I occasionally surf Quora and sometimes find great gems. This was one of them - a discussion thread about bad cooks!

Quora: What screams "I can't cook even if my life depended on it!"?

Answer by A. Taylor Rich, May 27, 2020

An Italian girl in my film class overheard me mention I was planning to make pasta for dinner that evening. She immediately pounced to start questioning me on my pasta preparation techniques.

I felt the floor drop out from under me, but my answer seemed to be to her satisfaction—boil the water, add salt, add pasta, cook until al dente, drain. Olive oil, minced garlic, a small onion, sauté, add a little salt and parsley and basil. Toss, serve hot.

“Huh,” my friend said. “That’s an awful lot of work just for some pasta.”

I glanced over at him. “How do you make it, then?”

“Oh, I just boil it in a bowl in the microwave and add mayonnaise.”

Cue collective screaming.

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Answer from B.A. Dey, November 17, 2018

· You can induce cognitive dissonance in anybody who tries your homemade soup, which turns out solid. It tastes and smells like soup, but you have to chew it.

· You're livid thinking the chicken you prepared is missing parts. You can't find the breasts because you roasted it upside-down in the pan. That happens more than once. Oops.

· There's a 50% chance you'll have to order pizza when trying to do up any meal in the crockpot.

· When having company, you have plenty of frozen dinners available ‘just in case'. Alternately, you just serve the frozen dinners and avoid the risk of failure altogether. Yum.

· People are overtly shocked and genuinely amazed when you do cook something really delicious because it's so very unexpected. And will never be replicated.

· You ban certain people, like i dunno maybe my mother, from your kitchen while you're cooking because it's just way too much pressure.

· You sincerely believe that to be able to get all the different foods hot and ready on the table at the same time takes a bit of magic. And since you know you're not Houdini or Merlin, you don't even bother to try it.

· When you try to season food and think, “It needs more _____.”, it would really be helpful to have that be multiple choice because you have no clue what to put in that blank. Duh.

· You disconnect the smoke alarm before you start to cook. Saves the time and effort of knocking it down with a broom later.

· By the time your son is 4, he's calling up your mother to see what she's making grandpa for dinner. Traitor.

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Answer from R.D. Vries, 15June2020

A young scholarly gentleman (for whom I have the greatest love and respect) decided to make spaghetti carbonara. The dish had won his approval after a recent restaurant visit.

Though inexperienced in the kitchen, he was determined to handle the preparation on his own.

First he diced the ham. Then he filled the pot with cold water, added the spaghetti and the ham and turned the burner on.

Proud that he knew how to crack an egg, he emptied it into a bowl and dumped it in the water.

It made for a once-in-a-lifetime meal.

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Answer from R. Chaffee, 11June2020

When my ex and I first separated, he'd sometimes ask me over for a home-cooked meal. Since one of the reasons he married me was that he couldn't cook and I could cook really well, the meals he made were always somewhat…interesting. (He first proposed to me over a discussion of pot roast. Not even the real thing--just talking about it!)

I showed up one morning for breakfast, and he met me at the door with a puzzled and worried expression. He'd screwed up my bacon and eggs, but didn't know why the eggs came out so weird.

I went in to look. In the large skillet there were four cooked bacon strips arranged neatly around the edge, and in the middle was a medium-sized puddle of yellow goo. The goo was supposed to be scrambled eggs. Not the breakfast he'd intended. I asked him what exactly he had done.

Well, the bacon got done a lot sooner than he expected, but he thought that the bacon grease would be a good flavor additive for the eggs. So he turned the heat down to almost-off, waited for fifteen minutes, then very slowly stirred the eggs into the warm grease.

I congratulated him on something that many home cooks never even try, much less achieve: he'd made fresh mayonnaise!

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Answer by Y. Kaye, November 15, 2018

The cook wasn't too creative apparently, and every morning the same breakfast was served, a huge pot filled with hard-boiled eggs. After some time the students had enough and tried convincing him to add some variety. “Why don't you make soft-boiled eggs once in a while?”

The next morning when they came to breakfast they saw two pots on the table, the first was the usual hard-boiled eggs, and the second had eggs that were clearly way overcooked; the yolks were green and the whites felt like rubber.

When they asked the cook what happened he said “I don't know, I tried making soft-boiled eggs like you asked, but I cooked and cooked and cooked and they just weren't getting softer!”

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Answer by A. Sedelnick, Answered May 11, 2020

I have this sweet friend. She's hilarious and a genius. Unless she’s cooking.

One day she calls me desperate, she’s 23 at this time and panicking. She tells me shes making spaghetti. She's boiled the water for the amount of time it says to, but when is she supposed to add the noodles, the water is almost gone and she’s afraid she’s going to burn it. Yes folks, she's afraid she's going to burn water.

I stifle the laugh that’s dying to come out because my dear friend is in a total panic. I tell her to add more water to the pot and bring it to a boil, then as soon as it starts bubbling, add the pasta. Stir, let cook until it feel right to taste .

She asked if adding water would ruin her already boiled water. Face palm.

She can now make an excellent hamburger helper. That’s about it. Her box cakes frighten small children.

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Answer by M. Ettrick, November 18, 2018

My grandad was notorious for not being able to cook, even once burning a poached egg. My favourite story however, happened on kitchen duty.

It was at a big group home and everyone was expected to take turns to cook. When his turn came, he was not pleased. He was put in charge of baking a cake, since they figured that would be simple enough. The cook asked him to throw in some raisins, while she left to get more ingredients.

She came back to find him, standing at one end of the room, with the raisins in his hand, tossing them one by one into the bowl at the other end of the room.

“Don,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Well, you did say to throw them...”

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Answer by A. Ng, January 13, 2019

My mother and I are working in the kitchen together. She likes to cook with us, by which I mean we work on separate dishes in the same kitchen. She says it’s a good way to get us familiarized with the process of taking care of ourselves. Anyway, we’re cooking.

I have brought my phone into the kitchen. Mistake #1.

I put a pot on the gas stove to boil. While waiting, I start playing a game on my phone. Mistake #2.

Before I know it, the pot on the stove is boiling over. There’s steam everywhere. The lid is rattling like crazy. And there’s liquid crashing over the sides of the pot and onto the open flames of the stove.

I freak out.

I try grabbing the handle, but it sears my fingers. The steam is too hot for me to get anywhere near the lid. I grab a dishcloth, ready to do battle with the bubbling pot, and —

My mother reaches over and turns the stove off.

Thanks mom.

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Answer by L. Barklay, November 17, 2018

When I was at university, I spent my first year at college, then moved into a town house. In my final year, my oldest brother came to visit and stayed with me. For some reason, he was cooking two-minute noodles, or packet pasta. I’m not sure why I wasn’t preparing the meal - maybe I did, and he just didn’t like my cooking.

He was used to living in college and cooking things on the microwave, but I told him to do it on the stove. He put the saucepan full of water on the stove. A few minutes later, he came into the lounge room where I was reading a book. “Uh, sis?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How do you know when the water is boiling?”

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Answer by R. Adam, March 24, 2020

My 24-year-old sister’s questions.

· “Do you have to use oil to fry an egg?”

· “Do I have to add water to boil an egg?”

· “What is the difference between high heat and low heat?”

· “Do I have to wash pasta before I put in the water?”

· “Why does my pasta look like cake at the bottom of the pot? Did I not wash it long enough? Do you think I should’ve let the water become hot first?”

· “How can I tell the difference between salt and sugar without tasting it?”

· “Is tuna fish?” (I was waiting for a few more words to finish that question till I realised that was the entire question)

· “I’m frying aubergine but it’s not cooked on the inside. What do you mean I have to slice it first?”

And last but not least ….. (drum roll)………

“I tipped the sugar bowl in my stew by accident. If I add an equal amount of salt, that would equalise it. Right?”

We’re in our forties now and she has hugely improved from the cook from Hell to making simple omelettes and pastas.

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Answer by G. Howe, September 6, 2018

A group of us went on holiday to Greece. Our hotel rooms contained “cooking facilities” that consisted of a single hot-plate and a saucepan. My son’s room-mate bought himself a frozen pizza to cook in his room.

When my son laughed at him and asked him how he proposed to cook a frozen pizza on a hot-plate, he replied “I thought of that!” and proceeded to place the pizza topping-side down on the hot-plate.

It took the rest of the holiday for my son and his clueless mate to clean the hot-plate and get rid of the smell of burning.

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Answer by S. Spande, June 4, 2020

*Your Jell-O has granules at the bottom.

*Your lamb roast tastes like liver.

*You serve canned peas.

*Your spice cabinet is in your salt and pepper shakers.

*You think pancakes come from a mix, and Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup is an acceptable substitute.

*You use boil-in-a-bag rice.

*You use the smoke alarm as a timer.

“What's a knife block for?”

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Answer by L. Frangipani, December 3, 2018

My husband putting oil in a frying pan, turning it on high, and leaving the kitchen for a lengthy period of time.

After putting the fire out, cleaning the area, throwing the frying pan out, and replacing the burner and repainting the kitchen wall near the stove, he did it again but this time with FISH in it. Have you ever tried to remove burnt fish glued to your ceiling? It’s not a pretty sight.

He was banned from cooking in the house anymore. I bought him a outdoor skillet and he can use the gas burner and grill out there, too. Far away from the house.

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Answer by L. Critzer, November 21, 2018

My friend should not even be allowed to walk through a kitchen.

One time he attempted to make Ramen noodles and somehow, I’m still not even sure how, since he was doing them in the microwave, he managed to cook them into a mashed potato type of mush.

Another time, he put water on to make spaghetti noodles and he put more noodles than he put water and all the water boiled off and the noodles burned in the pot until the copper bottom fell out of the pot and ignited the stove top on fire.

I showed him how to stuff chicken with cheese and herbs once and he thought I was a sorceress.

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Answer by D. Grushkin, December 7, 2018

I saw one episode of “Worst Cooks in America” where a contestant attempted to make Grilled Cheese…. By putting a piece of cheese on a barbecue grill….

I laughed so hard I had to pause the show just to catch my breath.