Habits of bad cooks http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198 bravrayj in my story, i have a couple of bad cooks that can't cook to save their lives, and i'm talking kitchen disaster bad. one of them actually cooks so badly, that it lands another character in the hospital for food poisoning. the other just has food that's barley edible. problem is that i have no idea how bad cooks manage to be bad, since i don't screw up in the kitchen much. i need some ideas about what they would do to be so horrible. thanks. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 02:10:59 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060525 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060525 Amaya Well they could get distracted easily, leading to burning or putting the wrong amounts into the food. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 02:15:28 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060531 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060531 Tricket - not tasting what they're making as they're doing it... this can lead to definite disaster... - not using salt, pepper, spices...or, using too much - not knowing what the spices they're using taste like... (I once had a friend that put tarragon in a chicken noodle soup - not just a little, but a whole cup of it because they thought it looked like thyme... not the best chicken soup in the world) - letting ingredients sit out for a long time before using them (the food poisoning part), not cooking meats fully, or cooking veggies too much Sun, 15 Jan 2012 03:48:30 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060753 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060753 J.Kievsky Undercooking things like rice and grains Substituting ingredients that are only vaguely related to the original ingredients (e.g. beef for fish, "they're both meat") Sun, 15 Jan 2012 03:59:42 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060813 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060813 Notkieran For food poisoning, they could use the same utensils for cooked and raw food. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 04:26:39 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060922 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060922 allthepersimmons Thinking that one can improvise recipes and then going horribly wrong with combinations - rhubarb and black beans, for example. Bad things have happened this way. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 04:32:19 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060944 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1060944 vampyre_smiles Especially adding too much of anything. Too little can be fixed easily. I'm know for being a decent cook except that I add more salt than most people can stand. And that brings those dishes to "almost not edible" for everyone but me. So, adding WAY TOO MANY EGGS, or way too much baking powder, way too much of a strong spice.... Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:04:52 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061081 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061081 lrparks Not reading the recipe through befroe using it Not knowing the difference between a bulb and a clove of garlic Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:11:26 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061112 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061112 allthepersimmons Oh, I keep thinking of more. Bad substitutions - a friend of mine butchered an asian style noodle dish by using balsamic vinegar instead of rice vinegar. Another friend cooked a batch of cookies that had baking soda spilled all over them with unfortunate results. Cooking pasta incorrectly is a pretty good one because it's supposed to be so basic - from what I hear, you can really mess things up by adding the noodles to cold water and then putting it on the stove, rather than adding the noodles to boiling water. Frozen food or left overs heated with the plastic still on. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:24:25 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061158 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061158 WhatsForDinner Mixing up salt and sugar. Mixing up baking soda and baking powder. (Tasted that one in muffins. They tasted like metal. Yuck.) Bad timing. The meat is done and the rice is crunchy, so you add more water to the rice and hope for the best, then burn the meat and make mush out of the veggies. Pre-cook something, don't cool it fast enough so it spoils, then reheat (think soup or stew, which is supposed to taste better a day later after the flavors blend). I did the following as a kid. I tried to make fortune cookies, and just started putting all the ingredients in the bowl as I measured them. I was supposed to separate the eggs, cream the butter, sift the flour, slowly add one thing at a time, blend something with water. It wasn't until I got to the last ingredient, the slips of paper with fortunes on them, that I realized I probably wasn't supposed to put them in the bowl and just stir. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:55:03 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061244 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061244 DozyCat hygeine and safety. Stuff like not washing utensils, leaving meat out and then cooking it, not browning minced meat before adding to a sauce, leaving stuff too long without checking, using blunt or wobbly knives, picking their own mushrooms and herbs without knowing what is safe and what isn't, not washing vegetables for salad and stuff, spoiling ingredients by cooking them the wrong way or at the wrong temperature, or with the wrong ingredients - e.g. letting milk burn. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:43:32 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061477 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061477 Lizardhound not checking ingredients before cooking cancause food poisoning. Eggs just beginning to rot, curdled milk, bad meat/fish, mould etc. Spice. Too little, too much, wrong spice, wrong spice combinations. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:47:35 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061655 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061655 Robjames112 Poorly planning cooking times, so that they have to rush to finish and something are either over done or under done, or both. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:25:49 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061667 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061667 Twilight7fire One of the most rancid things I ever ate included: - a dish with fish and tomato sauce - the cook figured that instead of adding sugar to take the sour edge off, she could just use rosemary and thyme. Weird and gross! - a friend of mine baked me 'poffertjes' - a Dutch dish consisting of a plateful of really tiny, sweet pancakes. Instead of using sunflower oil, or, in fact, any other neutral kind of oil, he used asian spiced stir frying oil. It nearly made me puke. - I also know someone who once tried to boil a steak...I didn't even try to eat it. - another glaring error: a cook that tried to make a sweet parsnip dish, than switched the cinnamon that was supposed to go in there with nutmeg. Because both spices 'looked the same', Although I'm a fairly good cook myself, I did make a grotesque mistake last year. I was preparing a seven dish grand dinner, so I was somewhat stressed and rushed. The third course was a soup hollandaise - asparagus soup with grangon shrimp. The shrimp were fresh, or so I thought - it turned out they had been salted. I didn't taste the soup before serving it, and it was so salty that the dinner guests nearly choked on it. Embarassing! Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:49:48 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061681 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061681 Vinxman My mother is a terrible cook. She'd cook everything the same length of time (25 minutes, whether in the oven at 350 or on the stove at medium high heat for 25 minutes), so some things would be underdone while other things would be overdone. She'd also forget and take a nap, burning everything. Her substitutions would be based on the oddest things. Instead of flavor, they may be because of color (cantaloupe instead of pumpkin because they're both orange, for example, or tomato soup as marinara sauce because they're both red). Shortcuts were another of her big errors. On one memorable occasion she put tomato sauce, ground beef, and spaghetti noodles in a pot with water and cook it all together in an attempt to make spaghetti with meat sauce. The dog enjoyed it, though. Once she made a birthday cake and the icing on it and the candles in it when it was fresh out of the oven. The icing melted off and the candles melted into the cake. There were a lot of candles, too. Because of her terrible cooking, my brothers and I all learned to cook when very young. I suppose something good came from her mistakes. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:19:44 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061748 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061748 Vinxman Oh, three more things come to mind. She dices everything very small. All vegetables are the size of kernels of corn or peas, no matter what is being cooked. Salads become more like salsa in that case. She boils meat. Someone mentioned boiling steak. Yeah, she's done that. Boiled sausages, ham, chicken, turkey, and other meats were part of my childhood. Cream of mushroom soup was used in most dishes. It's the universal binding agent for pretty much anything. If she doesn't use cream of mushroom soup, she'd use tomato sauce (or something red). This is not an uncommon dish: Put some chicken or steak or tuna in a pot of water. Boil for 25 minutes. Dice a bunch of veggies. In a casserole dish, add the veggies and cream of mushroom soup or a can of tomato sauce (or tomato soup or a cup of ketchup) to the boiled meat and cook in the oven at 350 for 25 minutes. Did I mention that the over-boiling often burned out the bottoms of pans, wooden spoons, pot holders, and everything else? We didn't have a smoke detector (they weren't common in those days), but I wouldn't doubt it would have been constantly going off if we kids didn't take over the cooking duties. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:32:23 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061754 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061754 sovay Not knowing how to stir foods in the pot correctly - if you're melting butter or stirring a sauce and you just move it around with your wrist, you'll burn whatever's in the saucepan. You have to use your whole arm and really scrape the bottom of the pot so that everything gets moving. This was one of my biggest problems when my brother was teaching me to cook! Also, simply not knowing what tastes good together makes for some bad dishes. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:45:37 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061771 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061771 Bill Moonroe An easy thing to confuse is baking soda and baking powder. Vastly different results... Hygiene issues can make for some interesting problems, too. The last thing you want to hear before someone storms out of a kitchen is, "...and anther thing, I never wash my hands after using the bathroom." Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:55:13 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061784 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061784 Bill Moonroe A bad cook dealing with the results of a hunting trip can go pretty wrong, too. No matter how much you like your roasted raccoon or opossum, you probably don't want it with the head still attached. Unless you're into the little tidbits on that part of the animal's body. Even worse than putting it on the table with the head attached is deciding halfway through the meal that you're "tired of it looking at you" and twisting the head off. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:58:55 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061790 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061790 WritingGeek97 The very first time I made potato soup by myself, I decided to put in basil, oregano, garlic, onion powder, pepper, and salt. It tasted REALLY bad. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:58:45 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061895 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1061895 Saspirilla Not reading the recipe all the way through. One of mum's classic mistakes. We made cheesecake one Christmas. I was working Christmas Eve, as was dad, so mum was on her own. She was supposed to make the base in the morning to store in the fridge to harden and do the cream part that night to rest overnight. What did mum do? Add them both in the morning... The cream top sunk into the biscuit base. Another classic is the "shove everything in the pot and hope for the best". Burnt onions, burnt carrots and soggy potatoes with stringy mince is what mum calls a casserole. Ugh. Spaghetti bolognese is interesting. She never puts enough tomato in. I or my dad have to save it but adding salt, pepper, more tomato puree, herbs and a dash of lemon juice. I also fish out the badly burnt onions. I cook when dad is working, mostly for self defence. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:55:46 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1062020 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1062020 J.Kievsky Forgetting/not knowing to gut the fish is another bad one Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:58:26 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1062029 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1062029 acover4422 I'm going to second What'sForDinner's comment about baking soda/baking powder: UUUGH! - Trying to 'create' new recipes - Thinking they understand the basic principles, but they really don't ("oh, I know how to make a cheese sauce now. So if I just mix up the flour and butter and then put in loads of chocolate and milk I'll have chocolate sauce!") - Burning herbs/spices. Actually pretty easy to do, tastes awful - Using out-of-date ingredients, eeew I once watched in horror while a friend prepared a raw chicken directly on the worksurface. I didn't say anything, since it wasn't my house, but when they took the cooked chicken out of the oven and carved it, right on the worksurface where they had placed it when it was raw, WITHOUT washing the surface down, I nearly gagged. Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:14:59 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1096501 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1096501 nawilla Some of the worst cooks are selfish cooks, as in 'I cook for what I like, and if you don't like it you have bad taste and can put up with it' My uncle isn't a bad cook in the sense of the food is terrible, but he is very much a 'my way is the ONLY way cook'. He also has TERRIBLE kitchen hygiene (will sample RAW ground meat, not so much into handwashing except to ridicule those who do, weighs raw meat directly on the scale and sees no need to wash it off after even though he weighs out his diabetic son's carbs directly on the same scale, thinks lettuce is the only vegetable, and openly sticks a spoon into other people's cooking (more than once) because 'he can'. So nice to have a nice hole in the Christmas brownies because he scooped out some batter before they ended up in the oven, then have him tell everyone else that his niece made them. With a hole. My sister is a really terrible cook because she a) has no interest in learning to cook properly and b) enjoys serving really bad food to people. She made vegetable soup and asked how to improve it. She thought some sort of 'spice' was missing. Firstly, she had no broth base. Just water. She figured if she boiled the vegetables enough the water would magically become broth. 20 minutes seemed like enough to her. She added no seasoning, not even salt because 'salt' is bad. She refuses the get the proper tools. As a result, the carrots weren't peeled. Yes, you read that right. She rinsed off the carrots, cut them into chunks and LEFT the fibrous skin on them. Unpeeled, gritty carrots were the basis for this soup. There was no meat (which is okay, but this IS an easy source of flavor for inexperienced cooks), nor any other protein source. There were no onions/garlic/shallots/chives or other vegetables with flavor and no oil to bring out aromatic flavors. She had basically taken a bunch of raw vegetables that were getting past their freshness date, cut them into chunks, tossed them in a pot and par-boiled them and thought she would end up with Progresso soup. Her question that she posed to me as I choked down this swill? Should she add oregano because it was the only spice she had bought at the store. Other habits of my sister: she refuses to use recipes because 'she doesn't like to be controlled.' She also is too lazy to research anything before she just does it. She also refuses to entertain the idea that she might not know something so she just wings it. And of course she refuses to ever admit she made a mistake but instead pretends she 'prefers food' however she screwed it up and will continue to make it that way (and serve it to others) rather than figure out how she messed it up. She undercooked the macaroni in macaroni and cheese once and rather than admitting her mistake made 'crunchy' macaroni and cheese for years, insisting she preferred it this was, and serving it to other people this way even though she was quite aware this was disgusting. (This wasn't al dente, the noodles BROKE as you chewed them). Like my uncle, my sister believes her way (or what she decided was Saint Mommy's way) is the only way. She adds water to pasta sauce because when we were young and poor, my mother added water. That my mother added water at a different ratio is irrelevant. When my aunt and I (who were the ones cooking) did it without the water (which came out about the same as Mom's adding a bit of water a decade ago with different products, my sister was pissed that we didn't honor dead Saint Mommy and my sister's personal preferences, so she insisted on putting her bowl of pasta directly under the tap and pouring cold water into her food with great drama, as she waxed poetic about how much better and perfect her now cold and watery pasta was. (She added water at about a 50% ratio, turning pasta sauce into a thin red tomato juice, no where like what Mom had ever made). Heaven forbid she subtley fix it the way she liked it, she had to make sure we knew we made it WRONG, her way was BETTER and she had to add her special touch to make it right. And just looking at her pasta swimming in cold, red water was disgusting. In addition to refusing to be 'controlled' by recipes, my sister is one of those cooks who utterly refuses to even look at the directions on boxed or frozen food, then wonders why it doesn't come out right. The directions are right on the box/bag. She also has no knowledge of how to cook anything she witnessed our parents make approximately 14 bazillion times when we were kids (although I suspect this is just a ploy to get other people to do the cooking for her when she insists we MUST cook rather than order in, then intentionally begins screwing it up so everyone else will have to cook it for her). Unfortunately, she doesn't bother reading directions when she is alone either. Finally, when she has to cook something she doesn't know how to cook, she will seek out advice from multiple sources, then decide everyone was wrong and she knows better, even when the crowdsource data all concur, but it is different from what she thinks and she has eaten and liked food prepared by the crowd. She once had to cook chicken breasts for an event (something like 40 chicken breasts). She asked how long to cook them in the frying pan. I told her (as did several other people) that she should put them in the oven, cook for X number of minutes, flip, and cook at 350 F for x-1 minutes and cut ONE of them in half to make sure they were done, and not cook them all in one batch so if she over or undercooked some of them, the rest would come out okay. Several other people told her exactly the same thing (although X varied a minute or two). She decided we must all be wrong, baked the chicken for more than twice as long as recommended and cut each and every one in half to see if they were done. They came out like leather and every serving was cut in half. But she of course knew better. She also once asked me how to bake a cake with applesauce instead of sugar. I said to buy a mix. She said that was too expensive. I said applesauce replaces oil, not sugar. She insists she made a cake from scratch with no sugar, no oil and only applesauce and that her friends LOVED it. I think some self-delusion was involved here. Another friend has a friend who tries to cook things in the friend's kitchen while dinner is being made (usually cookies). Frequently this ends up with tools getting ruined because plastic pie servers get used as spatulas and melt, or dough gets scorched onto pans permanently when the oven temp isn't set properly or food is forgotten about. My friend is more patient than I am. Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:06:59 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1099636 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1099636 keolah My grandmother likes to try out things she sees on TV. Badly. For instance, she tried substituting applesauce for oil in brownies... the result was a brownish, cake-like substance that wasn't even sweet and only vaguely resembled chocolate. She also insists that everything white is "bad for you", so maybe she didn't even use sugar or something... Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:05:52 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1099823 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1099823 larri2005 I like to think I'm a pretty decent cook, but I've made a few mistakes in the past. One of my earliest mistakes was putting chicken in water to simmer and then leaving with my roommate to go to the Laundromat. Two hours later, we returned to heavy smoke. This was a few years before smoke detectors were mandatory, so we didn't have a smoke detector beeping. Fortunately, I didn't start a fire! But I did ruin the pan. The chicken was a blackened lump in the bottom of the pan, and I never did manage to get the pan clean. I made lemon meringue pie. I knew I had to avoid having any grease in the egg whites and to avoid getting the yolk into the white. But the yolk broke when separating the egg. I thought I had avoided getting any yolk in the white - but the whites never got foamy and formed peaks the way they are supposed to. Lesson learned: if the yolk breaks, do not use that egg for meringue (save it for scrambled eggs). Every once in a while, I get distracted while baking and will forget cookies in the oven and they will burn. A timer helps, sure, but sometimes I forget to set the timer and have to guess when the time is up. Someone mentioned putting pasta into water before boiling the water. I didn't do this, but was at a Girl Scout overnight when the girls doing the cooking did this. What a starchy mess we had! Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:52:14 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1100072 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1100072 Screnwriter My family's been known to substitute applesauce for oil in cake and the cake comes out fine (maybe the texture's slightly different, but it's still appetizing), so I wouldn't blame the applesauce alone for such a drastic change in a batch of brownies. I can see them coming out cake-like, but they'd still be chocolatey. Leaving out the sugar, though, that might do it. :-) Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:19:08 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1100869 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1100869 Screnwriter Whenever I hear about cooking safely, a big point is cross-contamination. Doing something like cutting up raw meat and then cutting up vegetables on the same board or with the same knife without washing them well in between is BAD. That's a very reasonable way for your characters to give someone food poisoning. You could also have them not understand about oven thermometers and/or safe temperatures and undercook the meat. (Actually, I once melted a cooking thermometer by sticking it in a piece of chicken and then baking the chicken, thinking this is what I was supposed to do. Which it might have been, had I been using an OVEN thermometer and not a cooking thermometer with a plastic dial…) Hamburger's a good candidate for undercooking — my college dining hall, not known for its food quality, served me hamburger that was brown on the outside but pinkish in the middle a couple of times my freshman year. The second time I spent much of the evening puking. I don't order hamburger anymore. :-p I also have a friend who has a story about getting tipsy from the dining hall's excuse for rum cake... it's supposed to be a myth that all the alcohol in a recipe can be cooked out, but there still shouldn't have been that much left! :-) Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:35:41 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1100901 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1100901 Gowan I am too lazy, which leads to many "went to google something and just forgot I had to finish cooking" situations. Broccoli is not edible if boiled too long. It also tastes terrible if it has been kept warm on a buffet for hours. But that may just be my taste. I always wonder why there is no warning on bean packages - some people could think that beans, like other vegetables, are especially good for your health if eaten raw. Which could get them into hospital, or worse. (Also, green beans. They're even more dangerous, considering they look rather more appetizing than dried bean seeds) Just googled it...there actually are people who don't boil beans: http://offthecontrary.blogspot.com/2006/05/science-fact-dangers-of-kidney-beans.html Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:08:10 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1102014 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1102014 Danny Campbell Failing to PRE-HEAT the oven can make for disastrous results. Baked goods will fail and meats can be raw in the middle. Anyone like some pork tar-tar??? No, I didn't think so! Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:26:06 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1102192 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1102192 iinsanely Sane Not washing everything well enough - or at all - before cooking/preparing it. Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:47:13 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1102562 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1102562 clever1 Not washing your hands enough! Say you're taking chicken out of a package and putting it into a baking dish, then the oven. You decide to make a salad next, without washing your hands. Bacteria from the raw chicken will be destroyed during cooking, but you've transferred raw chicken juice to salad fixings, which don't get cooked. Sandra Lee stresses handwashing on her show like it's some kind of culinary breakthrough, but it should be common sense to any cook. Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:54:51 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1102690 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1102690 FreakierThanThou Leaving things out overnight. I got really horrible food poisoning in Spain when my host mom left a mayo sandwich on the counter during for me when she went to bed, and I didn't get to it until midafternoon. (I thought she had just then put it out, which was why I ate it.) My older brother asked me last Christmas if yogurt goes in the fridge. We don't let him cook. Forget you're doubling the recipe. I've done that, but I've always caught it before it was too late. If you want twice as much food, you add twice as much of every ingredient. But if you forget you do that, you end up with half as much sugar as salt, for example. It can get pretty bad. Once when I was baking something that requires mint (forget what it was), I ran out, and my brother tried to get me to use my mint tea instead. Just cut open the packet and put it in. I have no idea what that would have turned out to be (I made him go cut some from the garden), but it could be interesting. (By the way, this isn't the same brother mentioned before. They're both terrible.) A friend of mine bought a box of Mac & Cheese and tried to cook it like you'd make ramen. She didn't read the back of the box to see that it required butter and milk, too. Confuse teaspoons with tablespoons. Oh dear. (Alternately, not even checking the units of measurement. When I was four, I tried to convince my babysitter that my mom's chocolate chip cookies included two pounds of sugar. She didn't buy it. Rats.) Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:28:48 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1102736 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1102736 Chelle-Lynn Trying to 'create' new recipes isn't a bad thing unless you're a bad cook. I have several friends that experiment with different food combinations (I haven't gotten that courage yet; I usually start with a recipe and adjust from there). Sometimes their results are bad, but sometimes they turn out pretty good. Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:16:03 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1103474 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1103474 endlessfever i'm a shit cook and fully admit it. this is a true story: my sister went away and left me with her little ones (4 and 2). the 4 year old wanted ramen for lunch and i had to call my sister and ask her how to make it because i didn't know how to make the ones not in a cup. im not joking. i called her up and asked 'is boiling water the bigger or the smaller bubbles' to which she said 'just order pizza.' and apparently hung up the phone, looked at her husaband and said 'i left our children with her.' i'm 29 and live on my own. it's quite sad. that said -- under cooking mean is probably the biggest/worst thing you can do. you could kill someone. also not refigerting right, or mixing up table and tea spoon will make a big difference. or measuring over the pot, and just leaving the extra that falls in.... Tue, 31 Jan 2012 02:24:41 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1103801 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1103801 bandiceet This would be ideal, especially if done during a hit day, Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:43:06 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1113023 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1113023 Alice Majella "As a result, the carrots weren't peeled. Yes, you read that right. She rinsed off the carrots, cut them into chunks and LEFT the fibrous skin on them." On the habits of bad cooks - no-one in my house ever peels carrots. So long as they're not covered in dirt from the garden, they're actually quite edible. Not peeling onions, on the other hand - *that* is the habit of a bad cook. Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:45:57 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1117137 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1117137 Alice Majella Raw green beans are poisonous? Oops, I should be dead. Further googling tells me that this is a belief in Germany and China, but not necessarily fact... Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:50:55 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1117143 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1117143 nawilla These were grocery store carrots. They had been sitting on the shelf for who knows how long. The outer skin gets very tough and the long fibers get stuch between teeth and are not softened by cooking. Cleanliness was not what made them disgusting, though I'm sure she didn't wash them all too well either. Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:55:36 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1117360 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1117360 Dragonchilde I have a friend who is convinced he is a good cook. He believes this, because he took at few classes at a cooking school before he dropped out, so he learned to cut onions without cutting off his fingers. I refuse to eat at his house. His food is usually overspiced and overcooked, but I can deal with that... the problem is that he tries to give everyone food poisoning. See, he reuses marinades. I wish I was making this up. For example, if he cooks steak, he will marinate it in Dale's marinade (sure sign of a pro chef, there) and then drains the marinade off... and pours it BACK into the original bottle, which is then stored OVER the stove, in the spice cabinet. Not the refrigerator. He will do this with ANY meat, so it's not unusual to have chicken grilled with marinade that's been used on several OTHER kinds of meat. Yeah. I like my meat salmonella free. Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:32:43 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1117600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1117600 Lissa03 - Not prepping before the actual cooking: Not doing important tasks like pre-measuring ingredients, cutting vegetables, etc. I made this mistake recently, and I don't normally make mistakes in the kitchen. I was making fruit bars, and I was supposed to cook the filling, then prepare the dough and topping. I decided to prepare the dough while doing the filling. Big mistake. The dough somehow turned hard as cement when I left sitting in the food processor. It took a half-hour to separate the pieces of the food processor, and I still couldn't scrape off all the bits of dough. I also had a problem because the food processor was just large enough for the dough, and it started to overflow. - Not selecting ingredients before cooking: If the cook discovers they are missing a crucial ingredient, the dish can be ruined. - Not measuring: An experienced cook can get away with this, but inexperienced cooks often ruin recipes by doing this - Bad substitutions. I know someone who is a horrible baker because they think all kinds of flour are interchangeable. They once substituting chickpea flour for all-purpose and produced rock-hard cookies - Overmixing batter or overworking dough or pastry, or not mixing enough. - Adding too much salt. This one girl in my high school cooking program added way too much salt to everything. She added nearly a quarter-cup of salt to Yorkshire Pudding, not only making it so salty that no one could eat it, but also giving it the consistency of rubber bands. Mistakes that can make people ill: - Cross-contamination: Not washing hands, knives, and cutting boards after cutting raw meat, reusing marinades. - Not washing hands after using the bathroom (disgusting, but there are adults who don't wash their hands). - Using ingredients that are spoiled. The cook might not notice, or they might be so cheap that they'll knowingly use spoiled food. - Not cooking raw meat long enough. - Leaving food sitting out for too long. Many people don't know that cooked potatoes need to be refrigerated, because bacteria grows easily in potatoes (they don't have salt and they have a fairly neutral Ph). In fact, cooked potatoes are more hazardous than store-bought mayonnaise. The eggs in store-bought mayonnaise are pasteurized, and mayonnaise is acidic because of the vinegar. - Burning food - it won't give anyone food poisoning, but most people can't eat carbonized food without feeling sick. It's very easy to burn foods while broiling or burn nuts/spices while toasting them. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:25:29 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1118755 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1118755 VeganMacAndCheese o.o There's a TV show called Worst Cooks in America or something like that, for ideas. One lady mixed like, four kinds of canned soup into one soup. O_O Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:09:39 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1119626 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1119626 Lizardhound Scout cooking is either really good or completely inedible. I've been a scout for five years, I should know. I once opened an oven containing a soufflé. It didn't collapse, luckily. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:45:07 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1119939 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1119939 larri2005 [quote=VeganMacAndCheese] One lady mixed like, four kinds of canned soup into one soup. O_O [/quote] There's nothing wrong with that. We did that in Girl Scouts, once. Everyone brought a can of soup and we mixed it all together and ate it. It was quite good, actually. At Girl Scout camp, at the end of the season, the cooks would mix different juices together to use them up. That looks nasty, but tastes good. Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:46:54 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1122094 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/49198?page=2#forum_thread_comment_1122094