Please describe some of the worst things you ever cooked.39 responses total.
Jim says when he was little and nonvegetarian, he cooked a hamburger with the tomato, lettuce, and pickles wrapped inside the meat before frying, he wanted to see what would happen. Don't bother, it's awful.
I wouldn't call it the worst, but the weirdest I ever cooked was deep fried hamburger dill slices with a batter mix on them. They are actually pretty good, but it's an aquired taste. ;)
spam soup. a true (and truly inedible) desperation meal.
Half-cooked rice and half-cooked squash and half-cooked eggplant was our worst meal of the week. We were too hungry to wait. Crunchy. We turned the rice back on to finish cooking.
("Spam soup" is the most horrifying concept I've encountered
in a long time.)
(Are we talking worst in terms of taste, appearance, or the cleanup job that followed? All of the above?)
Once at a party in college we ran out of mixer after all the stores had closed, so someone (I'm afraid it might've been me) suggested using Alka Seltzer. If you've never tasted rum and Alka Seltzer, you don't know the meaning of the word "horror."
Overcooked squash I had last night. I think it was a Turk's head (squash, that is). Dry and tasteless. Not as bad as the time, years ago, when I tried to cook a pumpkin like any other squash. The whole thing went into compost.
I am curious what was wrong with the pumpkin, it is a sort of squash.
Pumpkin can probably be cooked like any other squash. If I hadn't just come back from the store, where I got a nice-looking butternut squash, I'd go out and get another pumpkin just to see. I suspect what makes pumpkin pie taste good is the spice and molasses and other stuff. My failure, several years ago, was probably trying to fix too many things for a fairly large dinner with guests with fairly conventional tastes. Plain, unseasoned pumpkin just wasn't what they had in mind for a Thanksgiving dinner.
Was it a pie pumpkin or a jack-o-lantern type, which is bred to be large and tasteless and not for eating? We have discovered that 2 week old persimmons taste fermented, they should not be served to guests. Better to freeze them at once and they also do not get slimy if frozen quickly.
Butternut squash pie is most excellent. You substitute the pumpkin for butter nut squash and add the usual spices for pumpkin pie. You really cannot tell the difference. I am not a fan of butternut squash and was most surprised when I found myself asking for a second piece. The worst food ever? Wax beans.
What did you do to the beans? I find them rather tasteless but not 'bad'.
I am not a veggie fan. I hate them. Like just a little less than the contempt I have for things like Satan, Hitler, spinach, green beans, etc. I had a very bad experience with them in my childhood, and I swore to the heavens on my dog's very soul that I would never, ever voluntarily buy, harbor, cultivate, cook, encourage, or ship wax beans. I get the vitamins I need from pills. A painless experience.
Wow...I can't imagine life without a crisp green salad, warm, crisp veggies with herb and spices, or all the wonderful tastes and textures of the garden. Then again, I can live without quite a few things, so I guess it's all a matter of taste. (But I can't help but wonder, Jim, if you just haven't had really well prepapred veggies. The catch is, everyone has a different idea of what wonderful veggies are. (My mother likes to buy them canned and then boil them until they turn grey. Anything else strikes her as disgusting.)
Do not store eggplant for several weeks in a plastic bag. Or peppers.
I love salads. I can eat a oil tankerful. Raw carrots, and raw broccoli and raw cauliflower is just fine. But as for peas, limas, wax, green beans, notrhern beans, spinach etc, I hate it. I grew up going to a boarding school which was a little heavy on the discipline and woe to anyone who hated veggies. Everyone was expected to eat them, and eat everything. This was the 60's. No one would dare pull that crap today. I tried them nicely prepared and it's the same thing. Bleah. I'm afraid that part of the hard disk is not rewriteable. Corn, I like in certain forms. As for on the cob, or out of the can, I despise it. Popcorn, I can eat a ton, and frankly I don't see the difference betwen opening a can of corn and popping a bag of corn, except the smell. My mother never had the cojones to tell the school to back off on the forcefeeding of veggies.
Just a follow-up on the pumpkin question. I got a medium-sized pumpkin at the store, without any indication of whether it was for jack-o-lantern or eating. Cooked in the microwave, turning every three or four minutes, until tender, about 20 minutes altogether. Ate the first half plain. Pretty dry and tasteless, as predicted. Mashed the second half with salt, maple syrup, cinnamon, egg replacer, soy milk, and microwaved for a few minutes. Delicious. Like pumpkin pie without the fatty crust. Egg replacer is mostly starch, and cornstarch probably would work as well. Orange juice or apple juice might substitute for the soy milk. Might be richer with some canola oil. From now on I'm a pumpkin eater. Incidentally, I threw the seeds into the compost bin, but wonder whether there's a good way to roast them for eating. In the olden times we used to buy pumpkin seeds at the store at Halloween time.
Yes, you just rinse the seeds to get all the goo off, then put in a pie tin or cookie sheet. Put in oven 300-400 degrees, stir every 4-5 minutes. Most people put some salt on them before putting in the oven. Don't allow the seeds to get brown while in oven. Seeds do not take very long to cook.
250 degrees for half an hour or so will also work, in a broiler oven. LEss chance of burning them.
Incidentally, Kami scolded me for my limited view of pumpkin cuisine. She suggests such delicacies as pumpkin soup, pumpkin stew, and pumpkin bread or cake. Sorry, Kami. I'll get another pumpkin and try all of these.
I attended a cooking class at Kitchen Port a week or so ago and the featured chef was from Great Harvest Bread Co. She made a number of soups, my favorite of which was a pumpkin-coconut bisque. I've since made it and it was both easy and delicious.
Pumkin custard is a favorite around our house. I've taken to adding chocolate chips to it in honour of valerie. <g>
This being the "Worst thing you ever cooked" item, I assume resp:23 is drift.
YUp. (oops)
Re back-there: I use "pie pumpkins" and "Jack-o-Lantern pumpkins" interchangeably in cooking. They taste pretty much the same to me. Haven't had any luck getting the seeds to cook up into something edible, though. I'm told there are other types of pumpkins that are grown for their seeds.
Out of curiousity, why aren't you ssupposed to let the pumpkin seeds get brown? Last time I did seeds, I did it at 350 for about 35-40 minutes, with a little oil in the bottom of the pan, and got the seeds nice and toasty brow, which tasted much better to me and my roomie than the non-toasty brown ones that my parents did. My dad preferd them too. (My mom wouldn't let him do them brown though...sigh :)
See 'what am I'. Problem is that it is easy to burn the seeds, and if some get a little brown others may turn black. If you stir very frequently, or shake, it helps.
Joy of Cooking says that the seeds will brown a bit after being removed from the oven, so you shouldn't let them get brown while still in the oven.
Anyone try microwaving pumpkin seeds?
Sounds like a recipe for an explosion. ;)
I wouldn't think that microwaved pumpkin seeds would explode. But things in the microwave generally don't get crunchy, and pumpkin seeds are supposed to be crunchy. Dunno. I toast walnuts in the microwave from time to time, but that's partly because I'm not a big fan of the flavor of toasting.
the response way back there about rum and alka-seltzer reminded me of the time some drinking buddies and i ran out of orange juice, so we made screwdrivers by dissolving tang in straight vodka.
One of the worst things I cooked lately was refried beans in olive oil. Believe me, they don't go together.
That is odd, I have seen recipes for French provencal beans with white beans, tomatoes, onions, garlic and lots of olive oil. Maybe it was your expectations of a different taste?
Well, refried beans and white beans are quite a bit different.....
Not sure which conference this belongs it, but at Kiwanis we just got in a top of the line Epson printer that rattled. Jim turend it upside down and got a cascade of short pieces of spaghetti, a bit of linguini, and some small black ojbects that turned out to be sunflower seeds. A mouse nest? We had a pair of speakers once like this.
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