25 Cooking Catastrophes Netizens Have Personally Witnessed

When we consume food, we imagine it must have been prepared in hygienic conditions. However, a lot can happen behind closed doors that we may not necessarily be aware of.  Redditors recently gathered online to share the weirdest kitchen disasters they were privy to. The stories range from funny to icky but are definitely worth the read even if it's just to get an understanding of what strange shenanigans some cooks may get up to in the privacy of their own kitchens. 

#1

[caption id="attachment_329468" align="alignnone" width="700"] before[/caption] Image source: anon, Stevan Sheets My super drunk roommate came out of his bedroom while I was heating up some food at midnight. He opened the fridge door and then pulled his pants down and started p**ing and then I screamed. He woke up from his daze and ran to the bathroom. I am an amazing roommate and friend so I cleaned up his mess. I asked him about it the next day and he said he didn't want to talk about it, but he's not going to drink for a long time. He venmo'd me $100 for cleaning and he's been sober for the last 6 months.

#2

Image source: MYOB3, Jeff God bless my Mom, and her mac and cheese. Layers of elbow macaroni, slices of american cheese, a few tablespoons of flour, and a splash of milk. Repeat. She would stick it in the oven for 45 mins, and I would bite into ... gobs of flour. I swore for years I hated mac and cheese, until I realized, it wasn't supposed to have gobs of flour...

#3 When I was a kid, one of my friend’s moms made a sardine lasagna. It was a traumatic experience.

Image source: Monalisa9298, annulla

#4 Guy grabs 2 pound container of ground turkey, takes the wrapping off and puts it on the hot grill. There were no additional steps taken.

Image source: Full-Sympathy-3404, Emma Forsberg

#5 I texted my boyfriend to throw some chicken breasts, cream of chicken soup, and some broth and seasoning into the crock pot as an easy meal for me since I was sickish and at school all day. I got home that night and one of the seasonings he threw in was cinnamon. It’s all you could taste. Bland chicken with some strong cinnamon from the cabinet. The taste still scars me.

Image source: pizzaonmyunicorn

#6

Image source: smile_saurus, Nickolas Titkov I read a story years ago in 'Reader's Digest' about a young wife who wanted to observe every step of how her mom prepared Thanksgiving dinner so that she could do it the following year. The next year, the young wife prepared Thanksgiving with her mom nearby her. Everything went fine, but the mom had one question: 'Why did you place your dish-drying rack over the turkey as it thawed in the sink???' and the daughter explained: 'Because that's how you thawed your turkey,' and the mom replied: 'Yes, but you don't have a cat!'

#7

Image source: authorized_sausage, rob_rob2001 I had a roommate who would deep fry eggs I walked into the kitchen and there was a quart pot of oil with a cracked egg undulating in it. I later asked her about it. Because it was weird and also because maybe I didn't know? No. She thought you fried an egg like you fried a piece of chicken.

#8

Image source: Yggdrasil-, Rooey202 When I was in high school, my mom and I were absolutely famished leaving a late-evening rehearsal for our community band. We called my dad and older sister to make dinner since it was about a 30 minute drive home, there were no drive-throughs on the way and our house was too far out in the boonies to get anything delivered. “Sure, no problem, we’ll have it waiting for you when you get home!” they said… They had decided to make a boxed creamy pasta, but realized after the noodles were already cooked that the milk had gone bad. So they replaced it…with **french vanilla coffee creamer**. For some reason, they thought it was OK because the creamer was sugar free. It was not OK. We each had about one bite and threw the rest of our plates in the garbage. I think we ended up having canned soup for dinner that night ?

#9 My grandpa’s wife served us tacos with UNSEASONED ground beef that she rinsed in cold water before serving. Flavorless hell, she didn’t want the extra calories of grease or spices

Image source: SayNoToColeslaw, stu_spivack

#10 A family member tried to make cheesecake for a family dinner. They didn't have sugar so they used cornstarch instead. Nobody enjoyed the cheesecake that night.

Image source: Itriedtowriteitdown

#11 My sister made guacamole but used broccoli. It was beyond terrible.

Image source: MyFrampton, V

#12 My friends former roommate, bless his heart, was not culinarily inclined. Put the jar of pasta sauce in with the boiling water and noodles.

Image source: BreadUntoast, rovingI

#13 I’ll fess up. This one was me. I had been working loong days and was very tired. I got up and poured a bowl of cereal. Then I poured some milk into my glass and some orange juice over the cereal. I didn’t have any money so I sucked it up and ate it.

Image source: A_Fartful_Dodger, Rosmarie Voegtl

#14 I saw a video on Reddit or Pinterest of a woman washing her chicken in a sink with Bleach and a couple drops of Dawn dish soap. She said her Mother and Grandmother both cleaned their chicken this way.

Image source: Defan3, Gabrielle Gatchalian

#15

Image source: deceptivekhan, Evan Bench Was helping a friend prep for dinner, I was given the task of dicing an onion. I was using my usual method of slicing down half an onion and then making perpendicular cuts for a medium dice. He takes the knife out of my hand and goes, no my moms friend says just do it like this. He proceeds to chop violently and erratically at the onion until chaotic lumps of alum lay strewn about in various sizes and shapes. I dunno what’s wrong with his friend’s mom, but I have never and will never chop onions like that. I haven’t offered to help him cook since.

#16

Image source: figsfigsfigsfigsfigs, Marco Verch Professional Photographer I once had a roommate take a sponge from the kitchen, clean the bathroom with it, then put it back in the kitchen sink. When I asked him why he put the sponge back in the kitchen, he said because that's where he'd found it. I wanted to burn down the entire house. And it's a good thing I noticed at all. Edit: there was a hair in the sponge.

#17 A girl in my uni dorm almost burned the place down because she tried to boil a potato (her words) - what she actually do was put a large, unwashed and unpeeled whole potato in a dry pot, put the lid on it, put it on high on the stove top, then left to go watch movies in her room while it cooked. She was bloody lucky that me and a mate were in the adjacent common room. We caught the smoke and whipped it off the heat, she was completely dumbfounded that she’d done something wrong. The potato was half raw and half charcoal ?

Image source: aizukiwi

#18 My nephew tried to use plastic shopping bags as oven mitts.

Image source: SopaDeKaiba, Eric Lane Barnes

#19

Image source: Preesi, 1Day Review My ex Sister In Law made Curry Chicken with Sweet Coconut Cream for BEVERAGES. not the canned stuff I couldnt stand her. She always told me, "I have expensive tastes" One year for xmas I got her and her hubby a 2 cup $27 bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and $15 bottle of Balsamic from Williams Sonoma. About 2 yrs later we were sitting in my house chatting and she nonchalantly mentions, "oh someone got us Olive Oil one year and it was RANCID so we threw it out! Dumb ***** had never had really good olive oil and her expensive tastes didnt know what it tasted like. Im so glad I never have to see her again

#20 Microwaved dry pasta without water and complained it was underdone and crunchy.

Image source: sunnydiegoqt

#21 I once walked into the back of a french bistro on a slow night and one cook was swinging a trussed, raw cornish hen around his head and the other cook was fending him off with each of his arms fully sheathed in a large baguette. i laughed so hard i cried, that night.

Image source: somethingweirder, Jeremy Keith

#22 It can't be the worst thing I've seen, but after browning ground meat, my mother would have us rinse it off in a colander under running water, to get rid of grease. RIP our plumbing and dinner.

Image source: Squidproquo1130, Amy Ross

#23 During my freshman year, my room mate put a frozen pizza in the oven with the plastic on. She thought it was like a popcorn bag and the pizza will steam.

Image source: NewMar00, Alan Levine

#24 When I was 18, I started working at a restaurant. One night during closing duties, I dumped some water into the empty broaster so I could scrub it. Except I forgot to close the drain valve, and the water went straight into the bucket of hot oil that was still sitting underneath it! The following chaos of an oil/ water volcano preceded to cover the ENTIRE kitchen. It took about 3 hours to mop everything up.

Image source: Rare-Lettuce8044, John Lodder

#25 In college I saw a girl cooking a chicken breast in the shared kitchen in a Teflon pan. She decided to cut it while it was still cooking in the pan. Not only was she scraping the s**t out of the pan with the knife, she was cutting too close to her silicone tongs and shredding tiny little slices of it into her chicken.

Image source: crystal_daddy, Nick Amoscato