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These Hilarious Kitchen Fails Will Make You Wary Of Ever Cooking Again

Samantha Wachs

Published July 10, 2019

When I was young, my dad served me a slice of pizza that tasted really off. It was weird because he is actually Italian. And he learned to make pizza from scratch a long time ago. Consequently, the family expected all of his pizza endeavors to be delicious. On this particular instance, though, his slices didn’t pass the test.

They were so sweet. Not wanting to insult his cooking, I didn’t say anything about it. Then, he served himself a slice and found out the truth for himself. He had added powdered sugar, instead of flour, to the dough! Not only was the dough flat and tough, but it was also sickeningly sweet. That’s a cooking fail we talked about for years after it went down.

While some people certainly have a natural talent cooking, no one is born just knowing how to cook. It takes some time and a lot of patience to get a hang of the basic skills needed for baked goods or a home-cooked meal. Nearly every chef has some hilarious kitchen fails of their own. Sometimes, a lack of knowledge is to blame, but many times the cook got a little absentminded. These hilarious kitchen fails, pulled right from the pages of Reddit, are so epic that they will make you wary of every cooking again.

A Missing Ingredient

When their little brother decided to try baking, he failed to add the cake mix to the recipe.

It turns out following the instructions exactly as printed on the box doesn’t do much good if there isn’t a basic understanding that the cake mix is required. This highschooler ended up creating a blob of eggs, milk, and cinnamon. He also set himself up for a lifetime of teasing over this hilarious cooking fail.

Meat-Flavored Oats

If this accidental combination is on the menu, you can count us out.

Reddit user llcucf80 confesses that a little improvisation led to their worst kitchen fail. When they discovered their pantry was looking pretty bare, leaving them without crackers or breadcrumbs to bind together their meatloaf, they reached for oatmeal instead. It’s actually a pretty common trick, but this home chef added way too much and the meatloaf ended up resembling a baked good. Yuck!

An Egg-plosion

This cook got a little too carried away when it was time to crack some eggs.

Midnite_st0rm used way too much force. They completely shattered the eggshell and sent the contents flying. The cost of their wild cooking? Yolk completely covered their face. Plus, none of the egg ended up in the bowl with the other ingredients. There’s a good reason the cliche “walking on eggshells” exists. Handle eggs with care!

A Rookie Mistake

It’s easy to assume everyone understands the cooking basics, but not explaining crockpot mechanics to a first-time crockpot user is a big mistake.

Cooking with a crockpot might seem like a simple enough task, but that assumption lead to a massive mess for Reddit user uhhhh_phrasing and their roommate. The roommate never cooked before and didn’t realize the ceramic part of the crockpot wasn’t optional. They added all the ingredients to the outer part of the appliance and faced massive mess!

A Dangerous Misstep

When cooking with oil, it’s important to know that hot oil and cold water are a dangerous combination.

Icedchoco_tea2 had no idea that using cold water to cool down too-hot oil could actually cause an explosion. Their french fry cooking attempt could have left them seriously injured. Instead, it sounds like the wall behind the stove top was the only victim of this cooking mistake. Anytime hot oil is being used, it is important to proceed carefully!

Cooking While Under The Influence

Some people get the munchies after using marijuana, but this user couldn’t pull it together to make food.

Even though marijuana can make some people feel super focused on the task at hand, that wasn’t the case for Redditor Kin-Of-The-Cosmos. Instead, they started cooking chicken breasts to eat the next day and got completely lost in their own thoughts. Even when three smoke detectors started going off and the kitchen filled with smoke, they didn’t snap out of it!

Please Add Water

When the simple steps of a packaged meal are too hard to follow, it might be time to order take out.

It’s hard to imagine anyone messing up packaged ramen noodles, but P_princess says their little brother managed to do just that. Pro-tip, make sure you add water anytime a packaged meal calls for it. If you don’t, you’re in for a kitchen full of smoke and a really disgusting lunch. How embarrassing!

Pride Goes Before The Ruined Pizza

Before cooking even the simplest meal, there are a few basic skills that are required, like turning on the oven.

Reddit user VaultBoyNewReno really wanted to prove to himself, and perhaps his parents, that he was capable of feeding himself while they were out of town. He was 16, though, and hadn’t learned how to turn on the oven! It took time to figure it out, but he got it set to preheating. The problem? The pizza was fully thawed before he pulled it off.

An Unusual Approach to Tea

DrDragon13 tried their hardest to follow the directions but made a mistake that filled the kitchen with smoke and their mother with rage.

When this Redditor filled a pitcher with water and tea bags, only to learn that the water needed to be boiled, they added the pitcher right to a pot on the stove top. No, they didn’t pour the contents in the pot, they set the plastic pitcher right in the pot. DrDragon13 says their parents still tease them for this mistake 10 years later. Is it fair to say the teasing is well-deserved?

Grandma Tried to Poison Us

Poor eye-sight caused this major cooking mistake.

At a family picnic, everyone discovered that the grandmother mistook a bottle of ammonia for a bottle of vinegar. Luckily, though, ammonia smells horribly and an observant family member noticed that something wasn’t quite right with grandma’s recipe. Sounds like this kitchen fail turned into a legendary family story as time passed!

Some Real-Life Schooling

This failed recipe resulted in a useful chemistry lesson.

Forager51 wanted to bring molecule cake pops to chemistry class, but their recipe just didn’t turn out as planned. The white chocolate completely solidified, and this high school chemist learned the hard way what happens when water-based food coloring mixes with white chocolate. Everyone should take note of this for future baking endeavors.

What Did Home Cooks Do Before The Internet?

Without a smartphone or an internet connection, Redditor blmcquig was left to figure out how to cook on their own.

In fact, this Redditor’s original “recipe” for fried rice definitely sounds interesting. When their uncooked, burnt white rice had to be dumped in the trash, blmcquig called their grandmother for a little help. Perhaps that was the real mistake because this turned into a cooking fail that Grandma will never forget.

Too Salty!

This Reddit user recalls a disgusting mix-up they made while preparing sugar cookies as a 13-year-old.

When the cookies came out of the oven looking strange, the young baker gave them a little taste. As it turns out, Redditor Merulanata reached for the salt instead of sugar when mixing up the ingredients. Fun fact: salty dough is actually a really good base for Christmas ornaments. Maybe the Redditor figured this out before tossing those baked goods in the trash.

A Sickenly Sweet Swap-Out

Running out of an ingredient is an unavoidable part of cooking; it just happens sometimes!

Instead of turning to the neighbor to borrow a little milk, however, Redditor halcyonights decided to get a little creative. They added almond milk to their pre-packaged pasta meal. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until they took a big bite that they realized the almond milk was of the vanilla-flavored variety. It’s great for cereal or coffee but terrible mixed with cheese and pasta!

Pizza Smoothies? Hard Pass.

It was very sweet of Redditor fujitsupronman to try to help their brother deal with his hunger, but this was a terrible choice.

Thinking that any food could be blended, the younger brother actually took some leftover pizza and added it to the blender with water. No one took a single sip of the concoction, though! Honestly, as terrible as it sounds, I’m kind of impressed by this Reddit user’s determination to come up with a unique, blended treat for their brother.

Have you ever made a mistake so embarrassing you never lived it down?