Beefburger of charcoal!

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Anyone else have trouble with cooking?

Me and my mum went to our local butchers the other day and, while we were there, bought two beefburgers. Nothing else to eat this morning so I decide to try my hand at cooking them both and putting them on a butty.

I cooked them for about 25-30 minutes or so, and when they came out they looked like charcoal with a bit of meat in the centre! After I ate them I realised where I went wrong but I was cooking the burgers from recollections of the last time I cooked them myself (oh, must have been last year that I tried it!). I thought it was quite funny to be honest. Must try harder!

I'm actually on week three of a course in south Manchester that will teach me how to cook and that sort of thing. I can't cook but I hope to learn. And learn I must because I truly love real food and would consider it deeply humiliating if I lived on my own and wasn't able to feed myself adequately. And with such a good cook as my mother I am determined to learn.

Would anyone else here like to share their cooking disasters?

Let me think...

I was cooking pancakes one morning for breakfast, but since I'm not very good at cooking with a frying pan, I burnt most of them. One of them was almost black because I left it in the frying pan for too long! I just threw it straight in the bin!

I often have mix results from ground beef patties. I make them very thin and cook for a few minutes per side. Never pressing or cutting them and turning only ounce. The meat should be at room
temperture ideally before cooking starts.

The best burger I have ever eaten and perhaps the worst too I made myself. I think a high fat ground beef is better to.

You might try searing the meat on both sides for say one minute in
an oven proof skillet (on the range) then wrapping the meat in baconand cooking till a patty (larger ones) get to 160 F (in your oven)

What temperature did you cook them on? It sounds like you cooked them too long anyway, but then how big were the burgers?

I tend to find if you put the grill on full heat (for big burgers not little ones, what's the point?) and do them for in between 8-10 minutes each side tops, then they are good. Make sure the grill is totally heated though otherwise one side will be done better than the other. I have an electric grill and that can take about 5 minutes to be fully heated up

My grandma ALWAYS burns whatever she has to bake or toast. If it's not charcoal black, it's not done. Her burnt brownies were especially infamous in my eyes. My mom had this incident involving a honeydew melon and an exploding microwave. One of my little sisters microwaved chicken with ketchup on the plate and the ketchup became a black, revolting mess. I've made my oatmeal too watery due to poor measuring but that's about it.

I cook OK food. I rarely burn or undercook food. My dorm's cafeteria can't say as much about themselves. It's really hard to not get a charcoalburger there.

I can cook anything that is microwavable. Both my siblings and my parents forbid me to cook because I'm awful at it. I burn everything.

At least I made this beautiful cheesy bacon surprise to make up for it. It was sublime!

I've made some pretty spectacular cooking gaffes.

Back in the day, I worked up the courage to invite this girl in my apartment complex over for dinner. For some reason I decided to make enchiladas, which I never made before, and the recipe called for a clove of garlic. I had no idea what a clove of garlic was, so I bought an entire garlic plant (bulb?), took off all the skins, cut the pieces up, and threw it all in.

Few hours later she comes over when the enchiladas are done. Right away she noticed my whole apartment smelled of garlic and said she really liked it. We fixed our plates and sat down to eat. She took a bite, immediately turned white and took off for the bathroom. I thought "Oh crap, that's not good" and took a bite of my own enchilada. Now I absolutely love garlic, but it was so strong it literally took my breath away, like I had been punched in the stomach. It was all I could do not to gag. I started getting embarrased as it was now obvious I made a huge mistake.

She eventually emerged from the bathroom and joked that I was trying to kill her. I lamely apologized that dinner didn't turn out like I planned. We went over the recipe to work out what went wrong and when the part about the garlic and I explained what I did. All I remember is "YOU DID WHAT?????" followed by a stern lecture about how a clove of garlic is one little piece rather than the whole thing. I was really embarrased now and ended up throwing my enchiladas in the trash and ordering a pizza.

Now I know what a clove of garlic is and I'll never forget it.


Another one of my great gaffes- When I was single I would make a huge batch of food on Sundays, like spaghetti or tacos or something, then eat the leftovers for lunch and dinner the following week. One week I decided to make eggrolls so I found a recipe, bought all the ingredients, and spent pretty much an entire Sunday chopping up cabbages, carrots, pork, etc. then assembling and frying about 50 eggrolls. By the way, I wouldn't recommend making your own- way too labor intensive. But that day the deed was done, they tasted good, and everything was great.

Monday rolls around and it's time to heat up some eggrolls for lunch. I put a few in my toaster oven and turned it on. A few minutes later I check on them and MY TOASTER IS ON FIRE!! The flames are going all the way to the ceiling. I guess the oil from frying dripped onto the heating elements and ignited. So I panic, grab a handfull of bath towels, pick up the flaming toaster with the towels, carry it out of the kitchen, through the living room, open the front door, and threw it out my front door as hard as I could. I was on the second floor. The flaming toaster sailed through the air about 50 feet before crashing on the sidewalk below, narrowing missing one of my neighbors, and continued burning on the ground until I found a fire extinguisher and ran downstairs and put it out.

This whole thing took place in about 10 seconds. I've never moved so fast before or since. The next day I noticed there was a trail of holes between the kitchen and the front door where drips of oil had burned through the carpet (lost my security deposit because of it). I'm amazed I didn't burn myself because I wasn't wearing shoes. Lesson learned- eggrolls + toaster oven = BAD!

Tastes quite a bit better than it looks. It's filling, low-brow cuisine of Lancashire. (Well, it's not really - the recipe is made-up but it more than does the job.)

Check every few minutes? That's a must. I can stand slightly undercooked food, but not overcooked carbon that used to be food. So long as the bacteria are dead, and my food is warm.