A couple of months ago I asked for savory recipe requests and someone suggested chicken nuggets. I came across a slow cooker chicken nugget recipe on A Year of Slow Cooking and thought it would be a fun to make them in a new way (plus fulfill my weekly slow cooker recipe goal).
Boy, was I wrong.
Do NOT make these.
They seem to have sort of worked (with some soggy pieces) for Stephanie at a Year of Slow Cooking, but not for me.
The recipe calls for layering chicken nuggets between aluminum foil. The further down you went, the soggier my layers got. I took them out after 3 or 4 hours and put them in the oven to crisp them up and some were still soggy. Plus, if you have to put them in the oven, what’s the point of using the Crockpot?
You win some, you lose some.
Next time, I’m making chicken nuggets in the oven like a normal person.
What was your most recent cooking disaster?
Wendy
June 13, 2011 at 12:49 pm (14 years ago)Not my most recent, but definitely one of my most memorable. I made breakfast casserole, but rather than buy hash-browns like the recipe called for I shredded some potatoes in the food processor. That would have been fine, but I didn’t know you could cook potatoes and then shred them. After the potatoes were shredded I got distracted talking to my sister for a few hours and the potato shreds had turned this nasty grey color. I tried soaking them, but it didn’t work. I used them anyway hoping the cheese would hide the color. The whole casserole came out a nasty grey/green color that made it look as though it had been in the attic for a year or so. Surprisingly, it tasted delicious anyway.
Stephanie
June 13, 2011 at 8:49 pm (14 years ago)@Wendy – that does sound gross! I am a really visual person and I like my food to look good. It’s hard when it’s an ugly color like that, even though it’s actually fine and tastes good.
Kath
June 13, 2011 at 4:48 pm (14 years ago)My latest flop was yesterday. I believed all those blog posts about kale chips. I bought some beautiful organic kale. It was HORRIBLE! The whole experience reminded me of “The Emporers New Clothes”. I didn’t blog it.
Stephanie
June 13, 2011 at 8:48 pm (14 years ago)@Kath – oh no! I love kale chips! Were they soggy? If there’s too much oil on them, they are kind of soggy and gross. If you use less, they get really crispy and amazing.
Katrina @ In Katrina's Kitchen
June 13, 2011 at 5:32 pm (14 years ago)Lol! This was funny – well not funny that it didn’t work, that’s sad. But your enthusiasm for us NOT making this recipe! lol
Stephanie
June 13, 2011 at 8:47 pm (14 years ago)@Katrina – haha I was energetic when I wrote this. I do feel strongly that no one else should have to make the same mistake! 🙂
Ann
June 13, 2011 at 5:45 pm (14 years ago)Oh, boy! My latest flop was blogged about – I called it “A Learning Experience”. It certainly was!
Great post!
Stephanie
June 13, 2011 at 8:46 pm (14 years ago)@Ann – thanks! I will go check out your learning experience.
cindy
June 14, 2011 at 1:35 pm (14 years ago)kitchen flops are the bane of my existence! i feel for you;) I once dropped a whole cake on the floor on the way out the door for a party. I cried and threw a fit, it was not pretty.
Stephanie
June 14, 2011 at 2:03 pm (14 years ago)@Cindy – oh that sucks! I once made a cake for a baby shower, only to come down with stomach flu the next day. I didn’t want to get anyone sick (especially the expectant mother!) so I had to toss the cake and buy one at the store. That was disappointing.
Mrs. Mordecai
June 14, 2011 at 4:02 pm (14 years ago)When I was about 10, I got my hair stuck in the mixer. My family will never let me forget it!
Also once I made a ’60s recipe called “Turnip Puff” from nasty hot turnips I grew in the garden. It was completely disgusting.
Stephanie
June 14, 2011 at 4:54 pm (14 years ago)@Mrs. Mordecai – ouch, that sounds painful! And gross. Way worse than soggy chicken nuggets!
Juls
June 15, 2011 at 2:27 am (14 years ago)Not my worst disaster or even my most recent, but my biggest over-reaction to a cooking fail was simply in making a really basic lasagna about three years ago and the only thing wrong with it was that I had got distracted whilst making the bechemel and it had gone lumpy and too thick and weird and I went ballistic. I refused to let my starving boyfriend eat any of it and put it on the floor for the cats to eat declaring it “not fit for human consumption” and then when the cats turned their noses up I went into sobbing hysterics about how I failed at life. Now any over-reaction I pull is called “doing the lasagna”.
My biggest kitchen fail was my first attempt at a gluten free bread. It turned out like a weapon. I could have killed someone with it. Literally. “Miss Juliet in the Library with the Buckwheat Loaf”.
My most recent was Cornish Pasties. The internet went down and my recipe for the pasty pastry was online and so I had to cook it “blind” and ended up with oily and odd pastry. The boyfriend professed to adore it but, to me, it was just…not cool. The internet is thankfully back on.
Love reading this post and the replies!
Stephanie
June 15, 2011 at 8:38 am (14 years ago)@Juls – I love that you call overreactions “doing the lasagna!” That’s so funny. Gluten-free baking is a pain in the butt and I haven’t even tried bread – I can totally imagine it coming out that way! I can also sympathize on your last disaster – I often follow recipes online too. Pastries and other baking especially has to be fairly exact, so I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that came out weird if you didn’t have the recipe in front of you.
Belinda @zomppa
June 16, 2011 at 11:08 am (14 years ago)Healthy and delicious!!
The Mom Chef ~ Taking on Magazines One Recipe at a Time
June 16, 2011 at 5:08 pm (14 years ago)I’m so glad to hear that this didn’t work out, not because you wasted chicken, but because as I was looking at the title and headed over here I was trying to figure out HOW chicken nuggets in a crock pot could work. I couldn’t come up with anything that sounded right. I am sorry that it was a flop; those are always hard, but thanks for letting us know!
Stephanie
June 16, 2011 at 5:11 pm (14 years ago)@The Mom Chef – Yeah, I probably should have thought of that ahead of time! But I figured if it worked for someone else, it would for me too. Oh well. Also, I didn’t waste the chicken – I put it in the oven and ate almost all of it (except the soggiest pieces). I couldn’t bring myself to throw away all that food, especially meat!
Carmen
June 17, 2011 at 1:20 am (14 years ago)Thank you so much for posting this! So refreshing to read, and it made me laugh out loud!
As for me, well, I’ve been without measuring spoons for a while (long story) so every time I bake it’s a new adventure. My roommate laughs because without fail, as the thing is about to go into the oven I say “Well, [long list of problems possibly involving lack of measuring spoons], so these might be horrible.” Tonight I was making some scones and realized I had absentmindedly put in about 3 or 4 times as much baking soda as I meant to. Whoops. I was afraid they’d taste really bitter and acrid, but they were actually alright. Not the best thing I’ve ever baked, but not the worst either.
@Juls! “Doing the lasagna” — Love it!!!
Stephanie
June 17, 2011 at 8:24 am (14 years ago)@Carmen – so glad you enjoyed the post! It was fun to write too. That’s funny about your baking mishaps. I know you say it’s a long story, but why don’t you use measuring spoons?
Erin @ Dinners, Dishes and Desserts
June 17, 2011 at 2:54 pm (14 years ago)Thanks for posting this anyway! Good to know what NOT to do, as well as what works! Can’t remember my latest flop, but there have been many. Something recently we had to toss, but I just can’t remember what it was. My husband will eat almost anything, so if he won’t eat it, it is BAD!
kita
June 20, 2011 at 6:38 pm (14 years ago)Awww, I got so excited when I saw the title of the link over at food buzz, but I really appreciate you keeping it real in your review! I know that I don’t have to waste my time now!
Chastity
September 19, 2011 at 10:11 am (13 years ago)Well,my biggest flop was red velvet cupcakes. The first time i ever made a red velvet cupcake they were amazing and nothing was wrong..but when i tried again with the same exact recipe,they all fell! they were done,but they had a big ‘pocket’ in the middle and the sides were oddly chewy..like a brownie. I was making them for my boyfriends fourth of july.I went insane and tried three different recipes.
All together,I had made 70 something cupcakes,2 thirds of which went in the trash!
and then my cream cheese frosting was WAY too sweet.so i made two batches of that as well. I cried the whole time i made the final batch.
The last batch was Martha stewarts recipe, and they actually stayed up. I still have no idea why my other cupcakes deflated like they did. it’s as if they cooked,and then the middle just went ‘poof’ like a souffle.
I was still crying about it when i gave him his cupcakes.
🙁 they loved them but it hurt to know MY recipe had failed horribly. I threw threw my version away shortly after.
Hannah
December 1, 2011 at 2:37 pm (13 years ago)As with the others, I saw this post and it made me giggle. I cannot think of a certain time that I messed up because, well there were so many times. But most of my disasters involved cookies-burning them, using too much artificial sweetener, adding too many things that the recipe didn’t call for, or just trying to make them too healthy. I have probably wasted more ingredients and thrown more cookies into the trash than I’d like to admit. Me and cookies have a strained relationship…