I was reading in the ways to save post earlier to never throw out leftovers - freeze them for another meal. What do you all do when you have made something completely horrible (like some new recipe that turns out to be really bad)? I never know what to do - If I can salvage it or not - until you all teach me how to rescue the leftovers I guess the dogs will be happy. They like seeing me in the kitchen trying something new!!:(

I toss it. I've done some really nasty surprises in my recipe testing, and if the family hated it fresh, no amount of disguising it will make it acceptable on the second or any other try.

It's the price you pay for trying new recipes. Some are dumpster material from the get go.

Don't sweat about it, just heave it and count that either the family will die of boredom if you stick to the same 7 weeknight recipes or

or the family budget will simply have to get over the fact that in the pursuit of winning recipes, some duds will appear and they are better quietly trashed.

I do a rating system on ALL recipes I try so I know if they are worth repeating and also if it was a super duper or merely a super meal.

RATE THE DUDS and mark them so you don't absentmindedly do that one again.

says she who has

which is why I started the ratings.

Good attitude, margery. :D

I agree with Margery ---- there's a few things to never mention to my family - EVER...Sticky Chicken & Lentil-Rice Casserole.....however, Zoe loves hearing either one of them!! :)

I'd keep them for threatening the family: You get those chores done, or it'll be TOFU SURPRISE

One last word on leftover management. If it is a good recipe, one they love, or worth making again, they fight over the leftovers, who get's em for their lunch tomorrow that sort of thing.

My aim is to mostly make the kind of food that they like well enough to fight for the right to eat a bit more tomorrow.

That rating system. I never save any recipe that didn't hit at least a 8/10

The Ratings Code:
BRONZE MEDAL AWARD:8/10 really good, just needs a bit of tweaking, leave out a spice or make it less soupy. This recipe is worth a bit of work, it's got great features.

SILVER MEDAL AWARD:9/10 Oh MY that is good. Lets do it again. Dibs on the leftovers, get outta my way, quit shoving I called dibs first says the family as the meal is over.

GOLD MEDAL AWARD:10/10 very very rare but this is the kind of thing that becomes an absolute ace in the whole, my gold standard for meatloaf or whatever it was. Don't mess with success and don't meddle with the recipe.

IF YOU PERSERVERE thru the scary bits of trying a bunch of new recipes (I always aim for at least one new recipe a payday) then have the courage to toss the trashy ones

you will end up with a lot of 8 and 9 out of 10's and even better a little handful of the gold standard 10/10 recipes

and most of your meals will be great.

Still keep trying a new one every payday and have the courage to dumpsterize it if it's a dud.

It won't affect your reputation as a great cook in the slightest. your family will just see it as the recipe at fault, not you because they are used to you slapping Olympic Gold, Silver and Bronze medal foods in front of them.

another quick thought before I go on

and that is, writing in your cookbooks. I always write the rating in that night after dinner of a new recipe, right beside the recipe in the cookbook.

Saves a lot of grief if you are attracted to it again, and forgot that you hated it.

BUT in the front cover of the cookbook I also have a list of those 8 or 9 or 10 out of 10 award winning recipes that I tried and loved.

When I menu plan I pull a few of those back in for another go round, it makes it easy to keep variety in my cooking and establish a family reputation as a great cook.

You can do what my neighbor does. Dig a hole next to the garden and let the plants have their way with them. She has a beautiful garden. And a skinny husband :toothy:

Hopefully, they're few and far between.

But if you have a culinary failure that even your pets won't eat, and you live in an appropriate area like I do, maybe the local wildlife will enjoy it.

I live in an old central section of our town which has been invaded by over development. They raze all the trees and put up multistory cracker box dwellings with parking lots. This pushes the racoons, oppossums, feral cats, rabbits and even deer into the larger and more wooded yards like mine from a kinder, more accommodating time to both humans and animals.

I started placing my inedibles (bones after boiling for broth, excess fat from meats, and culinary experiments gone horriby wrong :scary music!:) in the wooded areas after the racoons made regular forays into my garbage cans. They scattered plastic and paper trash in the process of digging out the edibles.

I got tired of cleaning up the yard, and the critters are happy with my offerings left conveniently in the woods. This practice hasn't attracted them noticeably any more than it did when I put the edibles in the garbage can and has eliminated my time cleaning the yard of scattered trash. Hungry critters can smell a chicken bone in your trash from a mile away!

This is a better solution to me than putting it in the landfill. The critters were here before we were, after all.

Still haven't found a solution to the gangs of two legged nasties that are trying to take over our beautiful town. :(

I'm with Margery all the way on notes in cookbooks. Mine all have notes and a few big black X's. I feed things gone wrong to the dogs and if they don't like it I leave it in the bowl and its always gone in the morning. I bring the dogs in at night. We have all sorts of vistors who like a free meal.

Laurie in Bradenton

See if the dogs can stomach it.... LOL..... if not..... toss it!

I've never really made something we couldn't eat. Leftovers get eaten and garbage goes in the can and stored in the closed grage til trash day. Too many beasties I don't want to attract around here.

I can usually get DH to eat just about anything but if they are that bad I toss 'em.

Garbage disposal :lol:

If it's horrible, I just toss it.
I have tried a few times to salvage something but it never works. So, I just bite the side of my cheek & down the disposal it goes!! LOL

I try to remember to mark it off in my cookbook not to make again or if it's in my online cookbook, I delete it! LOL

I ask :smooch: about it -- being a chef-in-training, he can tell me how to salvage it or if it's fit for the pit, in it goes. :P

Believe it or not, the only recipe that I have tried and it was a total horror was a Paula Deen recipe. It came out of one of her cookbooks and used canned salmon. Not only did it taste nasty, it looked nasty as well. My hubby grew up poor and they had to eat what they could get including squirrel brains, deer hearts, chitterlings and you name it. He took one look at this salmon stuff in the frying pan and refused to eat it. Dd tried it, (she will try anything at least once...Bless her heart) and she spit it out. You were supposed to serve this stuff on biscuits but it never made it that far, LOL.

Come to think of it, I don't even think the dogs would eat it, and they have been known to drag up road kill and eat it. I swear I followed the recipe to the letter, but it was just nasty. :puck: Come to think of it, I've never seen Paula cook it on any of her shows either. I think it was called Salmon Stew if I remember correctly.