I set out tonight to make a delicious chicken paprika kind of stewish thing I've done before. As is my usual habit I took the jar of paprika from the cupboard and sprinkled a generous amount in the pan. Tasted after half an hour and fuck me, it was HOT.

It was cayenne pepper, not paprika.

My stomach actually hurts a bit.

That time I made banana bread but with salt instead of sugar. Accidentally, of course.

It looked sad and squishy, I tried a bit anyway. It was odd, my tongue detected something amiss, but the bad taste arrived a second or two after my brain started "reacting", like warning lights were flashing but I didn't know why.

And then the taste of bananabrine arrived and my face locked up in a rictus grimace.i couldn't control my mouth so I had to scrape it out with my hand.

Truly awful.

FYI, the trick to making caramelized onions is boiling the onions. After you cut up your onions and add them to your pan, add a small amount of water, enough that the water will cook out after a few minutes. The water will steam the onions and cook them more quickly, which will them make them faster and easier to caramelize.

Here's a video to demonstrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqhzil3wJw

This trick works well to make mushrooms more flavorful and all sorts of other foods!

I found a recipe for Boston Beans that sounded interesting. It involved stewing kidney beans with tomatoes, brown sugar and bacon bits.

At the end of it I realised I'd made baked beans, exactly like you'd get in a can. It tasted okay, but 45 minutes of effort when I could open a can and heat the contents in five minutes for the same result?

Pumpkin pie using fresh pie pumpkins. It's not that hard, but it takes more time and means washing more dishes, and no one that I know of can tell the difference vs. a pie made using canned 100% pumpkin.

Angel Food Cake. It turned out fine, but it really wasn't much better than the store bought kind. Plus it calls for about a million egg whites so I was left with a million egg yolks when it was all said and done.

Fucking cauliflower vegan "wings" they were the nastiest, smelliest, mushiest pile of gross I have ever tasted.

I have a dog who is a rescue, she was severely neglected when we first got her as a foster and her file stated she had to eat her own feces in order to survive at the place she was rescued from. Well, those cauliflower wings I just told you about? She sniffed them and gagged!! That's how bad they were.

Orange chicken.

It was my comfort food while studying in the US. At Panda Express it was cheap, convenient, and delicious.

Then I tried making it. And... although I could make delicious-er, it was too much work. Then I forgot how much work it was, and made it again, and I swore, never again. I don't have a proper kitchen or a fryer, and it took me about two hours of active work (if you're serving 8 people). Most other food I make is max 20 minutes, and the rest is just time passing and heat doing its thing. Even dishes that take 8 hours to prepare, is usually still only 20-30 minutes of labour.

Without the right kitchen equipment. Never again.

I might make it again soon.

One time I made a Chinese restaurant favorite, mei cai kou rou.

It was very long and made a ton of dirty dishes.

It turned out not quite as good as restaurant quality, cost the same, and I learned it’s better left to someone with a prep cook and dishwasher.

Puff pastry! The constant fear the butter getting too soft, the (seeming) hours of rolling then resting in the freezer, the failure of witnessing the butter melt out in the oven was just too much for me, especially when the pre made frozen stuff is quite good.

That said, I love a challenge and have been thinking of trying it again.

Fried chicken, it was absolutely delicious but the prep work, frying and dish clean up was more than I’d like.

Some sort of marshmallow dessert that added condensed milk and sugar.

It caught on fire in the oven.

It tasted like eating pure sugar.

Threw it away after it cooled and it was also a bitch to clean off the pans. 0 stars.

We followed a cake recipe once from some US food blog. We learned then that you should only use half or even one quarter of the sugar stated in recipes from Americans and even then it might be sickeningly sweet.

My wife and I tried to make Pho one year for our anniversary. Went all out and got stuff from the Asian market to make it authentic and to the recipe I was recommended.

It was so bad, we just had to throw it out and order pizza. It sucks cuz I really like Pho, but it's just not worth trying to do myself.

French Onion Soup is indeed a bitch and a half, but its also delicious and vwry affordable to make. Next time, try a heavy cast iron pot; it'll absorb the onions flavor without stinking. That said, you still have to endure chopping 3 lbs of onions...

I'll probably never make fried ravioli again. I like em on salad but its just a pain to deepfry anything and the payoff isnt worth it.

Smoked brisket. I don't have the proper smoker, but that didn't stop me. I turned the thing and watched fuel and air and temperature every half hour for 12 hours. It was delicious. Never again.

I can get pretty much the same results just buying from the barbecue joint 3 miles away.

Pumpkin lasagna roll ups. Absolutely delicious but not worth the time and effort.

Homemade Soup Dumplings (Xiao Long Bao), made from scratch. So much work. It became quickly evident doing it properly required skill you couldn't learn from a video or a recipe book and would take a really long time to master.

The whole thing ended up kinda thick and clumpy. Definitely one of those things better left to people who know what they're doing.

Boiling your own beets takes so fucking long, I had no idea. 4 hours on the stove for a simple beet. No thanks, I'll just buy them in a jar.

Thanksgiving 2019 my wife and I decided to make an apple pie from scratch. Cook and prep time was estimated for 3h this was with us factoring in never having baked before. We decided we could start at 8 and be fine. Fast forward to 230am and we are just removing it from the oven. Next day everyone is trying it and we all agreed it was probably the best pie ever made in the family. I'll never try again because it wasn't worth all that work.

NEVER put lemon juice in an omelette. Absolutely disgusting. Once tried it, not following any recipe. Never again.

I made prime rib and was scared of the oven constantly burning, causing me to constantly turn it off and then back on whenever someone got angry since I was at the house alone babysitting the oven at the time. When we went to eat it, everyone complimented it and theorized me constantly jumpstarting the oven while it was cooking actually made it better than it otherwise would've been. So while I successfully made prime rib by accident, I'm not going through that again.

Pad Thai, found a recipient from Hot Thai Kitchen YouTube video. She made it look easy.

3 hr later I produced a goop that was un-edible. So bad my SO asked me never to try again.

Chocolate soufflé. Fuck that caved in nonsense

I mixed myself a Bloody Mary, just to find out if I like it, and I didn't like it at all.

Now I know. Never again.

More of a cooking technique than a recipe. I wanted to make a stir fry more substantial so I added flour to it. Strongly recommend against ever doing this.

Cooking meth, I almost got intoxicated and exploded..

Inspired by this video, I tried making smörgåstårta, a Swedish sandwich cake.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=I98AAMQm9f0

It had lots of ingredients, but it was like eating salty mayonnaise-flavored swamp mud.