Our worst cooking catastrophes and kitchen nightmares
by Simon Ward | 15 October 2012 | 
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The lovefood team shares its biggest culinary meltdowns and we want to hear yours.
Almost two thirds of us have experienced a baking disaster, according to a new survey.
Of those 62% who suffered a cake-related catastrophe, nearly four in ten found their cake had sunk in the middle and over a third burned theirs.
Meanwhile, one in ten people confessed to still serving their creation even after it had been dropped on the floor. And 15% of people burned themselves in the course of their cooking.
lovefood's kitchen nightmares
Whatever you're cooking, it’s very easy for things to go wrong in the heat of the moment. Here are our biggest culinary cock-ups:
Andrew Webb, editor
“There are many... but the worst was perhaps a braised rabbit dish I did when some friends came to lunch. I'd made it before and it was delicious, but this time the rabbits ended up tough as old boots. I had no back up protein in the house, and had to serve it with an abject apology, though it was completely inedible. I've not cooked rabbit since.”
Charlotte Morgan, writer
“My worst kitchen nightmare was an exploding cake. A blue exploding cake. One late night during my student years, my slightly sozzled friends and I decided that it would be a great idea to add blue food dye to a Victoria Sponge batter. We put the monstrosity in the oven, and 15 minutes later came a big bang, followed by a splatter. We were still cleaning bits of dried blue cake batter off the oven weeks later. Moral of the story? Never add food colouring to your cake mix! Or maybe it’s just blue food dye?”
Simon Ward, news editor
“I’ve had a fair few cakes that went down like a Premier League footballer looking for a penalty, but my worst food nightmare happened at school. I took GCSE Home Economics and one of the coursework tasks was to make a three-course meal. I decided to make avocadoes stuffed with prawn cocktail for my parents, as I’d seen them prepare it plenty of times for dinner parties, although I’d never eaten an avocado at that point."
“However, I didn’t ask for the exact recipe as I figured it was simple enough. To their horror, they were served empty avocado skins filled with prawn cocktail. When they enquired where the fruit was, they were told it had been thrown in the bin earlier in the day. They started feeding me avocadoes after that.”
Your turn
Now we want to hear about, and ideally see, your food flops and kitchen nightmares. What went wrong and why? What did you do about it? There’s a great prize up for grabs – a load of top cookery books to keep you on the straight and narrow – for the best entry.
Write your stories in the Comments box below. If you have any photos, or video, you can either upload them to the lovefood Facebook page or email them to contactus@lovefood.com
Comments
by tantricyogi | on 06 November 2012
I have two notable kitchen calamities, one mine and the other my mothers.
Some friends had come over to mine for a film and pizza evening. My girlfriend and I were in charge of the pizzas whilst the boys lined up which films we would watch. I turned on the oven, un-wrapped the pizza and went to sit down whilst the oven pre-heated. My pal questioned what I was doing and said she always just shoved her food in to the oven as she switched it on. I explained to her why you do this and that I always did so and how much better the cooking results would be......
After a little while the pizza looked done but when I went to remove it from the oven the base was totally soggy and un-cooked. It still took a another few minutes or so of puzzlement to realize I had set the oven to grill not bake. We resorted to the dry frying the pizza to crisp up the base whilst laughing ourselves stupid at what we (I) had done. When the boys pronounced the pizza was delicious we nearly died laughing, leaving two rather bemused men wondering what on earth we had been getting up to in the kitchen.
by tantricyogi | on 06 November 2012
My Mum's kitchen disaster was, having spent an entire day roasting veal bones and preparing a rich home made stock for the meal for the dinner party she was hosting, straining the beautifully flavoured stock into the kitchen sink with nothing to catch it in - all that work - straight down the drain !!!
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