Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

right around thanksgiving the NYtimes published some vegetarian side dishes. there was a cornbread/ broccoli rabe/ cheese casserole. i didn't feel like making my own cornbread, so i purchased some at a local grocery store. i should have tasted it first and read the recipe that stated it had to sit for 4-6 hours before baking (it was some sort of strata thing)...anywho, i put it together and soaked it for about an hour...served it to the family and realized that the cornbread was very sweet and mushy, so it was like eating broccoli rabe cake...it was truly nasty...

I've thrown out batches of pie crust dough that don't come together - thankfully, I've since improved my crust-making skills.

Like everyone else here, I HATE to throw away food... but if the recipe was truly a dog, I'd toss it.

There have been a few situations where things have been salvageable. If I made a stew and it just didn't appeal to me, I'd hand it off to a family member who doesn't cook. A few weeks ago, I was trying to make a lemony aioli for fish (from a Jamie Oliver recipe on SE). I had to throw out the first two baches. I made something, but it was not aioli or mayonnaise or any kind of emulsion. In the end, I scooped some Hellman's into a bowl, added a bunch of lemon juice, some dill, paprika and capers, and spooned that over the fish. Received many compliments.

Them: "This sauce is delicious! What's in it?"

Me: "I don't want to talk about it."

And so it goes.

I try not to throw out food, and have become fairly adept at recycling leftovers into something else (grinding overdone beef for example, to use in shepherd's pie, something I did this weekend).

But I have made a couple of dogs that simply got kicked to the curb - if I find it inedible, the rest of my family definitely will! The one that always sticks in my head was an antipasto pizza - when I opened the jar of antipasto I KNEW it was going to be a mistake (I was fairly new to cooking, and didn't realize the mixture was pickled AND it contained green beans!). The recipe called for me to spread the antipasto over a pizza crust, top it with plenty of bacon and heat through. My ex and I took one bite each and just stared at each other in horror. He gamely took another bite. I place my piece on my plate, picked up the rest of the pizza, deposited it directly in the garbage, followed by the rest of the jar of antipasto. We didn't stop laughing for an hour, which was about how long it took to change and hit our favourite restaurant!

there is a restaurant in my area that serves rings of similar size but they have a substantial amount of onion in them and they are fabulous. if you're planning a trip to northern indiana soon (ok, you can stop laughing now) look up Between the Buns.

I can usually tell before something is done that it's just not going to work, so I feed the garbage disposal, (salvaging meat scraps for the dogs if possible), and start something else asap!

I usually swear a lot while doing this.

That looks more like an onion flavored donut.

The hugest pot of chili...it was meant to be a very small batch, and I was trying to recreate a restaurant recipe from over 10 years ago...and I never saw the recipe in the first place, just ate the stuff. I kept adding and adding and fixing and fixing until I had at least 3 gallons of disgusting....stuff. It had to go....and I still havent figured out that chili!