How (not) to cook pasta.

[Dave7]

Hope this link works. Three 20 year old exchange students decide to make a spag bol......but have no idea. They throw the spag in a dry pan and heat it, then they have to call the fire brigade when the spag catches fire.
Three of them
Age 20
And NONE OF THEM know it needs water

https://www.unilad.co.uk/grub/ameri...aly-start-fire-by-cooking-pasta-without-water

 

[swee'pea99]

Reminds me of watching a teacher taking a cookery class in one of those back to the future programmes, gaping in disbelief as one of her charges chopped an onion without taking the brown skin off. She didn't know you were supposed to. I suppose if no-one's ever taught you/cooked around you...

 

[Cycleops]

Amazing, maybe they come from a home where nobody cooks.

 

[Chris S]

I've heard of somebody who tried to make fried rice using uncooked rice.

 

[Globalti]

I won't tell you about our first attempts to cook couscous in our student halls in France.

...oh well okay, I will. We had eaten it and seen Algerian and Tunisian students cooking it so we got some and boiled it with water, which turned it into wallpaper paste. After several failed attempts somebody explained that you needed to pre-cook it very hot with a little oil before adding a small amount of water. Nowadays couscous comes pre-cooked anyway so you can just boil it up.

 

[captain nemo1701]

I once had to show someone in their 20's how to boil an egg....no joking!.

 

[MossCommuter]

In my 1st house share at uni' I had to help my mate out when he tried to cook a pie under the gas grill.

 

[Brains]

The normal technique used by Explorer Scouts (15-18 years old) cooking pasta when on camp is:

• Light Trangia meths stove (wasting fuel)
• Put 2 liter billy on stove
• Fill bill to the brim with half a kilo of dried pasta
• Pour in a liter of freezing cold water straight from the tap
• Wait
• After 20 mins the water starts to boil
• The dried pasta expands and starts to explode slowly out of the billy
• Now read the instructions, it says boil for 10 minutes
• Fuel now runs out, which they realize 5 minutes later
• Pour meths into (hot) Trangia burner and attempt to relight (We often end up with singed fingers, eyelashes, hair at this point)
• Get pasta boiling again
• Drain pasta as per instructions

Inedible Wall paper paste is the predictable result

Every year, we run two cooking evenings prior to camp (one of which will involve pasta)
Every year at least one patrol will cook as above
Every year we sit back and watch the disaster slowly unfold

You would think that people in their late teens would know better.
They don't.
Cooking has now been dropped from most schools.
It means the only place they may learn is home, however most parents did not learn to cook either, it's a dying skill that is now only known by grandparents.

 

[Brains]

In my 1st house share at uni' I had to help my mate out when he tried to cook a pie under the gas grill.

Cheese on toast in a toaster results in a fire

 

[Brains]

I once had to show someone in their 20's how to boil an egg....no joking!.

I'm really not surprised at all!

 

[Dave7]

Cheese on toast in a toaster results in a fire

And you know this how?

 

[cisamcgu]

Cheese on toast in a toaster results in a fire

Lay the toaster on it's side - easy

 

[Brains]

And you know this how?

errrr, a friend told me

 

[Brains]

..... And one that really was from a friend (and a saw the results)

Many years ago a friend had a number of 30 liter drums of honey (the reason why is another story)
After a few years in storage the honey had gone solid
The family decided to sell the honey, but no one would buy the stuff by the drum
So the family bought a several thousand rather nice jars and had labels printed up saying homemade organic honey with some great graphics
They then started selling the honey far and wide

In order to get the honey out of the drums, (which only had a small screw top, like a bottle), what they used to do was put the drum on the gas stove, put all 4 burners on a low heat, and leave it for a couple of hours to warm through and de-solidify.
One night, unable to sleep, the master of the household decided to melt some honey.
After a couple of hours, as dawn was breaking, he looked down the hole at the top of the drum. The honey was still solid, so he got a long wooden spoon and prodded the crust of honey at the top.

BANG! 30 liters of super-heated honey exploded out of the hole, hit the ceiling, and then came down as a vapor over everything.

He was lucky, the blast had blown out the gas, and he was wearing a thick toweling dressing gown, so he only got a burnt hand, and a very burnt head, as a lump of hot honey congealed on the light and then dripped down.
The vaporized honey spread over all surfaces and went into all the draws and cupboards and over every surface within range.

The end result, once he got back from hospital, was the entire kitchen had to be ripped out, and then rebuilt including a new floor and ceiling and re plastering the walls.

 

[Electric_Andy]

My stepdaughter (aged 17 at the time) once asked "is there anything for dinner". I said "sorry you've missed dinner, but here's a tin of beans you can do beans on toast. She replied "how do I cook beans?"