'Nothing better than hour long soggy macaroni, it was like glue': 20+ Family members who majorly ruined meals with their terrible cooking habits

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Dec 14, 2022 3:00 PM EST

There are few joys in life, like spending time with your family, but perhaps the exception is cooking with your family members. The kitchen can get way too crowded, even with just one extra person poking around. As one Redditor, u/RioA, posted on the r/Cooking subreddit, they were dealing with their mom rushing a chicken dish, and turning up the heat to get it to cook faster. 

Once you're done rolling your eyes at that line of logic, you'll see that the poster asked if anyone else could commiserate, and yes, yes, the commenters certainly could relate to that. People spilled the tea about family members over-spicing food, leaving perishables out too long, and even straight-up sabotaging a nice dinner. There were so many people who typed out a story of their own that this is clearly a common experience. 

Keep scrolling to check out these well-meaning fams who really tried to help in the kitchen and failed miserably. Then, click here to read about these chia fans who are planning to coat as many surfaces as they can in chia seeds. 

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  • 01
    Plant - 'My mom will make a big batch of chili and then leave it on the stove for days - her reasoning is it's safe because she boils it once a day to "kill anything."
    via Shayda Torabi on Unsplash
  • 02
    Font - r/r/Cooking Posted by u/RioA 7 months ago 22 2 n My mom just decided to turn up my sous vide chicken breast from 65C to 90C to "speed up the proces" and it's now has the consistency of leather. What food crimes have your family committed behind your back on your behalf?
    via r/Cooking
  • 03
    Font - Like the title says. I was going to make perfect tender and juicy chicken breast with a sous vide stick but my mom decided to overrule me behind my back by turning the temperature up from 65C to 90C "just to be speed it up" (even though they would have been ready right on time for dinner at 19:00 as planned... It now has the consistency of stringy leather and taste like it too. I was curious if your family (or friends) have ever decided to give you a "helping" hand behind your back?
    via r/Cooking
  • 04
    Font - headfullofpain. 7 mo. ago My mother in law cooked salmon at 400 for and hour and a half.
    via r/Cooking
  • 05
    Facial expression - eeComing 7 mo. ago Mother ran out of sugar to make a cake and replaced it with jello crystals. Don't try it at home.
    via r/Cooking
  • 06
    Font - grifxdonut 7 mo. ago Not my meal, but I had a nice bottle of olive oil hidden in the furthest part of the pa try, and a gallon of good, but not amazing, olive oil on the counter. Well one of my girlfriends friends comes over and makes food for us when I'm working late. I come home to an empty bottle of olive oil, some chicken she baked using my good oil, and about a cup of my oil mixed with some bad Costco herb mix to dip our 3 slices of bread in. Ended up tossing out the leftover cup of
    via r/Cooking
  • 07
    Font - humanCharacter 7 mo. ago I was prepping the steaks and to be "safe" my aunt washed all of the meats in the fridge. She also threw out my tomahawk because it sat in the fridge too long. I was literally letting the steaks sit in the fridge to dry out a bit before grilling. It's been in the fridge for 16 hours.
    via r/Cooking
  • 08
    Font - OJs_knife 7 mo. ago I came back into the kitchen and my sister in law said she checked my stuffed mushrooms and they "looked a little dry" so she added some olive oil to them. Opened the oven to see that they were swimming in oil. Like, a half inch of oil in the baking dish. She ruined the mushrooms and used up the last of an amazing bottle of olive oil a friend brought back from Greece for me.
    via r/Cooking
  • 09
    Font - NoelleRoyal 7 mo. ago My mom intentionally blunts knives/ throws them away when they're sharp because she's worried about injuring herself on the sharpness of the knife
    via r/Cooking
  • 10
    Font - __fujoshi - 7 mo. ago i was making a large amount of loaded potato soup, in an 18qt turkey roaster. my dad would wait until i had left the kitchen so it could simmer and thicken and add seasonings to it without tasting it. more salt here, more pepper there... until he finally decided it wasn't thick enough and added some mashed potato flakes to it. he then had the AUDACITY to complain it was too salty. i very nearly threw my bowl at him i was so p never cooked at his house again.
    via r/Cooking
  • 11
    Font - endorrawitch 7 mo. ago One Christmas, my grandfather's second wife sneaked into the kitchen when my mother left the stove for a moment and added a bunch of water to her gumbo because she felt it was "too thick". My mom cried. It was like 5 gallons and it was perfect until Joy The Imbecile ruined it.
    via r/Cooking
  • 12
    Font - RudderlessLife - 7 mo. ago . I feel this one. I had a big pot of sausage and meatballs in Sunday gravy, and a friend dumped several table spoons of cayenne into it because "I'm Sicilian, I like it spicy". Dude, you're a Nebraskan who's never going to be invited to dinner in your lifetime.
    via r/Cooking
  • 13
    Font - Rustymetal14. 7 mo. ago While making fajitas my wife once realize we were out of cayenne. Instead of telling me, she grabbed a spice that seemed to be the most similar and used the same amount of that instead. What she grabbed was Trader Joe's Smoked African Ghost Chili powder. We had to use a lot of sour cream that night.
    via r/Cooking
  • 14
    Font - Just_call_me_Marcia · 7 mo. ago Just last night: Grandma, who always hated cooking, lives with me. For reference, the only seasoning she believes in is salt, and she likes her steaks "well boiled." I had to go out for an event last night but didn't want her to go hungry, so I made chicken and noodles in the crock pot. Seared the chicken, then threw in to slow cook with onions, garlic, and veggies, whole deal. Just before leaving the house, I added the noodles and appropriate bit of water
    via r/Cooking
  • 15
    Font - I got home several hours later and went to put the food away (she's great about turning down the crock pot to a holding temp after getting her own food) and was shocked to discover the noodles were still CRUNCHY! I asked her if something happened, and she said "well, after you left I went to check on things and it looked like you put too much water in there, it would be soupy, so I used a cup to scoop it out. Those noodles weren't very well done by the way." I love this woman, but how she
    via r/Cooking
  • 16
    Font - Hattapueh 7 mo. ago my ex-girlfriend's father was something very special in the kitchen. He cooked meatloaf completely covered with water. The 'meatloaf' was wet and soggy. He cuts at least five thin slices out of a normal steak. Not that he wanted to save money. He said the paper-like slices cooked more evenly that way. Paella had to be cooked from a frozen fish mix. The water that forms in the bag during defrosting was collected and later poured over the individual finished portions. "T
    via r/Cooking
  • 17
    Cheezburger Image 9718874880
    via r/Cooking
  • 18
    Font - A-RovinIGo 7 mo. ago Yup, my husband did something similar with my ham soup stock. It was "full of fat" so he dumped it -- all of it -- into a coffee can. Yeah, it was "full of fat" that was going to rise to the top and solidify, so I could use the precious ham bone broth that had been simmering for hours.
    via r/Cooking
  • 19
    Font - 97 ariadnemara · 7 mo. ago Similar story. Was baking a pavlova for a cooking competition in a family holiday. And 'someone' also turned up the heat to quicken the proces. Turned out in a delicious black burned piece of sugar. I'm still mad about it especially since that someone wasnt man enough to admit that they did it. Reply Share 1.2k CatumEntanglement 7 mo. ago I got sabotaged periodically by my exMIL. No one was allowed to have a better tasting anything compared to her. She even gave
    via r/Cooking
  • 20
    Font - Ulsterman2021 7 mo. ago Your wok was all black so I scrubbed it clean for you. 1.4k Reply Share MarshallApplewhiteDo - 7 mo. ago I had a room mate who did that in college. She scrubbed an entire teflon pan clean with steel wool.
    via r/Cooking
  • 21
    Font - Kiruvi 7 mo. ago I bought my partner a nice wok for our first Christmas together, and a couple weeks later we came back to their apartment to find that the roommates had used it to make something horrible and sticky (some kind of misguided stir fry), and left it in a sink full of water coated with a thick layer of scum and sauce. Brand-new wok absolutely coated in rust, less than 30 days after Christmas. We don't speak to those people anymore (unsurprisingly, they were awful in lots of ot
    via r/Cooking

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