Disasters You Have Cooked

kylith

Not the usual "I burned it" disasters. Have you ever followed the recipe exactly and just wound up with something that can't be eaten?

The thing that sticks out in my memory was some kind of US mince recipe. I can't remember what it was called but the recipe called for mince, worchestersire sauce, and milk.

It smelled fine, but the milked turned everything zombie grey colour. When the grey sauce formed a skin over the grey mince lumps it was the most revolting looking thing I've ever seen, and I couldn't even bring myself to taste a forkful.

Minder

Heston Blumenthal's mushroom ketchup. Take a large quantity of mushrooms, blitz to a rough chop, add salt and allow the salt to draw out the liquid. Cook and add a thickening agent. Maybe a bit oversimplified, but thats the essence of it. Result was a mushroom ketchup with enough salt to choke a donkey. Next time I drastically reduced the salt - same result. Too salty. Now this isn't a matter of salt to taste - this was salty like sea water.

Next was a Tom Kitchin recipe for belly of lamb. Seasoned, rolled and tied, then immersed in a terrine and covered in olive oil. The recipe calls for a long time in the oven at 170c. (From Nature Plate, Page 115) I thought that was too hot and reduced to about 140c. The result was a cinder. So I emailed Tom at his restaurant asking if the result should be crisp or soft. The answer came back - soft! A deep fat fryer is typically at 180c and not much come out soft. After a second challenge about Mr Kitchin's recipe I was told that my oven was probably too hot. No matter the vagaries of my oven, anything but the largest piece of meat in the oven for 4 to 5 hours at 170c will be a cinder.

So if you ever get invited to dinner and slow cooked belly of lamb with mushroom ketchup is on the menu - steer well clear!

Tree

Potato gratin ALWAYS turns out like rocks. Short of boiling the crap out of the spuds before hand, even if i leave it in for three hours, still rocks. And usually end up eating what was planned with it on its own and some waffles. That said, the rocks spud reheats soft, go figure.

The Lovely Muffin

Tree wrote: »

Potato gratin ALWAYS turns out like rocks. Short of boiling the crap out of the spuds before hand, even if i leave it in for three hours, still rocks. And usually end up eating what was planned with it on its own and some waffles. That said, the rocks spud reheats soft, go figure.

I use this recipe for potato gratin and it comes out lovely and soft. I got the recipe from a thread on Boards, no idea what thread though, sorry.

Potato Gratin:
Ingredients: Spuds, garlic, cream, milk, butter

Get a decent size oven dish and grease the bottom with a small bit of butter, then chop/mash/crush the garlic and spread over the bottom of the dish.

Peel and finely slice the spuds (the finer the better so u dont need to precook) and spread them in the dish... arrange the top layer to make it look nice.

In a bowl mix a small carton of cream with equal quantities of milk, whisk a small bit and pour over the potatoes.

Put a few flecks of butter over the top of the dish and stick in a hot oven for 30 mins or until its nice and golden on top.

I've made some awful disasters over the years.

I once made muffins/large buns and they sank in the middle.

I made spaghetti and meatballs recently and it turned out wrong, there was a horrible taste off it.

I made brown bread once and thought it was cooked properly, until I went to take it out of the tin and it was a horrible doughy looking thing, not like brown bread should be.

Every now and then when I made garlic potatoes they are slightly soggy in the middle, rather than light and fluffy and I've no idea why.

If I boiled them for too long or didn't let them dry out fully I could understand, but even if I drain them in time and let them dry out fully so can't understand why it happens.

I made apple crumble once and it was horrid. It was basically lumps of apple with crumbs. Not like a nice apple crumble should be.

Thankfully my cooking is improving, it helps that I cook most days too.

The Sweeper

Dessert chef James Martin had a recipe for lemon meringue pie in his book. There appears to be a step missing or some other issue. Followed it to the letter, and ended up with a a liquid lemon curd that never set and was like a sauce.

the beer revolu

I did Hugh Wattlybottom Smythe's leg of pork Donnie Brasco.
Basically a long slow cooked pork leg covered in a wet rub. Recipe was for up to 24 hours - my instinct told me to cover the joint but Hugh's recipe didn't.
I stupidly ignored my instinct and got up in the morning to find a very black, crusty leg of pork. Still served it and the guests claimed to love it. We found it black and bitter tasting - inside was nice, though.

fitzcoff

I have just had a complete disaster!!!

Decided to try to find a different cupcake recipe, so google I trusted. I found this one
http://bellyfeathersparty.blogspot.com/2010/03/baileys-irish-cream-chocolate-best-st.html

350˚ for 15-20 minutes

3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped 3oz
1 cups unbleached all-purpose flour 5oz
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temp4oz
1 ¼ cups sugar10oz
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup sour cream couple of large spoons
½ cup water

Melt chocolate in a double boiler, stir until smooth. Remove from water and set aside to cool slightly. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and sugar until smoothly blended and creamy, about 2 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl as needed during mixing. On low speed, mix in the melted chocolate. On medium speed, add the eggs one at a time, mixing until each is blended into the batter. Add the vanilla and beat until the mixture looks creamy and the color has lightened slightly, about 1 minute. Mix in the sour cream until no white streaks remain. On low speed, add half of the flour mixture, mixing just to incorporate it. Mix in the water. Mix in the remaining flour mixture until it is incorporated and the batter looks smooth.

Line muffin tins with paper liners and fill each with a generous amount of batter to about ⅛ inch below the top of the liner. Bake just until the tops feel firm and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 15-20 minutes. Cool the cupcakes for 10 minutes in the pan on a wire rack. Remove from pan; cool completely on wire rack. Makes 18.

Followed the recipe by converting it from cups to ounces, I must have gone wrong somewhere here.

I have my conversions in red above.

The batter was yummy, really smooth and light.

Put them in the oven and the started to rise, looked delicious.

After a few minutes they started to sink, I now have 23 sticky, chewy things that are not edible,

Any ideas what could have gone wrong ?????

Faith

Did they sink in the oven? Did you open the door of the oven at all? Are your raising agents still in date? Perhaps your oven wasn't at the right temperature?

Gloomtastic!

We bought some pig trotters a few years ago and spent a small fortune on the ingredients to cook them in.
As per recupe, simmered for five hours or so and then discovered absolutely no meat on the trotters whatsoever.
Absolutely gutted!

fitzcoff

Faith wrote: »

Did they sink in the oven? Did you open the door of the oven at all? Are your raising agents still in date? Perhaps your oven wasn't at the right temperature?

Left then oven closed until the 20 mins were up. They started off rising great and next when I looked at them they had sunk. They swelled up and rose over the sides of the bun cases. Then suddenly the middle started to sink back in itself.

I checked the dates and everything is in date, so not that one either and the oven was at 180, so I have no idea what happened.

olaola

I decided to make ribs for a BBQ of 20 people about a year ago. I made the rub, put it on the ribs for about two days. Had it all marinading. Made the sauce (tasted great!) put them on the BBQ, cooked to perfection. Then ate one – unbelievably salty. They were a rack of bloody bacon ribs. Everyone was too polite to say it, but they were inedible.

Faith

fitzcoff wrote: »

Left then oven closed until the 20 mins were up. They started off rising great and next when I looked at them they had sunk. They swelled up and rose over the sides of the bun cases. Then suddenly the middle started to sink back in itself.

I checked the dates and everything is in date, so not that one either and the oven was at 180, so I have no idea what happened.

That's a bit bizarre. My gut instinct is that there was too much sugar compared to the other ingredients. I'm not sure I've ever seen a recipe where there was twice as much sugar as flour. I use the Hummingbird Bakery recipes, and they call for 120g of flour and 140g of caster sugar for a batch - and they're pretty sweet. It would explain why they were sticky and chewy. If the structure simply hadn't been strong enough to support itself (usually because the oven isn't hot enough), they'd have just collapsed but not been inedible.

nompere

I suppose it's worth asking whether fitzcoff used self-raising flour?

It's not unknown for "all-purpose" flour to be misunderstood.

fitzcoff

Yea it was self raising flour, is this not all purpose?

I thought myself that it was a lot of sugar but I used this site to do the conversion .


http://www.deliaonline.com/conversion-tables.html

Faith

No, all-purpose flour is the American term for plain or cream flour. That must be it so, you used double the amount of raising agent needed.

fitzcoff

AH, makes sense so, I'll have to attempt them again this week with plain flour. Thanks for the feedback.

As always boards has the answer

barbiegirl

I cannot bake a vistoria sponge. I have tried every recipe, from all the books I have (a lot) plus off the net, and despite trying at least once a year for the past 24 years I can't do them.
They come out flat and hard. Every other cake is fine, I do a mean coffee and walnut, it's just the Victoria Sponge. I should mention that this is using various ovens over the years so it's not temperature. I obviously put too much air in somehow as there are lots of little holes on the top of the layers. :mad: I think I'm just resigned now.

diddlybit

French Onion Soup. Cooked the onions for hours and hours and then made a soup that gave my girlfriend indigestion for two whole days. It was horrible.

Twee.

Some chocolate cake recipe that had vinegar in it. Tasted like a gone off chewy Weeto. Gross!

timmaii

Potato gnocchi. Followed the recipe and reckoned they looked pretty good. After a few minutes in boiling water there was no sign of them coming to the surface however so I put a slotted spoon into the water to get them. It came out with completely empty! Rescued the situation by mashing the remaining ones together and making (rather tasty) fried potato cakes.

Pigwidgeon

Attempted to make the hummingbird bakery rose cupcakes yesterday. Normally all their recipes work perfect for me. But yesterday was a disaster. The cupcakes themselves were fine but the icing just end up splitting completely and being inedible.

I was also messing around with making peppermint brownies last week, the flavour was really good but they were completely undercooked, which I didn't realise until I had cooled and slice half of them. I then decided I'd throw them on a baking tray to cook them more. I have a picture of the result below. Not my smartest idea, as obviously they started to melt everywhere when I put them back in the oven!

Umekichi

Spiced Beef and Orange Casserole.
Followed the recipe to the letter and ended up with something that looked like diarrhea and tasted too orangey and yuck

Little Alex

Most recipes that I've tried have worked, actually.

Where it started to go wrong was sometimes when I tried improvising...

I tried making white sauce with buttermilk instead of normal milk. The buttermilk curdled as soon as it heated up, but I was not surprised at that. With a hand blender I managed to get it back together again. However, it tasted disgusting. Don't ever try making white sauce with buttermilk.

Another utter failure was when making meringues. I decided to mix in some food colouring and when they went into the oven they looked great, really pretty pink. During baking they collapsed into a revolting mess of grey skin with dirty pink inside. They looked like they had been made with dishwater and then stomped on.

And then there was the time I had no white flour left and tried to made some bread with Mexican massa harina flour, which is used to make tortillas. It didn't work to make leavened bread and turned out looking like a brain...



:eek: :pac:

It tasted worse than it looked!

Fart

Haha, that's hilarious. Be great for a Hallowe'en gag.

Mellor

Minder wrote: »

Heston Blumenthal's mushroom ketchup. Take a large quantity of mushrooms, blitz to a rough chop, add salt and allow the salt to draw out the liquid. Cook and add a thickening agent. Maybe a bit oversimplified, but thats the essence of it. Result was a mushroom ketchup with enough salt to choke a donkey. Next time I drastically reduced the salt - same result. Too salty. Now this isn't a matter of salt to taste - this was salty like sea water.

What quantities did you use?
The you add the red wine and vinegar to the mushroom juice.

Susie_Q

That brain bread is amazing!

I spent HOURS one afternoon making James Martin's French onion soup. Spent bloody hours cooking the onions really really gently and stirring regularly to get them sticky and sweet. All going well until the recipe called for a bottle of red wine - then everything was ruined. Couldn't touch the stuff, luckily my OH loved it and ate the whole lot. We both still talk about that soup from time to time, for very different reasons!

Minder

Mellor wrote: »

What quantities did you use?
The you add the red wine and vinegar to the mushroom juice.

This is the ingredient list.

For the mushroom juice
1.5kg button mushrooms
75g table salt

1 Wipe the mushrooms clean with damp kitchen paper, then chop finely or blitz briefly in a food processor.

2 Tip the mushrooms into a fine sieve placed over a bowl, and stir in the salt. Store in the fridge for 24 hours, or until the salt has drawn the juice from the mushrooms.

For each 600ml of mushroom juice, you will need:

120ml red wine
60ml red-wine vinegar
¼ tsp ground mace
½ tsp whole black peppercorns
2 cloves
1 shallot, roughly chopped
Cornflour (to thicken)

I got 1.2 ltr of mushroom juice - I added the wine and vinegar and reduced to 750ml - about half. Way too salty. If most of the salt is dissolved in the juice, then thats 75g of salt in the final 750ml of ketchup, or 10%.

In later batches I left the salt out completely and got the same quantity of juice. Continued with the recipe above and added some salt to taste at the end.

Mellor

Yeah that's the one I seen. I seen a variation with 50g too.
How did you get all the juice out with no salt?

Minder

Blitzed the shrooms in a blender and hung them in a muslin bag. After an hour or two wring the bag to squeeze out the juice. They would probably work in a juicer too.

leahyl

Susie_Q wrote: »

That brain bread is amazing!

I spent HOURS one afternoon making James Martin's French onion soup. Spent bloody hours cooking the onions really really gently and stirring regularly to get them sticky and sweet. All going well until the recipe called for a bottle of red wine - then everything was ruined. Couldn't touch the stuff, luckily my OH loved it and ate the whole lot. We both still talk about that soup from time to time, for very different reasons!

Jesus that's twice now that James Martin has come up in a recipe disaster thread! I have a dessert book from him - hopefully some of his recipes will be successful (haven't tried any yet!)

hdowney

fitzcoff wrote: »

I have just had a complete disaster!!!

Decided to try to find a different cupcake recipe, so google I trusted. I found this one
http://bellyfeathersparty.blogspot.com/2010/03/baileys-irish-cream-chocolate-best-st.html

350˚ for 15-20 minutes

3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped 3oz
1 cups unbleached all-purpose flour 5oz
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temp4oz
1 ¼ cups sugar10oz
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup sour cream couple of large spoons
½ cup water

Melt chocolate in a double boiler, stir until smooth. Remove from water and set aside to cool slightly. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and sugar until smoothly blended and creamy, about 2 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl as needed during mixing. On low speed, mix in the melted chocolate. On medium speed, add the eggs one at a time, mixing until each is blended into the batter. Add the vanilla and beat until the mixture looks creamy and the color has lightened slightly, about 1 minute. Mix in the sour cream until no white streaks remain. On low speed, add half of the flour mixture, mixing just to incorporate it. Mix in the water. Mix in the remaining flour mixture until it is incorporated and the batter looks smooth.

Line muffin tins with paper liners and fill each with a generous amount of batter to about ⅛ inch below the top of the liner. Bake just until the tops feel firm and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 15-20 minutes. Cool the cupcakes for 10 minutes in the pan on a wire rack. Remove from pan; cool completely on wire rack. Makes 18.

Followed the recipe by converting it from cups to ounces, I must have gone wrong somewhere here.

I have my conversions in red above.

The batter was yummy, really smooth and light.

Put them in the oven and the started to rise, looked delicious.

After a few minutes they started to sink, I now have 23 sticky, chewy things that are not edible,

Any ideas what could have gone wrong ?????

one other thing to note is i think your conversions are off. you have 1 cup converted into 5 oz and then 1/2 cup converted into 4 oz!!! that sounds wrong. i always convert 1 cup to 8 oz so your half cup is right at 4 oz

kylith

hdowney wrote: »

one other thing to note is i think your conversions are off. you have 1 cup converted into 5 oz and then 1/2 cup converted into 4 oz!!! that sounds wrong. i always convert 1 cup to 8 oz so your half cup is right at 4 oz

I assume her conversions are to weight. One cup = 8 fl oz volume. A cup of sugar will not be the same weight as a cup of butter.

hdowney

kylith wrote: »

I assume her conversions are to weight. One cup = 8 fl oz volume. A cup of sugar will not be the same weight as a cup of butter.

and yet in a lot of recipes when they give you the weights for things like butter and sugar they do treat them the same. if you see what i mean. like i have always straight converted and never had a problem

Faith

I checked the conversions through a number of sites and they're correct. Cup measurements are volume, so a cup of flour is a different volume to a cup of sugar. It seems counter-intuitive, but converting volume to weight can produce large differences in the weight measurements depending on what the ingredients are.

hdowney

Faith wrote: »

I checked the conversions through a number of sites and they're correct. Cup measurements are volume, so a cup of flour is a different volume to a cup of sugar. It seems counter-intuitive, but converting volume to weight can produce large differences in the weight measurements depending on what the ingredients are.

ya lost me!!! i don't understand why the volume of flour is different than the volume of sugar. it has been a LONG time since i studied volume!

Faith

hdowney wrote: »

ya lost me!!! i don't understand why the volume of flour is different than the volume of sugar. it has been a LONG time since i studied volume!

The particles are different sizes. It all depends on the density of the ingredient. Think about it, one cup of coal is heavier than one cup of feathers. So you could just say "Well, they're both one cup, so I'll use 4oz of coal and 4oz of feathers".

hdowney

Faith wrote: »

The particles are different sizes. It all depends on the density of the ingredient. Think about it, one cup of coal is heavier than one cup of feathers. So you could just say "Well, they're both one cup, so I'll use 4oz of coal and 4oz of feathers".

ah i think i get you know. gah brain melt!!

fitzcoff

I had the same thoughts myself when looking at the conversion but I used
http://www.deliaonline.com/conversion-tables.html

so assumed that it being Delia that the conversions would be correct. I was a bit confused looking at the different quantities until I thought like Faith said.

I have some sour cream in the fridge, using it for dinner tonight so I am planning to try these again tomorrow.

I am thinking the cause was too much raising agent, so plain flour this time round.

I will report back on how I get on, wish me luck

Swampy

I recently cooked the coffee cake recipe off the Irel bottle. The end result was a sandwich cake about an inch high.

pickarooney

I made a Baileys cheesecake one time and hadn't enough Maltesers for the base so I added in some Twix bars I had. I put a plate upside down on top of the base when putting it in the fridge to set. The plate welded itself to the base and no amount of coaxing and cursing would remove it. I was damned if I was going to throw it all away though so just continued on as though the plate weren't there, covering the whole thing with the creamy top. I have a photo of the thing somewhere. It was pretty good once you got over the whole 'plate in the middle of the cake' surprise element.

I once tried to make some Thai soup or other which called for prawn shells. I vomited after one spoonful; by far the worst thing I've ever tasted from my own kitchen.

Loopy

Not a total disaster, but I did make this from the Cooking Club, and added a tad too much butter. Silly mistake although it still got eaten.
I've made it since and it's a great dish.

ncmc

I tried to make a delicious sounding baked French toast, it was basically brioche, baked in the oven covered in a mixture of milk, sugar, cinnamon and egg. Things started off badly when I couldn’t find brioche in Tesco, so used ordinary bread. Things got steadily worse when I didn’t realise that a cup in an American recipe, wasn’t actually a tea cup! The result was a soggy mess with a crispy top that would break your teeth! The worst part was that the bread had to be marinated from the night before, so I was getting the whiff of sugar and cinnamon every time I opened the fridge. I was so disappointed with the result.

I’m not much of a cook to be honest, I’ve prob had more disasters than success. I follow recipes exactly, but something always seems to go wrong!

Rosy Posy

Tree wrote: »

Potato gratin ALWAYS turns out like rocks. Short of boiling the crap out of the spuds before hand, even if i leave it in for three hours, still rocks. And usually end up eating what was planned with it on its own and some waffles. That said, the rocks spud reheats soft, go figure.

Try slicing the potatoes really thinly, drying them out in a cloth, season then poaching them in a mixture of milk and cream with some crushed garlic and ground nutmeg until they are tender but not mushy, then take them out of the liquid with a slotted spoon and arrange them in the dish, pour the liquid over, top with cheese and bake until browned on top...that's l'original gratin Dauphinaise method and its never failed me

Rosy Posy

barbiegirl wrote: »

I cannot bake a vistoria sponge. I have tried every recipe, from all the books I have (a lot) plus off the net, and despite trying at least once a year for the past 24 years I can't do them.
They come out flat and hard. Every other cake is fine, I do a mean coffee and walnut, it's just the Victoria Sponge. I should mention that this is using various ovens over the years so it's not temperature. I obviously put too much air in somehow as there are lots of little holes on the top of the layers. :mad: I think I'm just resigned now.

Nigella has a great recipe that uses just a little bit of cornflour that's worked out well for me

Rosy Posy

had my fair share of disasters.

The first time I tried to make Rose Geranium Jelly boiled it for way too long- it was a hot day and I didn't put my setting saucer in the freezer so I just couldn't get a set...the liquid was evaporating like mad and a swarm of bees came into the house to investigate the sweet smell...I ended up with a jar and a half of rock hard candy-like stuff, uncommonly like those dreadful soother lollipops that you used to get in bray, which my friend christened 'the tar in the jar'...

made an apple chutney from laurel's kitchen that was so disgustingly vinegary that I had to bin the whole pot...

Nigella's 'store cupboard' chocolate orange cake which was just horribly marmalady and inedible, even by students...

I guess you've got to kiss a lot of frogs...

fitzcoff

Loopy wrote: »

Not a total disaster, but I did make this from the Cooking Club, and added a tad too much butter. Silly mistake although it still got eaten.
I've made it since and it's a great dish.

This reminded me of the time I made brocolli soup and instead of 1oz of butter, I used 10oz :eek:

I double checked the recipe a few times and still saw 10ozs each time I looked at it.

pickarooney

I found the picture of the cheesecake

Outside


Inside

number10a

I tried making French Onion Soup once, and you know the way you'd improvise sometimes for small things when you can't be bothered going to the shop (I call them the "Ah sure it'll be grand" moments). Well I had too many of those moments and ended up giving myself a good, shall we say, "detox" after the soup. It was rank, but I was determined to eat it after spending ages at it. Lesson of the day: never be determined to do anything.

Zuiderzee

Theres been a few, once tried a Morrocan recipe for cous cous, added a bit extra Harissa paste, two teaspoons instead of one - dear christ, inedible excrement of satan.

I grow a great deal of my own food, but have found Cardoon impossible to make palatable, it gets one more attempt in a gratan

reallyrose

I was making chilli once, decided to put serious effort into it, slow cooked beef pieces, half a bottle of ale, lovingly simmered for several hours. After a bit I decided that it needed a bit of a kick so I went to throw a shake of dried chilli in. I didn't notice that the bottle of dried chilli had an open top, not a shakey top so I put a deluge of chilli into my .. well.. chilli. I tried scooping some of it out but too much escaped into the sauce.

I couldn't eat the result, pure fire on a plate. My housemate and boyfriend loved it though!

herisson

i was trying to make this chocolate tarte from lindt

http://www.lindt.com/au/swf/eng/lindt-lovers/recipes/chocolate-connaisseurs/chocolate-tart/

absolute disaster it ended up tasting like custard with a weird taste of egg and chocolate
the pastry wouldnt cook right either....
when taking it out of the oven i ended up spilling half the stupid mixture on to my legs!
it wouldnt settle at all for me and just ended up being a massive pile of goo!

i want to try it again and get it right!