Exploding Eggs, Gizzards Left in the Bird, Cupcakes That Didn’t Rise: We’ve All Had Cooking Disasters, What’s Yours?

The exploding egg incident

This morning, Glenn came up with the idea to use a glass coffee pot for cooking meals. Now, I can understand how this would work if say your stove, oven, microwave and crock-pot all suddenly died and you didn’t have cash for take-out, but cooking a whole meal in a glass coffee pot? It just seems strange. I mean, who really, honestly likes coffee flavored spaghetti?

Our discussion about cooking in a coffee pot turned into a discussion about cooking disasters. Times that things just went terribly wrong in the kitchen. Like the time one of my best friends forgot that she was boiling eggs for egg salad and left her kitchen. When she walked back in an hour later she discovered that her eggs had exploded. All over her kitchen.

My friend's exploding eggs. Delicious, huh?

Then there was the time that I had the genius idea to try to cook a turkey in my crock-pot. The bird was too big and the lid didn’t fit so I covered the bird in foil, put the lid on top and then stacked up books on top of the lid to hold it down. I left for work and when I got home there were bits of turkey and turkey grease all over my kitchen. I will say though that the parts of the turkey that remained in the crock-pot were pretty delicious.

Deb Binkley posted on our Facebook page that at her very first thanksgiving dinner for her soon to be in laws, she left the gizzards in the turkey.

Kelly Graham says “The first Thanksgiving that we lived in Boston, my mom was going to make turkey. Set the frozen turkey out the day before to thaw. Was supposed to put it in the fridge before she went to bed, but fell asleep on the couch. Went to bed forgetting about the turkey. So I woke up the next morning to my dad googling while on the phone with Butterball and my mom calling every older female family member she could think of. Needles to say, no one could say for sure that it was safe, so we ended up throwing out the turkey and going to a restaurant.

Shannon Striggle wrote- "I once caught the stove on fire just by boiling water. I can't remember what the water was going to be for, but it doesn't matter because I never got that far."

Amanda Tuttle of Newark Valley says “I'm no genius in the kitchen, but I've never had a "disaster". My mother, however...well, nobody eats her cooking. She made a meatloaf once that got messed up so bad, when she tried to cut it the knife stuck to the meatloaf. Needless to say, the knife, meatloaf, and pan all went in the garbage. She has yet to live it down, or cook any better.”

Michele Landry wrote on Facebook- “I’ll never forget the night that my mom made stoffers lasagna and went to take it out of the oven however didn't have a good enough grip and it tipped over and went all over the floor then she looked at me and was like well there is still some in the dish and I did just wash the floors. Priceless.”

Kristen Godfrey of Binghamton also posted saying: “I teach Home and Careers in a middle school.....I await a cooking disaster every day of our cooking unit! Lol- I think the worst was the giant sprawled out cookie(s) that burned so bad I almost had to throw the pan away. Luckily, reinforcements from the after school sports study hall helped clean up the pan disasters!”

Christine Dunlap of Greene says "3 years ago on Thanksgiving I put the Ham in the crock pot, turned it on but never plugged it in!"

Debbie Hill of Binghamton wrote- "I forgot about eggs not too long ago that were cooking and all of a sudden the dog sat up and I thought my husband was out in the kitchen doing something and then the dog got up and ran upstairs to Mike who was on the computer and Abby stood at the top of the stairs he said looking back and forth at him and then he came downstairs and hollered in to me and there was eggs blown all over the stove and back wall of the stove! hahaha! Pan cleaned up ok though."

Catherine Coates of Conklin explained- ”I was making a blue berry cake and I forgot to put something in it. Even though I looked at the recipe twice. My mom ate a little amount of the liquid cooked mixture when we took it out of the oven. Then we both noticed I forgot the flour!”

Terri Polansky of Johnson City experienced the exploding egg thing too- “I did the egg thing. Fell asleep. Woke up to projectile missiles!!”

Tami Scone of Vestal posted this on Facebook- “My first time making chicken noodle soup in the crock pot, I just dumped in the bag of egg noodles right from the get go--didn't cook them first. I came home from work looking forward to a bowl of soup, and what I found what the broth, chicken, veggies and one giant clump of what should have been noodles! Needless to say, I now cook the noodles first!”

Julia Simons of Binghamton says “I put a hard boiled Easter egg in the microwave hit 10 mins not the 1 min. And boom it sounded like a gun shot. We all screamed.”

Sue Starr of Binghamton says- “The 1st time I made turkey with sausage dressing my friend told me I did not have to cook the sausage all the way since it would cook in the turkey---WRONG---after taking the stuffing out I noticed the sausage had not cooked and I was frying the stuffing to get the sausage fully cooked!!!”

Danielle Evans of Vestal commented on Facebook- “I was using my standing mixer. Had the butter and sugar creamed. Added the flour. All the flour. Turned the mixer on. I forgot to cover the bowl while it was mixing. Flour everywhere. And the sad part was that I just finished thoroughly cleaning my kitchen not 15 minutes prior to this lovely event.”

Wendy Adee of Binghamton says her disaster happened when she tried to cook potatoes in the oven. She put them in unwrapped and not fork poked - all of them exploded!

Helen French of Newark Valley says- “my son tried to cook liver in the microwave when he was around 12. Had to get a new microwave after that. even warmed up coffee tasted like liver.”

Janelle Lawyer says- “When my son was like 4 and he wanted popcorn n put it in the microwave himself still in the plastic. I didn't know and the house filled with smoke. There were flames in my new microwave. There were 15 min left when I got to it. It was a small black clump. House stunk for weeks!”

Lena Elwell wrote on Facebook- "I used to live in Las Vegas. I made dinner one night in the oven. The next 2 days the house was very hot. We called maintenance they came and said nothing was wrong with the ac unit. Come to find out the the oven had been in for 3 days. That would explain why my house was hotter than outside."

Robin Reynolds of Binghamton says- “I made a homemade chocolate cake and put it in a pan that I knew would hold it. It ended up all over the oven. I'm calling it a chemistry failure because obviously something went wrong with a measurement or reaction...”

Megan Obrien of Chenango Valley says- “One thanksgiving my Aunt was making her 1st turkey....she was told to wash it out.....yep you guessed it.....she used JOY dish soap to wash the bird out.....n then put the gizzards back in it to cook it!!!!!!”

And Mike Moseman of Chenango Forks also posted on Facebook and said “I wasn’t there but when I was still in high school my 2 older brothers were hanging out at the oldest’s apartment and the other decided to make goulash...which is a family favorite. anyways, he mixed the noodles, sauce and raw meat all together to make it. luckily, the oldest saw it before any disasters happened. its still something we talk and laugh about nearly 20 years later. lol

Inquiring minds want to know….what’s your cooking disaster story?

Categories: Articles, Food, Hawk Morning Show, Lifestyle