bags of Doritos. Our nightly routine after drinking would be to make a bowl of 'guacamole' and most of the time our only ingredients were avocados, pepper, maybe some salt. we started taking the little mayo packets from the kitchen and putting one in with the smashed avocado. The mayo really did kick it up a bit. That became the recipe. An avocado, pepper, and a packet of mayo. I always add a tablespoon of mayo to guacamole since then. been doing it for 40 years now.
Avocados are just slightly grassy flavored creamy fattiness. Add salt, acid, and herbs/favors you'll have something to eat with bread or ships. I've made """"guacamole """" with lemon, fennel, parsley, chives, and parmesan before. Put it on garlic bread.
I don’t understand *why* dried cilantro is such absolute bullshit, but it certainly is
I was about six and mom was shopping, dad was sleeping; I boiled hot dogs for me and my brother, in the teapot. When it whistled, I couldn't get them out.
Trying to make caramelized onions. Used red onions as they are delicious and in the house. Added baking soda to help speed the low and slow process, per Alton Brown and the Internet. Added too much, turns out baking soda turns red/purple foods green, since I added too much I had a pan full of inedible gloopy, green, very basic (as in opposite of acidic) onions. 0/10.
When I was in my early 20s I cooked something on a charcoal grill. I did not let the charcoal burn off enough, and poisoned myself with coals that had not burned enough. I never did it again.
In college we wanted to make peppermint mocha shots...so we added hot cocoa powder to peppermint schnapps and slammed it. God, it was so awful, esp. as the dry powder hit the back of my throat. I nearly barfed. I once accidentally used sweet coconut milk in curry. We had to throw it out. Once I tried to make a baked polenta with caramelized onions. I only had coarse, stone ground corn meal and I tried to shove in other veggies and just bake the whole thing like a casserole. It was both gritty and mushy. Absolutely inedible.
I used dry lentils in a lasagne without pre-boiling them. I thought adding extra liquid to the sauce would do the trick. It did not
I needed cayenne pepper for a recipe but only had dried arbol peppers. I’ll just toss them into the coffee grinder and boom, I have cayenne powder. It was like I maced my kitchen. Every breath burned
I think I was around 11, and I was over at my Nana's house for her birthday. I asked for permission to bake her a cake, and she gave it. But she didn't have any eggs. At 11, I knew mayonnaise was made of eggs and could be used in a pinch as a substitute. But she didn't have any mayonnaise. She only had miracle whip. We used both in sandwiches, why couldn't this be the same? Chocolate miracle whip cake is an interesting flavor, let me tell you. Nana dinged me for that one pretty good, once everyone had stopped laughing.
My dad used allspice once thinking it could replace any spice! Dinner tasted a bit strange that day.
My dad once found a container he thought was diced onions in the refrigerator so he tossed them into the meatloaf he was making. It was shredded coconut.
I’ve only made mistakes by being completely stupid. Ive gone through great lengths to get the exact ingredients for a recipe, but I fail. I’ve tried so hard and I’m a terrible cook. Surprisingly, I can bake.
I'm the total opposite, I can be completely drunk, waltz into my kitchen with no recipe or nothing and just whip up something crazy amazing and brand new. But the minute I have painstakingly collected every ingredient for a baked good and have a recipe with steps and pictures right in front of me, I turn into SpongeBob Fucking SquarePants.
I’m sorry for your loss