'Someone put a chicken in Jello': 25+ Potluck dinners gone wrong

Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor

Jul 5, 2024 11:00 AM EDT

While planning your potluck dinner, be sure to invite the right friend group! Maybe invite the friends whose homes you've eaten in before, or those who claim to be great cooks already. If you invite the wrong people—the kind who ignore safety protocols or just have zero idea what they're doing in the kitchen—you may wind up giving your whole party food poisoning.

You should still invite your friends who can't cook, but just tell them to bring a dessert. That's pretty hard to mess up! Unless you're one of the people who shared their stories with r/AskReddit. Those people could mess up any dish!

Some people think it's okay to leave food out for a really long time. One person saw a friend who cooked a pot of food and just left it on their stove at room temperature for days. He'd heat up the food when he felt like eating it. A decent amount of people think that just because your food looks fine to eat that it is okay. If it's been out for more than an hour or two, especially if it's a meat product, that thing is covered in bacteria. It only takes one bout of food poisoning to change your relationship to food safety forever.

At these potlucks, there was always at least one person who made the grossest food ever (like the "yogurt pizza" crafted by yucky toddler hands). You can check out all of the anecdotes below.

Up next, these people shared what happened when they just could not stop laughing.