Some people just seem to be naturals in the kitchen. They know how to pair different ingredients together to create delicious flavors, they can use all those different cooking appliances with ease, and they can follow a complicated recipe without breaking a sweat.
Other people, meanwhile, are the total opposite! No matter how hard they try, everything they attempt to cook just turns out wrong. They burn their pizzas, they ruin their cakes, and they can set the whole kitchen on fire if left alone in there too long.
Here are 60 examples of folks who should just stay out of the kitchen and leave the cooking to someone else!
1) Mug Cake 101
Mug cakes are some of the easiest things to cook. You just toss a few ingredients in a mug and put it in the microwave for a little while. It couldn’t be much easier, but someone still found a way to screw it up.
2) Who Lives In A Pineapple- Oh NO!
We can at least tell that this was supposed to be Spongebob, thanks to the square shape and yellow body, but really, it’s an absolute disaster anyway you look at it. Even Mr Krabs wouldn’t be able to sell this thing.
3) Time To Stop
Even bad cooks can usually do the simple things like making a cup of coffee or using a toaster. When you can’t even get that right, it’s time to stop.
4) Take A Chill Pill, Pops
When you start getting violent with the food you’re making, it’s probably time to leave the kitchen, take a seat, and calm down a little.
5) Put It Out!
It’s bad enough this terrible cook set the spaghetti on fire, but why are they taking the time to snap a photo of it instead of just putting that fire out!?
6) When Good Intentions Go Bad
A girl’s boyfriend wanted to be nice and make dinner as a surprise. She came home to this. At least he made the effort, but it ended oh so badly.
7) Fractions Are Hard
We get it. Nobody (except math teachers) likes fractions, but you need to at least have a basic understanding of how they work if you want to follow a recipe. 1/3 is bigger than 1/4!
8) Copy + Paste
Nailed it! A perfect copy! We can’t even tell the difference between the two! Oh wait, yes we can…
9) Whoops
Looks like you’re only getting one slice of toast, after all! How disappointing.
10) Don’t Drink And Drive With That Thing
It’s hard to know what was going through the worker’s mind when they prepared a take-out milkshake like this! Didn’t they have any cups around? No bottles? Nothing that people usually drink out of? Well, at least they supplied a straw.
11) You’ll Need A Lot Of Fairy Dust To Fix That
Oh Tink! What happened to you!? Without the picture-in-picture, we would never have guessed that this was supposed to be everyone’s favorite fairy.
12) What Did You Do?
It looks like this person tried to turn their oven into a BBQ, with a roaring fire and smoke filling the kitchen. And what’s that weird red mess they’re trying to cook?
13) It’ll Feel Better In The Morning
It’s pretty hilarious that someone broke a bowl and placed it back like nothing happened, but what really wows us about this picture is just how clean that break was. Usually, bowls shatter into lots of randomly-sized pieces, but this one seems to have been sliced perfectly in half!
14) I Live In Your Nightmares
They say if you look at this hellish bunny for too long, he’ll visit you in your dreams! Quickly, let’s just forget about it and go to the next picture.
15) That’s Not How Rice Works
This person was just trying to cook some rice, and ended up making a rice cake instead.
16) A Tiny Bit Hungry
You know when you’re hungry, but not all that hungry? Like, you couldn’t exactly eat an entire bucket of fried chicken, but you could still go for a single nugget? It seems like that’s what happened here.
17) Run Away
If you walk into a kitchen and see this, just leave. Just walk away and try to erase the image from your mind, hoping that whoever is responsible will somehow clean it all up.
18) That’s A Lot Of Hashtags
This person is really proud of their ‘yummy smoked ham and cheese bread’. They’re so proud, they added 20 hashtags and shared it for all the world to see. Maybe it really is tasty, but it looks more like those neck pillows you see people wearing on planes.
19) What A Let Down
Imagine opening up a box of candies only to find some stinky tuna pasta inside instead! Such a disappointment…
20) Frosty Needs A Diet
She looked so happy to begin with, but the final result definitely isn’t what she was expecting! What a disaster.
21) Metal And Microwaves Don’t Mix
The first rule of using a microwave is never, ever, under any circumstances put metal inside it! They really don’t like metal at all, and this is what can happen when you break that rule (the choco spread in this picture had a metal lid on top).
22) That’s Just Mean
Wow. Don’t let this guy in a kitchen, he’ll smash the whole place up! He clearly has anger issues to have thrown everyone’s drinks in the trash just because he found his own there. Most of those drinks are totally innocent!
23) Straight From The Fires Of Hell
Maybe they fell asleep. Maybe they got distracted. Maybe they just got forgot. But whoever was cooking these snacks and fries clearly made a big mistake.
24) You Pea’d Everywhere
This cook just couldn’t help themselves. They pea’d all over the kitchen floor! It’s going to take a while to clean up all that mess.
25) Dumb Question
Okay, the guy who responded could have been a little more polite about it, but the person posing the question should really have known better. To make a recipe without nuts, you simply don’t add the nuts!
26) Nope. Nope. Nope.
This weird meatloaf baby was never a good idea and will never be a good idea! Nobody wants to eat a bacon diaper, especially when it’s wrapped around such an ugly little creature.
27) How Did This Happen?
You know you suck at cooking when frying pans start exploding right in front of your eyes! This probably happened because the lid was too big and the glass was in contact with the heat.
28) You Should Be Ashamed
The whole of Mexico just shuddered at the sight of this awful plate of crackers and cheese trying to pass itself off as ‘nachos’.
29) Cat-astrophe
This poor lady must have spent a long time preparing that tasty tomato sauce. At least the cat is having a good time!
30) I’d Still Eat It…
They were expecting to make delicious fried mozzarella bites. Instead, they got a tray filled with melted, sticky cheese. It’s probably still pretty tasty though.
31) You’re Supposed To Chop It First
It’s usually pretty easy to tell if someone isn’t very experienced in the kitchen, especially if they do something really stupid like this! What did they think would happen by dumping a huge piece of brocolli in a pan like that?!
32) Pizza Disaster
Imagine putting a pizza in the oven and getting hungrier as you smell the melted cheese filling the kitchen. Then, you open up the door of the oven and see this looking back at you! Instead of a delicious pizza dinner, you now have no food at all and a huge clean-up job to take care of.
33) Pizza Disaster 2.0
Is the person who made this pizza from another dimension? Do they live in the ‘Upside Down’ from Stranger Things? Why would they possibly try to cook a pizza with the toppings facing down like that? So many questions and so few answers.
34) So Sorry!
Plastic and high temperatures don’t usually work well together, as this poor guy found out. At least he made the effort to write an apology.
35) When You’re Really Desperate For Cookies
Looks like this person’s fiancé was really in the mood for cookies. They didn’t have any in the house, so they scooped out the little bits of cookie dough from some ice cream and made these super small cookie bites.
36) Scarred For Life
We don’t know about you, but we’d be scarred for life if we were innocently trying to make a smoothie and then this happened! How did the top of the Nutribullet end up in the ceiling like that?
37) An A For Effort
At least this person did their best. And that’s just about the only good thing we can say about this awful monkey cake. Someone needs to just eat that thing as quickly as possible so we don’t have to look at it.
38) Haunting
This dreadful cook was trying to make banana ghost pops. It’s a pretty simple recipe, honestly, but it still ended badly, with a plate full of banana mush as the ghosts all melted into each other.
39) An Improvised Can Opener
It’s always frustrating when you can’t find a can opener, but there are a few different ways you can improvise to still get the can open and access the tasty goodness inside. This isn’t one of them. We hope whoever did this was super careful when touching that can. They turned it into a deathtrap!
40) That’s Where I Left Them!
Many people accidentally drop things into their cake mixes and cookie doughs, but it’s usually little things like an earring or bracelet, not a huge pair of glasses!
41) It’s The Thought That Counts
A guy’s girlfriend decided to cook some mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner as a treat. Unfortunately, she got it all wrong, making some kind of mac ‘n’ cheese cake instead!
42) Opening Things Is Hard
We’ve all encountered a tough jar from time to time, with one of those lids that just won’t seem to move no matter how hard you try. It feels like even the Hulk himself couldn’t open it, and desperate times call for desperate measures…
43) Are You Trying To Make A Volcano?
We’ve heard of chocolate lava cake, but this is really going one step too far! Someone needs to turn off that oven and throw that thing in a bucket of ice.
44) Yum…
Believe it or not, that bowl is filled with guacamole! The ‘chef’ thought it looked a bit yellow, so they decided to add some green food coloring to brighten it up a little. Now it just looks like ectoplasm.
45) Not Very Vegan-Friendly
It’s getting easier and easier for vegetarians and vegans to find great food in restaurants all over cities great and small, but it looks like this girl walked into the wrong place! All they could think to offer her as a vegan birthday cake was a single slice of banana!
46) The Truth Is Out There
Someone was just trying to make some fried eggs, but they wound up discovering extraterrestrial life right on their plate! Who would want to eat something that looks like that
47) Lies!
You often see ‘life hack’ lists saying that a spoon balanced on top of a pot will prevent the water from overflowing. This person tried it, with no success!
48) Beef Flavor
Oh dear… This is why it’s always so important to read the label of everything you eat! Otherwise, you might end up like Dan here, chowing down on a beef-flavored doggie sundae.
49) They Were So Cute!
This one started off nicely! The little chick heads were super cute to begin with, but then the oven just turned them all into one gigantic, mushy monstrosity.
50) Not Quite
Looks like someone has never seen a mango before! Somehow, they put a picture of an avocado on the mango flavor ice cream.
51) Is That What It’s Supposed To Look Like?
We have a feeling that this evil little thing probably isn’t exactly what the cook intended to make when they set out. They were probably hoping for a cute little hedgehog. Instead, they made something from a horror movie.
52) Oh Dear…
Here’s one more pizza disaster for the road! This person almost got everything right, but forgot the cutting board while putting the pizza in the oven, leading to molten plastic pouring all over the place.
53) Total Chaos
It looks like an earthquake struck this kitchen, but it’s actually just the work of a very bad cook who should never be allowed in there ever again.
54) Kill Us
Oh dear… The intentions were good from this awful cook. They just wanted to make some cute smiley faces. Instead, they wound up with a plate of doomed souls from the pits of the underworld.
55) A Learning Experience
Cooking is a learning experience. The first time you try it, you’re probably not going to make a world class meal, but you slowly learn more and more from each new recipe. This lady, for example, learned a valuable lesson about not leaving knives (or any kind of cutlery!) in her pastry while making a strudel.
56) Don’t Eat The Shell!
Looks like someone totally missed the point of what a hard boiled egg is supposed to be! They ate the shell too and naturally found the whole thing pretty ‘disgusting’ until someone pointed out their mistake.
57) Unhappy Birds
These birds aren’t angry, they’re just disappointed. They were supposed to be cute and beautiful, but they turned out ugly and awful!
58) Still Tasty
Some of these food failures should be thrown away and never thought of again, but some of them are still perfectly edible. Sure, these chocolate-coated kiwi slices don’t look great, but they’re probably still quite tasty.
59) We Don’t Even…
How did this possibly happen!? This awful cook seems to have broken the rules of physics entirely. It must have taken a long time to clean up this chaotic mess.
60) Taste The Rainbow
Maybe we’re a little too ‘traditional’, but we believe mac ‘n’ cheese should be yellow. It should never, ever be rainbow-colored like this awful monstrosity! That’s just gross. And there’s way too much sauce too.
We have to hope that these bad cooks learned some valuable lessons! Many of them should probably just stay away from the kitchen altogether in future, but maybe there’s a little hope left for one or two of them.
Either way, their awful culinary creations and cooking disasters definitely gave us a good laugh! Share the list around with your friends and family to let them know that everyone can have a bad day in the kitchen from time to time.