21 Cooking Fails and Bad Food for Optimistic Home Chefs Learning to Trust the Process (October 15, 2026)

Author image for Cata Holmes
Cata Holmes • Writer
Oct 14, 2026 5:15 PM EDT

Who needs a five-star meal when your kitchen can serve up five-star chaos?

Imagine coming from a family of cooks, and you being the only one who wasn't born with that part of the genes. Because, yes, that's me. From my dad's side, cooking (and also playing the drums) is in our system, and there's not a single family member who has at least a couple of complicated and good recipes up their sleeve that they can pull out to brag about from time to time. Not all of them are professional cooks, but some of them are, so in every family event, cooking is a big topic, and there's always enough discussion about it.

My uncle Francis is the best of them all. He's my dad's brother and has been working in a hotel's kitchen for more than two decades. He knows and has seen it all, so you can imagine how much he doesn't like to cook for us when he comes to visit. Since he's not working, the last thing he wants to do is touch a kitchen, yet he's the first one to criticize someone's meal or point out a few things that could have been better. He's annoying, but we love him… and we only see him once or twice a year, so it's not that big of a deal.

The problem with being from this family is the fact that cooking is a skill that has to be mastered. But I'm still trying to figure out how to turn on the burners on my stove. I don't know why I wasn't born with the chef genes, or even with the joy of cooking. I might be too similar to my mom in that way, but honestly, I can't cook. Not at all. I can certainly write, and they can't, but it's not really something I can brag about since nobody really gets it. Anyway, growing up being the only one who can't cook has been… a journey, to say the least.

I'm pretty much over it at this point, and whenever my uncle Francis makes a joke about me not being able to cook, I just laugh about it and move on. "If you get angry, it's worse", my mom said, and she's right. Now, I play along, and believe it or not, he's over it too. When I was little, though, it wasn't like this, and I used to get very upset. Feeling different from your family isn't ideal, and I felt like a fish out of water. With therapy, and a lot of work on my self-esteem and value, and learning to cope with it, I'm fine now.

Something that has worked, though, is scrolling through cooking fails on social media. The first time that I wrote this story, I felt like I had found my tribe. Cooking really isn't for everyone, and I'm so glad that I have found people who have also destroyed their kitchen while trying to bake a cake. If this sounds familiar, welcome to the family. Sit tight and enjoy these hilarious fails.

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amateur chef FAIL relatable memes cooking fail funny memes cooking memes
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