Fried rice - Freepik
Cooking seems a simple enough task, so it should not be too hard to whip up a meal, right? Wrong, as not everyone is cut out to be a chef and sometimes, we think too highly of our abilities without envisioning the dreadful results!
Some cooking mishaps are worse than others, and may even scare friends from ever asking you to cook again. But wait... maybe, that was the intention all along? Here are some rib-tickling stories:
1 Cooking for a big group can be nerve-wracking. I tried making a baked leg of pork that needed to go into the oven, thinking it would come out nice, tender and moist. Marinated it overnight and then, I miscalculated the temperature and it came out nearly rock hard! It was my first attempt making this dish and no, we didn’t eat it as it was just too hard! — Theri, F&B strategist
2 The worst thing I’ve ever made was Rachel’s infamous trifle from the TV show Friends! I had recreated it for a video shoot at work and painstakingly made it, layer by layer. Yes, including the minced beef! Just to let you know, here’s the full list of ingredients: sponge fingers, then jam, custard, raspberries, more sponge fingers, beef sauteed with peas and onions, more custard, bananas and whipped cream. My poor colleagues had to eat it for the video and although they managed to finish a fair amount of it, I don’t think they will ever trust me to make anything ever again! — Soraya, radio station manager
Okra can become horribly slimy if cooked too long. — Filepic
3 The worst thing I’ve ever cooked was pesto pasta without knowing what pesto was. Just for context, my scope of skills covers cooking instant noodles, rice and egg. But during Covid-19 when I was stuck at home, I decided to broaden my “resume”. I assumed pesto just meant a blend of veggies (no, I didn’t bother to look it up), so that was exactly what I did. I blended spinach, green bell peppers, milk, salt and pepper together. I was convinced I was on my way to becoming the next Chef Wan! The colour seemed a little dull, so I gave it a pop of yellow and some flavour by adding some pieces of boiled potato and crushed some chips, sprinkling them on top. Overall, I thought it looked pretty but the taste could definitely poison someone. — Sher, architect
Imagine having minced beef in your trifle! — Filepic
4 I was young and hungry, and since I chanced upon a bunch of kangkung (water spinach) in the kitchen, I decided to whip up a quick meal. The cooking process itself went quite smoothly. It was already dinner time by then and my mum, being famished, went straight for the dish since it was her favourite. Suddenly, she asked why were there chunks of grass in it. Only then it hit me that I didn’t clean the kangkung properly. There was a whole lot of grass as the kangkong was harvested from my neighbour’s garden. No one touched it after that. We all had a good laugh that night, and now I know better. — Karshan, accountancy student
Stir-fried ‘kangkung belacan’ is not the easiest dish to cook. — Filepic
5 When I first moved out, my partner and I decided to make fried rice as the first meal in my new kitchen. It was our first time cooking together. With no rice cooker in sight and only an induction stove, we made do by pouring water and rice into the pot after watching a few YouTube videos on how to cook rice. After about 10 mins, we could smell it burning. We took the lid off and saw that the rice had started to get mushy and was burnt at the bottom. We spent the next 30 mins trying to salvage it by adding more water, which was a bad idea. In the end we threw it out, and went out for fried rice instead. Took us two weeks to get the smell out of my house. — Yunisha, administrative executive
Pesto disaster. — SHER
6 The worse thing I cooked was kangkung belacan when I was in Form Three. Back then, I didn’t know how to estimate properly, so everything I threw into the wok was in excess. To make things worse, I forgot to toast the belacan. I ended up eating the saltiest kangkung belacan ever, followed by diarrhoea! — Shaiful, copywriter
7 Once, I cooked half-boiled eggs for my son who was barely two years old then. I broke the eggs into a bowl and poured in what I thought was soy sauce. He looked at me after eating a teaspoonful and declared that it was “not nice”! I noticed the eggs were purplish and realised I had added Ribena instead. — Beatrice, bank manager
8 I was probably about 14 years old. We had a domestic helper back then and she’s the one who usually cooked. One fine day, I decided I wanted to try my hand at cooking and experimented with the bowl of okra she had prepped. I stir-fried it and added soy sauce. I had imagined it would be easy but instead, I ended up with a pool of slimy mess. I actually tried eating it with rice, but it was way too slimy and no one else was willing to try it. — David, chef
