Despite the fact that all of us have to eat fairly regularly, some folks somehow have absolutely no idea how to make unburnt rice or an egg that is actually cooked through. The best way to learn is trial and error, but sometimes a lot of error can feel disheartening.
So if you happen to feel bad about your own cooking efforts, never fear, we’ve gathered some of the worst kitchen fails from across the internet. Get comfortable as you scroll through, make sure you’ve got nothing in the oven, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own tales in the comments down below.
#1 My Pepper Grinder Broke This Morning
Image source: scoobdrew
#2 I Made A Mistake
#3 First Time Trying To Fry Buffalo Wings. I Think It Went Pretty Well
Image source: psycholarry1
Take rice, for example. It sounds like the easiest thing on earth, water plus grain plus heat equals dinner, and yet entire corners of the internet exist purely to mourn crunchy grains and scorched pots.
The most common culprit is simply eyeballing the water instead of measuring it, and as Taste of Home explains, a scorched pot usually means the burner was cranked way too high when the steam should have been doing all the work. Lifting the lid every few minutes to check on things doesn’t help either, since that lets precious steam escape and throws off the whole process.
#4 Mom’s Sweet Potato Casserole
Image source: hellolillyyy
#5 Blender Exploded As I Was Making A Smoothie
#6 Asked For These To Be Sliced In Half For Hot Dogs
Image source: [deleted]
Eggs cause a similarly chaotic amount of kitchen carnage. Scrambled eggs in particular seem to trip people up, and it usually comes down to heat. Cranking the stove to high in the name of speed just turns soft curds into a dry, squeaky mess, and outlets like Food Republic point out that low and slow is what actually keeps eggs creamy instead of rubbery. There’s also the classic rookie move of tossing eggs into a screaming hot, bone dry pan, which explains a suspicious number of internet photos showing eggs fused permanently to a skillet like some kind of modern art installation.
#7 Psbattle: This Overcooked Yogurt Cake
Image source: thepostmanpat
#8 I’m Never Going To Recover Financially From This
#9 I Forgot Lunch In The Oven
Image source: poldis6
Then there’s the great baking soda versus baking powder mixup, a mistake so common it practically qualifies as a rite of passage. The two look nearly identical sitting in their little containers, but they behave completely differently once heat gets involved. Baking soda needs an acidic ingredient to do its job, while baking powder already comes packed with everything it needs, according to Betty Crocker’s breakdown of the two.
#10 Maybe We Should Buy A Rice Cooker
Image source: pandarmour
#11 Making Green Oil Gone Wrong
#12 This Is Why I Don’t Cook
Image source: [deleted]
Swap one for the other and you might end up with a cake that stubbornly refuses to rise, or one that somehow tastes faintly of soap, which is not the dessert experience anyone signed up for. Bread baking brings its own special flavor of heartbreak, mostly thanks to yeast being a surprisingly dramatic little organism.
#13 Cooking In College
Image source: khotch
#14 Tomato Bisque Blew Up
Image source: glake603
#15 Sink Drain Exploded The Exact Day After I Got The Apartment Professionally Cleaned. Oh Well
Image source: AnomalyTFT
Water that’s too hot can kill it outright, water that’s too cold just makes it sluggish, and Taste of Home notes that anything above roughly 115 degrees Fahrenheit or 46 degrees Celsius can wipe out all that rising power for good. Beginners often skip proofing the yeast entirely, tossing it straight into the flour and hoping for the best, only to pull out a loaf so dense it could double as a doorstop. Patience genuinely is the secret ingredient here, even though nobody wants to hear that when they are hungry and the clock is ticking.
#16 Was Away From My Apartment For One Night And I Came Home To This. Yes It Was Sewage. Yes It Filled The Entire Kitchen With Sediment
Image source: bluebull62
#17 This Is Why I Don’t Cook
Image source: eo326
#18 My Watermelon Just Exploded, Now My Kitchen Has Juice Everywhere
Image source: Accomplished-Tie-774
And let’s not forget the oven itself, which is lying to you more often than you would think. According to testing done by America’s Test Kitchen, home ovens can run twenty five degrees or more off from whatever the dial claims, and that gap alone is enough to turn a batch of cookies into hockey pucks or leave a cake gooey in the middle.
#19 While I Am Known As The Worst Cook… I Am Officially Banned From My Kitchen
#20 When You Become Impatient And Suddenly Leave The Syrup, It Can Be A Bad Idea
#21 I Knew Those Pancakes Smelled Weird
Plenty of people bake for years without realizing their oven runs hot, quietly blaming themselves for burnt edges when the appliance was sabotaging them the whole time. A cheap oven thermometer solves this instantly, yet it remains one of the most overlooked tools in a beginner’s kitchen.
#22 Spanish Omelette Flipping Went Wrong
#23 Classic Bonehead Move
Image source: ThatFridayFeeling
#24 When You Hand Slice And Pickle 300 Chillies Only To Promptly Drop Them All On The Floor
Image source: JPreadsyourstuff
None of this is meant to make anyone feel worse about their cooking journey. Every professional chef out there has a story about ruining a holiday dinner or setting off a smoke alarm at least once. Kitchen disasters are basically a universal language, and the internet has plenty of proof that even the most confident home cooks occasionally produce something completely inedible. So scroll on through, laugh at the chaos, and maybe let it serve as a gentle nudge to measure your rice, lower your egg heat, double check your leavening agents, and finally buy that oven thermometer you have been putting off. Your future dinner guests will thank you.
#25 I Spilled A 10lb Bag Of Rice All Over The Kitchen
Image source: Ethburger
#26 My Canned Curry Sauce Exploded In My Face
#27 Forgot To Clean The Rice Cooker, Opened It 2 Months Later To See This. Can I Salvage It?
Image source: chimericmacandcheese
#28 Left The Kettle On The Stove
#29 Found Out My Sink Has Been Glued To The Counter This Entire Time. I Hate It Here
Image source: ElectricMango6
#30 I Can Smell These Olives From Here
#31 I Made Coffee While I Was Still Half-Asleep
#32 I’m Pretty Sure I Saw My Coworkers Soul Leave His Body This Morning
#33 Okay, So I Messed Up
#34 Spilled All The Lettuce I Just Cut Up At Work Today
Image source: kryoxe
#35 What A Lovely Surprise
Image source: Kattjaohoo
#36 Petrified Spaghetti Anyone?
Image source: ThatFridayFeeling
#37 This Is My True Crime
#38 Just Wanted A Homemade Dinner After 40 Hours Of Hospital Cafeteria
#39 Before Bed Snack Exploded
#40 Nice Fire Pit
#41 Both Juicers Broke On The First Try And Were Loaned
#42 The Glass Bowl Exploded After 3 Minutes Of Eating
#43 I Dropped A Pot On My Parents’ Stove Top While Putting Dishes Away
#44 The Handle On One Of Our Basically New Kitchen Knives Melted In The Dishwasher And Fused To The Heating Element At The Bottom
#45 Dropped Some Eggs Down The Forbidden Abyss
#46 To The Person Whose Pepper Grinder Is Broken, The Lid Of My Pepper Shaker Fell Off
#47 My Wife Decided To Wash Our New Cutting Board
#48 Super Thankful For Smoke Detectors Tonight. My Best Guess Is That The Instant Pot Was Bumped And Somehow Turned The Front Burner On
#49 When You Come Home Late From Work And Husband Announces He Might Have Had A Little Accident Making Dinner
#50 Apartment Oven Fried Itself In The Middle Of The Night
#51 Keep Or Throw ? [it Does Not Leak Or Fall Over]
Image source: TomatilloAccurate475
#52 I Don’t Know How Long A Pot Has To Be On The Stove Before A Hole Is Burnt Through The Bottom Of The Pot, But I Do Know It’s Too Long
#53 Macaron Fail
Image source: Liquidzip
#54 Oops…😬 Our Rational Failed On Us In The Middle Of An Over Night Cook For Pastrami
Image source: RapperKid31
#55 Eggs Sacrificed At Costco To Avoid Ruining Over Toddler
Image source: JesseWegenast
#56 Literally The Last Thing I Had To Do At Work….3 Hours Of Work Ruined
Image source: guccicrocs420
#57 This Is How My Dad Eats His Salad
Image source: Great-Forever-6702
#58 Skill Issue
Image source: ThatFridayFeeling
#59 The Tiramisu Is Extra Sad
#60 Woke Up At 5 Am To Make Eggs And Knocked Over A Bottle Of Soy Sauce
Image source: 0254am
#61 Started My 15-Hour Shift With This Today
#62 Coffee Anyone?
#63 Picked Up The Salt Jar
#64 My Husband Just Wanted Some Crackers And Cheese
#65 Much Misery
#66 Me With A Kilo Of Sorghum
#67 My Great Friend Put Soup In A Crock Pot And It Wasn’t Heating Up Fast Enough, So She Put The Crock Pot On My Stove Top To Heat It Up Faster. Big Mistake
#68 Don’t Pour Cold Water Into A Glass Dish On A Hot Stove
#69 “Microwave And Oven Safe” But Not Safe To Make Soup Or Boil Water. I Cleaned The Water Up But Now The Stove Won’t Turn On
#70 Bro Was Trying To Pull The Chips Down… Talent…
Image source: AydeeHDsuperpower
#71 I Can’t Even Tell What That Was Supposed To Be
Image source: ThatFridayFeeling
#72 Hmm
Image source: ThatFridayFeeling
#73 Hmm
Image source: ThatFridayFeeling
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