20 Baking and Cooking Messes from Incompetent Folks Who Have No Business in the Kitchen

Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor

Apr 25, 2025 4:00 PM EDT

What gives you the most amount of anxiety in the kitchen? For some folks, it's not knowing the right or most efficient way to chop everything. For others, it's vague instructions in recipes that could easily go wrong. For instance, being told to eyeball something is the worst kind of instruction for the thorough, detail-oriented cooking novice like myself.

Cooking can be rewarding, but it can also be humiliating. I will never forget the first time I cooked dinner for my partner. I went for a simple breaded chicken recipe that my parents had made for years when I was growing up. I knew the process by heart and had made it for myself before. What could possibly go wrong, right?

As it turns out, a lot could go wrong. Something about the added pressure of having to cook for someone made me completely botch the whole recipe. I thought I had just barely salvaged the meal, but when my partner cut the chicken for a first bite, it was still completely uncooked on the inside despite beijng completely burned on the outside. All I wanted to do after that moment was crawl into a corner and hide. I'd say we laugh about it today, but I still feel far more anxious about the memory than anything else.

Keep scrolling below for these folks' amusing kitchen mishaps!