worst home cooked meal ever?

[brewerpaul]

Andouille is a different sausage entirely.

I am certainly glad to hear that. What the heck is an andouillette, then?

From Wikipedia:

Andouillette is a French sausage, a specialty of Lyon, Troyes and Cambrai.

Traditional andouillette is made from the colon and the stomach of pig. In modern times, contents vary and normally contain intestines of pig, cow and/or calf. It is not to be confused with andouille sausage, which is much spicier, but more mild in animal-derived smells.

American andouillette is quite acceptable to the American palate. French andouillette, on the other hand, is an acquired taste and can be an interesting challenge even for adventurous eaters who don't object to the taste or aroma of feces. It is sometimes eaten cold, as in picnic baskets. Served cold and sliced thinly, the smell, taste, and texture may be mistaken for an andouille, but on closer inspection the texture is considerably more rubbery and the meat has a more feces-like flavor. By contrast, many French eateries serve andouillette as a hot dish, and foreigners have been repulsed by the aroma, to the point where they find it inedible (see external links). While hot andouillette smells of feces, food safety requires that all such matter is removed from the meat before cooking. Feces-like aroma can be attributed to the common use of the pig's colon (chitterlings) in this sausage, and stems from the same compounds that give feces some of its odors.

I'd vote for eliminating the middleman and simply throwing the stuff right in the toilet,uneaten...

[Ronbo]

I am certainly glad to hear that. What the heck is an andouillette, then?

From Wikipedia:

Andouillette is a French sausage, a specialty of Lyon, Troyes and Cambrai.

Traditional andouillette is made from the colon and the stomach of pig. In modern times, contents vary and normally contain intestines of pig, cow and/or calf. It is not to be confused with andouille sausage, which is much spicier, but more mild in animal-derived smells.

American andouillette is quite acceptable to the American palate. French andouillette, on the other hand, is an acquired taste and can be an interesting challenge even for adventurous eaters who don't object to the taste or aroma of feces. It is sometimes eaten cold, as in picnic baskets. Served cold and sliced thinly, the smell, taste, and texture may be mistaken for an andouille, but on closer inspection the texture is considerably more rubbery and the meat has a more feces-like flavor. By contrast, many French eateries serve andouillette as a hot dish, and foreigners have been repulsed by the aroma, to the point where they find it inedible (see external links). While hot andouillette smells of feces, food safety requires that all such matter is removed from the meat before cooking. Feces-like aroma can be attributed to the common use of the pig's colon (chitterlings) in this sausage, and stems from the same compounds that give feces some of its odors.

I'd vote for eliminating the middleman and simply throwing the stuff right in the toilet,uneaten...

Nah, you will spend a fortune on Roto-Rooter. Feed it to the pigs.
On the other hand, if you buy andouille, you won't be getting the pigs' intestines. Been outlawed in most states with any USDA activity at all. But, the french eat snails, so I guess there is room ffor everybody's tastes, however bad.

[chrisoff]

I don't see why people are repulsed by frog's legs or snails. Unless you're vegetarian and are repulsed by all meat.

Anyway my Mum's made a few terrible home cooked meals. Mostly as the result of following a recipe but not preparing in advance for it. So essential ingredients get replaced by experimental substitutes. A memorable lasagne suffered the most for this.

I've made some rubbish as well, mostly through over or undercooking. But that can be fixed with exerience, my Mum can't really use that excuse any more...

[missy]

I don't see why people are repulsed by frog's legs or snails. Unless you're vegetarian and are repulsed by all meat.

I love frog's legs and snails. My favorite restaurant does great frog's legs. And at the recent "taste of Cincinnati" we were disappointed that the French restaurant wasn't serving their signature snails and mushroom dish.

[emmline]

I don't see why people are repulsed by frog's legs or snails. Unless you're vegetarian and are repulsed by all meat.

Right, but that's because you've thought it through.
True--there should be no empirical difference between a heaping platter of frog legs and one of fried chicken legs. But, the thing is, most humans are acclimated to viewing the chicken-leg, as a stand-alone object, as food.

For example, if you buy a toy kitchen set for your child, with plastic food, you're likely to have things like a carrot, a slice of bread, and a drumstick. Food. Not animal.

But to someone who has not grown up, culturally, eating frog legs, a frog leg does not look like food. It looks like a frog leg. So, you either have to either
a)not care, b)explain to yourself that it is, in fact, no stranger than a chicken leg (and believe yourself,) or c)decline.

I'm sure that if you kept seeing them, you'd acclimate.

[Flyingcursor]

Yep, that's the cartoon (or similar) that immediately came to my mind about frog's legs, too. Wasn't there an old Ray Milland movie about the frogs taking revenge?

djm

Yes. It was hilariously stupid. One of the worst movies I've ever seen next to the one with the giant bunny rabbits.

[ElPollo]

About 2 years ago i was both sleepy and hungry.

I decided i was more hungry than sleepy and threw some sausages on the frying pan and turned it on at the lowest setting.

Then i went to sit on the edge of my bed while waiting, and woke up 8 hours later.

I remembered about the sausages and went to take a look. Decided to turn them over and go sit on the bed while waiting for them to finish.

8 hours (not the same 8 hours as those mentioned before) later i woke up and ate some of the best sausages i've ever had.

[mamakash]

I only started experimenting with cooking when I was transitioning into a vegetarian diet. In the beginning, I made many odd dishes . . . most edible, except for the TVP "meatloaf". It sounded interesting . . . textured vegitable protein, kidney beans, breadcrumbs. It turned out awful. The TVP, although flavorless, does seem to have an odd flavor to me I couldn't mask. Mashed kidney beans are super slimey, starchy, have a strong smell I can't overcome. The italian breadcrumbs couldn't make either ingredient taste good and baking did not make this lumpy mass gel into a loaf. It ended up in the garbage.

Can we include food we bought that ended up being unedible? Encouraged to try the subs at a local sub shop, I tried the vegetarian sub, thinking it would be similar to the hot ones I've tried. The damn thing was stuffed with lettuce and raw onions, one or two tomatoes, and doused with a vinaigrette. I tried to eat some of it for my lunch at work, but the onions were too much. I took it home with me. I almost knocked my poor mom out with my onion breath and upset stomach and the remaining sub was disposed of as promptly and cautiously as if it had been a bomb.

Not to diss vegetarian food. Onions are just plain scary critters in the realm of veg and non veg dishes.

[Ro3b]

I made a big pot of black bean soup once. I'd just gotten some habanero peppers, and since I'd never coked with them before I didn't realize how hot they were. I diced up four or five of them, sauteed them in olive oil with onions, garlic, cumin, and oregano, and dumped all that into the pot of beans, which I then simmered for three hours or so.

I learned two important things with this soup:

(1) What they say about habaneros being the hottest pepper? That's true.

(2) Cooking hot peppers tends to make them hotter.

[feadogin]

Yep, that's the cartoon (or similar) that immediately came to my mind about frog's legs, too. Wasn't there an old Ray Milland movie about the frogs taking revenge?

djm

Yes. It was hilariously stupid. One of the worst movies I've ever seen next to the one with the giant bunny rabbits.

What are you talking about? The movie about the giant bunny rabbits is great!!!!! My husband and I saw that one at a bar the day we met.

[The Weekenders]

Yeah, I have been wanting to get that bunny movie as a DVD for my step-mother who raises rabbits. It was fantastic!

As for frog legs: we have Asian all-you-can-eat buffet places here, and frog legs are served, to your heart's content. My son likes 'em.

As for snails: compared to andouilette, snails sound just fine to me. I hear its all in the garlic butter....

As for worst meals: having compared notes with fellow office workers, I have come to realize that we have a special holiday for the annual worst meal ever. It's called Thanksgiving. It's a time when cooking a large specimen of poultry causes otherwise normal people to lose their common sense.

Some get it right. Many do not. And when they don't, there is usually a large party of victims on hand to share the experience. Nyuk.

[Redwolf]

Reading that article on andouillette got me to thinking. They refer to a "feces-like flavor." Who was the brave soul who tasted feces in order to have a basis for comparison?

The worst home cooked meal I ever had was a white vegetable lasagne. I'm not a great fan of lasagne anyway, but if it's got red sauce, I can usually choke it down. This stuff looked like a plate full of vomit. To add insult to injury, it was loaded with my two least-liked vegetables: zucchini (courgette) and spinach, and smelled so bad I couldn't even stand to sit at the same table with it.

Redwolf

[Flyingcursor]

Reading that article on andouillette got me to thinking. They refer to a "feces-like flavor." Who was the brave soul who tasted feces in order to have a basis for comparison?

The worst home cooked meal I ever had was a white vegetable lasagne. I'm not a great fan of lasagne anyway, but if it's got red sauce, I can usually choke it down. This stuff looked like a plate full of vomit. To add insult to injury, it was loaded with my two least-liked vegetables: zucchini (courgette) and spinach, and smelled so bad I couldn't even stand to sit at the same table with it.

Redwolf

Ditto to both.

I had the rare opportunity to try some of that white lasagne last week. I did not rise to the opportunity.

feadogin, weeks,
I'll watch the giant bunny movie again and see if there's something about it I missed. Isn't that the one where they electrify the railroad tracks or was that Day of the Triffids?

[The Weekenders]

Well, fly, "fantastic" was let's say... a characterization of how campy it is....

I had the worst birthday cake ever two weeks ago. It was vegan and it was simultaneously oily and dry at the same time. It was a similar experience to expecting a choco chip and getting a carob chip instead, but worse.

I wrapped it in a napkin and threw it out.

[DCrom]

I'll freely admit to being, at best, a journeyman in the kitchen. And, though I love good food, when I'm in a hurry I'll often opt for simplicity. So that if I'm cooking for just myself dinner might be some good crusty bread, a little cheese, and a salad. Or do a casserole that's good for more than meal.

I can follow recipes, even adapt them if I've made them a time or two so I know what to expect, but I have a very hard time visualizing the result when given a recipe I've never tried before. This chemistry lab approach to cooking works surprisingly well when I have a good cookbook, but means that when I have a *bad* recipe I may not realize it until far too late.

Fortunately for my palate (if unfortunately for my waistline), my wife is an excellent cook and absolutely hates sharing the kitchen, so my cooking these days is largely confined to the occasional weekend breakfast and the great male ritual known as the Backyard BBQ.

Back when I was in college, though, I did my own cooking and survived many a culinary disaster in the process of learning which cookbooks could, and which could not, be trusted. Making things worse was my very limited food budget - in particular, I learned to buy non-perishables when they were on sale and keep them on hand for when money was tight. (I still remember stretches of days at a time when all I had on hand were eggs, canned corned beef hash, and canned green beans. This is NOT a particularly healthy, or tasty, diet.)

My absolute worst home-cooked meal was my first Easter on my own. I was over a thousand miles away from home, and didn't have the time - or money - to fly home, so I decided to make my own Easter meal. In my family, the main course for Easter was either leg of lamb (which wasn't about to attempt - I had *some* sense or my limitations!) or a glazed Ham. But since I was cooking for one, a full-sized ham seemed rather excessive and I had a cookbook with a recipe for brown sugar and pineapple glazed . . . Spam.

I am told that the name "Spam" came from "Spiced Ham". But as my grandfather used to say about prohibition-era "near beer", whoever named this stuff was a d*mned poor judge of distance. By itself, Spam is salty, greasy, and vaguely ham-like. Sliced, browned, and served with rice it can even be tasty in small amounts, though it took years before my wife could persuade me of that. (I'm expecting Limuhead to leap to its defense, now - I know it's popular in Hawaii). But the "baked Spam" recipe resulted in a greasy, salty, styrofoam-like brick with a sweet glaze. In fact, a block of sawdust or styrofoam with the glaze would have tasted considerably better than the baked Spam did. How bad was it? I was a starving student with a limited budget and I threw most of it away. And, no matter how limited my budget and how low the sale price, I never bought Spam again.