If not the worst, then one of the worst, was one I saw Emeril do on his show. He went on about it being so good. I think the name of it was Maw Maw's Slaw. Horrible!

This isn't a put-down of Emeril. I've tried some of his which were really excellent.

Beverly

When I was a vegetarian 30 years ago I made this soy nut casserole that was so terrible we couldn't even eat a mouth full. I threw it out and never ate soy nuts again.
Clare

The most recent one I recall was a spinach-ricotta canelloni on the Barilla pack. It had nuts in the filling, which DH loathed (I kind of liked it) but the filling was very dry. Not a roaring success.

The absolute worse thing I've ever made was Lime Soup.

We had just come home from a vacation in Mexico, 1986, and the Lime Soup was so good, I bought a cook book just for the recipe. I bought all the ingredients including 1 lime. The recipe said to cut the lime into wedges and add the wedges to the soup at the last minute.

It was so disgusting that even Joe could not eat it.

Michelle

Well, without a doubt, it would have to be pumpkin fish pie. No, the recipe didn't call for fish. It was from either Gourmet or Food and Wine magazine and although I followed it exactly (I swear), it tasted "fishy". My dad - whose longevity secret was a piece of pie a day - couldn't eat it. My brother still jokes about "that surf and turf Thanksgiving."

This was the terrible recipe:

This is a moist, buttery banana bread loaded with banana flavor.
INGREDIENTS:

* 1 cup butter or margarine
* 2 cups sugar
* 4 eggs
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons soda
* 4 cups flour
* 6 large bananas, very ripe, mashed
* 1 cup finely chopped pecans

PREPARATION:
Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Sift dry ingredients together; add to creamed mixture. Stir in bananas and chopped pecans.

Pour banana nut bread batter into 2 well-greased loaf pans; bake at 325 for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

I don't know what it was, but the bread was dry and not sweet at all.

Tuna noodle casserole. I had seen on several different American TV shows and movies that it seemed to be some sort of ultimate comfort food, so I wanted to give it a try. I don't remember where the recipe came from, but it was disgusting.

In second place would be the Moroccan tagine recipe with lamb and prunes that I found on the Epicurious website. It ended up looking like lumpy brown wallpaper paste and the texture was incredibly slimy. I think I probably did something wrong somewhere when I was making that one.

Bobby, be really careful not to over mix a quick bread such as banana bread. I see the recipe you used doesn't have any milk, most recipes call for sour cream, buttermilk, yogurt or soured milk. The acid is needed to activate the soda. I quite often throw in a little baking powder also, won't hurt anything. Over baking is the other problem you can run into... guaranteed to ruin even the best recipe!

Here's the recipe I used for years at the deli. We made 10 loaves at a time, never had any that didn't sell. We did it with nuts and with out the nuts. Even after making thousands of loaves, I still love banana bread. It's best to use very, very ripe bananas. I draw the line when I see mold. I remember goofing once and adding twice the amount of butter, it was very rich that time, a little over the top.
You can use plain yogurt as the recipe calls for or buttermilk, but we often didn't have either so we very often used whole milk with a teaspoon of vinegar stirred into it. You couldn't tell the difference.

BANANA BREAD

2 C unbleached AP flour
¾ C sugar
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 C chopped walnuts (toasted if you have time)
3 very ripe bananas, mashed well
¼ C plain yogurt (buttermilk or sour milk works also as noted above)
2 large eggs, slightly beaten
6 Tabsp butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour bread pan.
Whisk dry ingredients together in a large bowl, stir in walnuts.
In a medium bowl mix together bananas, yogurt, eggs, butter and vanilla.
Add wet ingredients to the dry, mixing gently with a spatula, just to combine, batter should look lumpy. You don't want to over mix. Scrape batter into loaf pan.
Bake about 55 minutes, until loaf is golden and a toothpick comes out almost clean. It can have a crumb or two, but you don't want wet showing on the toothpick.
Cool about 5 min., then turn out of pan to finish cooling on a wire rack.

Makes 1- 9" loaf.

Nancy

Cant remember the name but I too did one from Emeril off food network and it was terrible! I think he puts his "essence" in evrything he makes including a bowl of cereal!

Thanks for reviewing the recipe, Nancy. I was pretty happy with my standard recipe, I just wanted to try a different one for a change. I actually took it out of the oven 10 minutes before I was supposed to, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't overdone. I did accidentally leave the mixer on speed 4 when I was creaming the butter and sugar for a bit of time. I left to fill the washing machine and forgot I'd left the mixer on. It shouldn't have had an adverse effect since the flour and eggs weren't in yet. I'll try your recipe next time and compare it to the one I normally use. When I added the flour and nuts, I "pulsed" the stir speed on and off a few times. Maybe I should have used a wooden spoon!

Bobby, also something that can ruin a tried and true recipe is the baking soda if it has been sitting in your pantry opened. We put opened baking soda in our refrigerators/freezers to absorb odors. So guess what it does in our pantry if we have some odors in our pantry that we necessarily don't want in our baking/cooking (paint, sealants, garlic, onions...)? Yep. So, I keep my opened box of baking soda in a sealed container.

As far as my worst recipe, as a new bride I tried a recipe for sweet potatoes which said to slice thin, make a syrup of sugar/karo and bake for an hour and 45 minutes at a higher temp. I had a heck of a hard time even getting them out of the pan....

Brenda

I've not had that problem with baking soda yet, but I'm sure it could happen. The tried and true recipe is the one I SHOULD have made! It has never let me down. Thanks for the baking soda warning. I have two boxes, one large and one small. I opened the small one to use it at the same time as the large one I already had as a way to test them. They both performed identically. That was a few months ago. Maybe I should transfer it to a plastic container to protect it for the future.

I wouldn't use baking soda that sat in the frig or freezer, as well as odors and flavors it collect moisture, too. I've never had trouble with a box left open in the cupboard. It's cheap, I buy a new fairly often.

I put my baking soda into a glass jar in the pantry. I save all glass jars from jams, jellies, pasta sauces or whatever and find them convenient for storage of a number of items. Beans, rice, brown sugar etc.

I had a recipe for muffins that was awful ... it was a book on muffins I picked up from a garage sale. I never tried any of the others in the book.

I can attests to the fact that Nancy's Banana Bread is fantastic... I used a carton of Vanilla Activa instead of regular yogurt and left out the vanilla and thought I was in heaven with every bite... Unfortunately, with hubby's 'diet' restrictions I can't make it any more... He'd eat the whole thing in one sitting.

As for my worse recipe... It was a recipe for a dry rub for BBQ ribs and it was my first and last attempt at grilling over charcoal... I won't go in to details but they were so bad.... the junk yard dog next door wouldn't even eat them...

Rita

I was given a copy of a cookbook as a gift and the first recipe I tried was for risotto. And what a great idea, the recipe called for it to be cooked in a slow-cooker. It turned out to be a gummy, inedible mess.

Tip for all...if you want delicious, creamy-textured risotto, step away from the slow cooker.

I found my worst recipe ever just today!
Its called "Parmesan Squash Ring". I had been wanting to make this for years....and just got around to it today, thinking it would be great for the Thanksgiving get-together, if it was good enough. If you read my post on "Can I bake in this ring mold", you'll see the recipe. Its the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted. Maybe it will improve alot by dinner, but I'm not counting on it. Maybe if I slathered a ton of the sauce on it, it would be edible.
The picture in the book (which I posted in that post) looks absolutely wonderful, but I have no idea how they got it to look like that. The ingredients are basically just butternut squash, eggs, parmesan cheese. How could it possibly look like the picture??
I'm sure they must have left out some other important ingredients! YUK!!
The butternut squash got really bright during baking, and everything fell apart. It looks like a neon orange pile of dog poop!

I used to be a faithful Emeril fan, but I can rarely get his recipes to work. I swear he leaves out an ingredient or two.

Anyway here's a link to a pie recipe of his. This came out VERY runny. It never did set. Can you say pie soup?

A recipe for Moussaka....years ago.

We ate PBJ's that night and I still can't eat eggplant.

catherinet: LOL!! about neon dog poop...

Deanna

I guess the worst recipe I've ever tried is a matter of taste, LOL, because the worst recipe I ever made in my family's opinion was Julia Child's Coq Au Vin. I couldn't choke it down, it was horrible. Ashley wouldn't eat it, which wasn't surprising, but when her boyfriend, the human garbage disposal, wouldn't eat it I figured it was beyond redemption.

Of course, none of us like wine, LOL, but like a darned fool, I made it again, figuring I'd screwed it up. Sure enough, it was just horrible. TWICE! Funny how it tasted just like wine, that "Chicken in Wine". (grin)

My boss, though, does like wine and she thought it was wonderful, so it's all a matter of perspective, I suppose...

Annie

I've never been tempted by coq au vin because I don't think of chicken cooked in red wine as sounding all that good.

I've made some clinkers. Usually because I screwed up.

It had to be the Pillsbury Bake Off winner, Salsa Couscous Chicken. I served it to my very adventurous family and they just laughed. The currants were disgusting in it.

I have only ever made one Emeril recipe in my life and it was awful. It was for an orange sponge pudding baked in individual souffle dishes.

I followed the directions exactly; they looked perfect but tasted so bland that I got up from the table to check the recipe, thinking that I'd left out an ingredient. I hadn't.

Well if you had looked closely at the Emeril recipe for apple custard pie, you might realize that most custard recipes call for 2 eggs per cup of milk or cream....and that part is OK...but the recipe didn't account for all the liuquid that would cook out of the apples.....and frankly the recipe didn't even mentioning peeling and slicing the apples. A little flour, sugar and cinnamon tossed with the apples before adding the custard would have made it pretty good...
I think the worst recipe I ever made was one for blue cheese and peanut butter....I made it just because it sounded so bad.....and it was bad...but not as bad as it sounded! LOL!
Linda C

I remember a recipe I made 25 years ago from the Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook that was called a "vegetable pate." It was tons of work and the end result was pretty but had no flavor. I think this is it. But I don't recall a vinaigrette or morels so maybe they put out a newer addition of this recipe. I'm not at home to check my own cookbook.

1 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into chunks

1 lemon, zest of, finely grated

1 pinch cayenne

1 pinch ground nutmeg

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 egg whites

2 cup heavy cream

½ cup chopped fresh basil

8 ounce thin asparagus spears, ends trimmed

2 carrots, peeled and cut into thin julienne

2 small yellow summer squash, cut lengthwise into quarters

2 sweet red peppers

½ ounce dried morels

12 UP TO ...14 grape leaves (packed in water), rinsed & patted dry

tomato vinaigrette (see recipe)

One day before serving, place the chicken breasts, lemon zest, cayenne, nutmeg, and salt and pepper to taste in a food processor fitted with a steel blade; process to a puree. Add the egg whites and process 10 seconds. Remove to a bowl and place in a larger bowl of crushed ice. Chill, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour.

Remove from the ice and stir in the cream, 1 T at a time. Process a third of the mousseline and all of the basil in the food processor until blended. Refrigerate both mousselines separately.

Blanch the asparagus, carrots, and summer squash separately in boiling water until tender but still crisp. Drain and refresh under cold running water. Pat dry and refrigerate covered until cold.

Preheat the broiler. Roast the peppers under the broiler until the skins are blistered and black all over. Let stand in a covered bowl for 10 minutes. Remove the blackened skins, the cores, and seeds from the peppers; cut into thin strips.

Soak the morels in hot water to cover for 30 minutes. Drain, pat dry, and cut lengthwise in half.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

To assemble pate, line the bottom and sides of an oiled 12 x 4" terrine with a single layer of the grape leaves. Spread a thin layer of the plain mousseline in the bottom. Top with an even layer of the morels. Spread a thin layer of the basil mousseline over the morels and top with the summersquash. Spread another layer of the plain mousseline and add the asparagus in an even layer. Top with the remaining basil mousseline. Make the last vegetable layer with the carrot and red pepper strips. Spread with the last of the plain mousseline. Fold the edges of the grape leaves over the top and fill in the gaps on top with the remaining grape leaves.

Cover the terrine with buttered aluminum foil and place in a larger baking pan. Pour hot water into the pan to come halfway up the side of the terrine. Bake until firm, 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes.

Cool to room temperature and refrigerate overnight. Just before serving, make the tomato vinaigrette. Cut the pate into thin slices and serve cold on a pool of vinaigrette.

From The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook by Julee Russo & Sheila Lukins.

I think the worst one I made (that I can remember) was fish tacos. The recipe was similar to this, and I think the cabbage with mayo was what I didn't like. If I had made it with guacamole and shredded lettuce, I think I would have liked it better. I like cabbage, but I hate it with fish tacos, and I've had fish tacos at Wahoo's in Laguna Beach that I really liked. If they had cabbage on them, it was such a small amount that it wasn't distasteful. The fish tacos I'd had in Mexico were simply fish, guacamole, salsa, and tortillas - no mayo and no cabbage. I think the cabbage is supposed to be an Pacific Asian or Polynesian influence, and I do not like Polynesian food. I don't like Hawaiian food either, for that matter, and so I avoid those types of recipes.

Lars

Years ago, I followed a shortbread recipe from my better homes cookbook to the tee...I'm pretty sure I did...maybe I left something out, but what can you leave out? Flour, butter and sugar...the basics! Anyway, it tasted like playdough! I'm still not sure I can be trusted with a shortbread recipe! I have been told that it could have been whether or not I used cold or room temperature butter, but the recipe did not specify and who knows!

And who would recommend you use mayo on a taco? I agree with you, it should have been guacamole! :)

It was an oriental steamed fish recipe that called for placing a whole fish down on parchment, drizzling with sesame oil and soy sauce and a bit of wine, sprinkle some hot pepper flakes and chopped scallions, then wrap and steam in a steamer or micro until the fish flakes with a fork.

I tried it both ways. Both ways were absolutely disgusting. The smell, the texture. It was like the fish melted rather than cooked, and the skin turned to slime. BLECH.

Oh, the memories! I tried something called Enchilada Stacks. I think the recipie was from a can of Old El Paso something or other. It called for a tomato sauce, cheddar cheese, and some other stuff. This was more than 30 years ago, so forgive me. What I will never forget is putting one bite in my mouth, running to the trash can, and spitting it out. Then I refused to to give it to my husband - brand new at the time. We're still married, and he won't touch Mexican food!

Treacle tart. I don't know if it was the recipe, or that fact that it was my first attempt but my husband still refers to it as "10W-40 pie". It was basically a crust with a half inch of what looked like oil sludge skulking in it. I haven't ever had the heart to try it again.

Last year I made cassoulet for the first time. I loved the idea of it bubbling away for a few hours on a cold day, then being ready in time for dinner. It was a very involved recipe, a lot of work & the end result was overly salty pork & beans. Even my husband found it too salty and suggested that we toss the remainder. Mind you, he'll eat just about anything so if he finds something vile enough to suggest throwing it away it's GOT to be heinous.

Nina

Thank goodness for trial and error - it makes us all better cooks!

Several years ago I tried to make up a recipe for a shrimp and rice casserole with spinach and feta cheese. It sounded good in theory, but when it finished the shrimp were overcooked and the spinach was bitter, it was just terrible. So I shan't attempt that again. Now I try to stick to ingredients that make sense together. And I only cook shrimp for a few minutes, rather than baking them for an hour.

A couple of years ago I asked my husband to put some pork chops on to bake, so they'd be ready when I got home from work. He decided to be creative, and dusted them liberally with cloves and nutmeg. Hunger made the best sauce that night... and the leftover pork chops didn't get eaten. I probably should have put a combination lock on the spice cupboard after that. However, I can trust him with the grill seasoning. :)

Years ago, I made an Mexcian rice casserole that called for avacados to be mixed in before baking. I didn't know that when you heat/bake avacados, some sort of chemical change takes place and they taste AWEFUL! The casserole ended up tasting like there were chunks of melted plastic mixed in. The parts without the avacado were delish!

I made this casserol 3 times, before I figured this out! So now, any time I see a recipe that calls for avacados and there is some sort of cooking process that takes place afterwards, I know better!

I won't even mention the Crockpot Apple Crisp with Peanut Butter I tried recently. Yech!

I'm just glad no recipes I've posted have been mentioned! size=1>

My biggest recipe flop was one by world renowned chef, Jacques Pepin. I've always liked and trusted his recipes, so I had no trouble following this particular recipe to the letter.
It was Gnocchi. And every step went as expected ... until, the Gnocchi were lowered into gently simmering water. They instantly disintegrated and all I had was Gnocchi scum floating on the surface.

This was just one flub, so I decided not to write him an angry letter ;-Þ
Instead, I crossed off his Gnocchi recipe and moved on. And, I continue to use his other recipes to this day.

Sol

Oh lori, I look for your posted recipes which are pretty darn good!

A fan of Lori316

Daria, I think my step-mother in law was trying to impress us (we're in FL; she was in St. Louis). She made a very similar recipe but failed to peel the shrimp. Gagggg! Luckily we knew she wasn't a good cook, so we hit White Castle before visiting. I could truthfully say that I wasn't hungry, but my husband did choke down a couple of forkfulls! We never ate there again--always arranged to take them out to dinner.

I think the worst thing or things i have ever tried making have to be any casserole with cream of whatever soup in it. They are almost all gross. I have found one that is OK but not great.

Ha ha, beachlily! Good thing your husband ate a few bites, otherwise he'd be in trouble. ;) It's nice to marry into a family, you can always play the "I'm allergic to an ingredient" card.

My MIL makes fish chowder occasionally, and it's very good. My husband HATES fish chowder. He'll eat hers anyway, but if I make chowder, forget it, he won't eat it. I wonder if I should be offended? Nah...

I love this thread.

many many moons ago (24 to be exact). My now dh and I were dating and trying to impress him I got a recipe for Tuna Casserole....Only thing was that I did not know he despized hot tuna. well, I made it and he took one bite and not only spit it out....threw away the casserole with the pan!!! So, as you can tell I have never made that again. Another really bad one was beef stroganoff...somehow the cream seperated and looked really bad.

Well, I can't blame anybody but myself, and while I am ashamed to admit it, I totally screwed up making Pigs in a Blanket, this very week. I spent the whole dinner laughing as my fiance tried to choke the stuff down. Ugh. We didn't have refridgerator rolls and I used biscuit mix, way, way too salty. Poor guy ended up snacking on candy instead.

My Magic Bullet came with somes recipes. The tomato soup one was awful. Granted, maybe I had bad tomaotes or something.. but I wasn't going to try it again. I really didn't like the Magic Bullet in general. Packed it up once years ago, and have never pulled it back out.

Kumquat tart. After waiting almost a year for kumquats to be in season, I patiently seeded & sliced 2 containers of them to be put atop a ricotta filling. Something I did (or didn't do) to the filling caused it to never set up & the kumquarts citrusy flavor left an aftertaste reminiscent of transmission fluid odor. An afternoon's work went straight in the garbage.
Hester

Martha's Stewart's "Cheese Coins" was my worst recipe. It was maybe 4 years ago and I wanted to make them for Christmas appetizers and serve them with hot pepper jelly. I made the recipe from her Holiday Baking magazine that year and they melted and ran all over the cookie sheet! I was so disappointed. Later when I compared the recipe with others online I found that the recipe from her magazine did not have enough flour in it compared to the butter! I was really mad and swore I would never trust her recipes again!

When my DH and I first got married I was experimenting with recipes and made Tomato Aspic for lunch one day....
needless to say it when down the garbage disposal. LOL That was at lest 35 years ago and he still brings it up once and awhile. LOL

Linda

Wonderful thread, Bobby... see what your Banana Bread experience has spawned. Glad to know I'm not alone. My brothers, I'm sure, would have several "bizzo meals" to mention, as I like ingredients more exotic for their tastes (like mushrooms in my spaghetti sauce)

but I think my worst was the first I served my now DH... One of my brother's had given me a variety of flavored vinegars asa Christmas present... one a "Salsa Vinegar" that I'd never tried before. I made a vinaigrette dressing, and the new BF (now DH) had forced down several bites of his salad (good boy, taught to clean his plate) before I got to my first one. One bite and I immediately removed the salad bowls from the table with "you do not have the eat this!!" It was HOT, and awful... DH says it took several more meals before he trusted that I really can cook!! LOL