For the first time ever I completely f-ed up a meal..

[draggar]

It's almost unsalvageable.

I'm no where near a great chef, I'll admit it but I'm usually not bad. I can cook up some simple things but tonight I think I completely f-ed it up.

I tried to bake some brown rice in chicken broth. The sites I saw today said ~20-25 minutes @350, little did I know it's over double that. I added flounder to it about 15 minutes in.

25 minutes after the start I had this soup. Grr, so I took the founder out (now it's in pieces) and cooked the rice for another 40 minutes, then added the flounder for 5 minutes.

Rice still needs about 20 minutes. I'm trying to salvage it but I'm thinking we may need to head to Pollo Tropical in about 30 minutes.

Edit: We just got back from Pollo Tropical. I would have given it to the dogs or the chickens but it tasted really badly and I didn't want to make anyone sick.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I don't think there's anyone here who hasn't - at one time or another - totally FUBAR'd dinner.

First time I attempted to fry chicken (this was several years ago back when my brother and I were here by ourselves while Mom was out working a live-in job) I overcooked it and neither one of us could eat it.

I found this out later, but my brother called Mom at work and told her "DGoddess tried to fry chicken and it was dead when she cooked it and now she's killed it again."

Mom snuck back to the house with a box of KFC chicken for him and told him to take the box out back with whatever was left over and throw it into the garbage can so I wouldn't find it.

Didn't work . . . she ratted on herself not long after that. My mom at times has the biggest mouth on the planet - especially when I screw up.

I haven't lived it down since . . .but I can fry chicken better now. I can actually do that on occasion and not kill it a second time.

[Solumina]

I think brown rice needs to be soaked for a bit (for about 20-30 minutes or so) before getting cooked and a lot of places leave that out of the instructions, which can make for a lot of fun as you seem to have discovered (and don't worry you are very much not alone).

[teh_blumchenkinder]

I get my rice (white, brown, wild, whatever) from bulk bins. I never soak my rice. Never have. Lentils, beans, yes.
In my rice cooker of cheap and dubious origins (rice cookers, how do they work??) I put the recommended ratio of rice:water in with some salt, maybe other seasonings (usually plain), and push the little lever to let it cook.
Perfect rice, every time.

Lentils and beans otoh... still figuring those out.
Oven or pot cooking rice is dodgy with me. I usually fluff... er, flub it.
EDIT: I once put dry rice into a slow cooker with some other stuff I needed to use up. It came out chewy and crunchy.
The rest of it was a tasteless gray gloop that no salt or seasonings would fix. I could only choke down half of the nearly 2 gallons of the stuff.
EDIT: I do have a recipie for baking rice/lentils together that does work, tried it and everything. Really inefficient with heat, tho.

[Food Lady]

Lentils should cook on the stovetop in 20 minutes. Beans, on the other hand, need to be soaked if cooking on the stove. You can avoid this completely and make it easier by using the crockpot. Just cover them with water (go 1 or 2 inches above the level of the beans) and cook on high for 8 hours or low for 12 to 14 hours. I cook them overnight and then freeze them in Ziploc containers that stack. For the price of 1 can I get the equivalent of 4 to 6 cans, depending on the bean. The only thing I don't recommend is chickpeas. They never quite cook right; just buy canned.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

The lentils cook just fine from dried to rice cooker... but I prefer to soak them due to phytic acid. I'm paranoid like that. When they're soaked, I have issues with the water ratios.
:\

[Seshat]

Congratulations. You're now a cook.

You're not a cook until you've made at least ONE inedible mess.

[Cat]

My bf and I were making veggie noodle soup....probably the easiest meal ever! Well, I stupidly didn't tell him that the brush I have to clean the pots was the kind with soap in the handle. He added lots of soap to the pot as he was washing...

...and it didn't really rinse away. Yeah...Dawn is not a goo ingredient in soup.

[MaggieTheCat]

There have been two three meals that I can recall right off-hand that I've totally botched.

One was for a lemon cream chicken recipe. As I recall, you pan fry or bake the chicken, boil some linguine, and make a lemon cream sauce to go over both. Well, thankfully the linguine and the chicken both turned out okay and were separate from the sauce, because the sauce was awful. Not sure if it was the recipe or me...probably a combination of both. I recall that there was a lot of butter in the sauce and by the time I got done adding it all, it had all separated and no amount of stirring or tweaking it would save it. It was a disgusting mess. Thankfully I had ingredients to make a quick parmesan cream sauce instead.

Another time, I was making stir fry. I had all the meat and veggies in the wok and was making the sauce. I reached for an ingredient -- corn starch, and added a couple teaspoons, to thicken the sauce. It bubbled way up and then I realized I had actually grabbed baking soda, not corn starch. They're both white powders and both were in similar sized cylindrical containers. Thankfully, I hadn't actually added the sauce to the meat and veggies so I was able to toss the sauce and start over. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough ingredients to make another batch of the same sauce, so I had to improvise.

Lastly, we were having some friends over and I was making homemade pizza for dinner. My mom had given me a new pizza dough recipe that I wanted to try, one that I'd never made before. It seemed pretty straight forward so I tried it. After 2 hours, my dough had barely risen at all. Not sure if it was my yeast or what. I didn't have time to make another batch of dough and let it rise so we ended up ordering pizza for delivery. Ever since then, I've started using a thermometer to get the temperature of the water that I use to bloom my yeast. The first time I did this, I realized that I'd been blooming my yeast in water that was about 10 degrees too cold, so that's probably why it didn't rise properly.

[reimero]

The secret(s) to beans - including chickpeas:
1. "Soak overnight" means "cover dry beans with at least 2 inches (5cm) of water and soak for at least 12 hours, but ideally 48 to 72." If you can soak for 3 days, do so. It really makes a difference. I've heard differing opinions as to whether the water should be changed.
2. When cooking the beans, DO NOT boil the beans. You want them to simmer at about 180F (82C) for at least an hour, ideally a couple. Boiling makes the beans tough.
3. When cooking the beans, DO NOT add salt while simmering. You can add herbs and other flavorings, but wait until the beans are done cooking before adding salt. Salt ruins beans.

Dry beans just need time and a gentle hand, that's all.

[Dilorenzo]

At least you didn't completely screw up no-bake cookies.

I had to hide a little while after that one.

[Kittish]

It's almost unsalvageable.

I'm no where near a great chef, I'll admit it but I'm usually not bad. I can cook up some simple things but tonight I think I completely f-ed it up.

I tried to bake some brown rice in chicken broth. The sites I saw today said ~20-25 minutes @350, little did I know it's over double that. I added flounder to it about 15 minutes in.

25 minutes after the start I had this soup. Grr, so I took the founder out (now it's in pieces) and cooked the rice for another 40 minutes, then added the flounder for 5 minutes.

Rice still needs about 20 minutes. I'm trying to salvage it but I'm thinking we may need to head to Pollo Tropical in about 30 minutes.

Edit: We just got back from Pollo Tropical. I would have given it to the dogs or the chickens but it tasted really badly and I didn't want to make anyone sick.

Sorry to hear about the oops. I've done pretty much exactly that very same thing, with the rice and fish in the oven attempting to make a casserole. It was absolutely inedible.

I've never had LOTS of luck with doing brown rice in a casserole, but keep in mind that it DOES take something on the order of 2 hours, and the dish needs to be covered so the liquid is actually absorbed, and doesn't just evaporate. And when I do rice in the oven, I pretty much always add an extra cup of liquid.

I've never tried a rice based casserole with fish a second time, but frequently make a chicken and rice combo, with broccoli and cheddar cheese.

[Kittish]

At least you didn't completely screw up no-bake cookies.

I had to hide a little while after that one.

Don't feel too badly about that one, no-bake cookies is one of those recipes that I cannot seem to make correctly. I've tried several times, and they NEVER turn out right. I always end up with this thick, sticky gloop that, admittedly tastes ok, but won't set up even with refrigeration.

[AccountingDrone]

My husband can take the same recipe I use for cooked fudge frosting and randomly come out with fudge, frosting or chocolate syrup ... doing the exact recipe each time. *sigh*

I love making my own birthday 'cake' [i like boston cream pie ...]

[Food Lady]

At least you didn't completely screw up no-bake cookies. I had to hide a little while after that one.

Don't feel bad. Humidity can vary greatly and affect recipes like that. It's not you. And AccountingDrone: your hubs is....interesting.