Share your student cooking disasters

Ahhh the freedom of flying the nest, and for many the first time trying to shop, cook and eat for yourself. We asked chefs, bloggers and top website studentbeans.com to tell us about their culinary cock-ups.

Who'd be a student these days, eh? The cost alone is enough to put many off. Wasn't like that in my day. Our fees were paid, and we got a grant to go there... imagine that! Still, many young people are taking the plunge this month, and so with that in mind, here's some advice from those that have been through it before.

Andrew - Editor of lovefood.com

I spent my first year at a London Art School in halls of residence (it's not there any more). There were no cooking facilities as breakfast and dinner were provided, except on Sundays, when you had to fend for yourself. There's only so much takeaway a stomach and wallet can absorb, and I'd had enough. So one Sunday I invited some friends to my room for dinner. Using my toaster I managed to make garlic bread, and by boiling the kettle with the lid off, I just about got enough penne cooked so I could run some pesto through it - mama mia! A bag of salad and a few tomatoes provided some greenery, and we washed it all down with cheap red wine. Seems I wasn't the only one who tried to cook on Sunday evenings either.

Sam Sixton, Head Chef at Sam’s, Fowey - Cornwall

We had a lurcher dog called Tiger who caught a roe deer that we butchered in the cellar of my student house in Northampton. We lived on venison burgers for six months until I fell out of love with Bambi. A conversation starter, but not always the best way to get the girl! Hence now you will never see a venison burger on the Sam’s menu. 

I also lived on SAS army rations. A member of the family would give me these at the beginning of each term but the packets had no labels on, so it was a lucky dip. What I thought was a chilli turned out to be rice pudding!

My fail-safe recipes for impressing girls actually came from The Winnie the Pooh Cookbook - it never let me down.

Danny Kingston - Food Blogger

In my first year at university I shared a flat in halls of residence with five other guys, and once a week we would get together in our rather scabby kitchen to make 'The Cottage Pie of Death'. Essentially, the idea was that each of us would bring one tin of meat to the table and all six tins would go into a large pot, regardless of origin and without any care or thought. Lamb curry, chilli con carne, corned beef, bolognese, Spam... whatever. As long as it was cheap, in it went. Lumpy mash was then slopped on top and the pie went into a roasting hot oven until fairly crisp on top. We would all tuck in, proud and boastful of yet another culinary accomplishment before going out for the night. But more often than not, plenty of scraps were left on plates. Plates that would remain unwashed for at least another week. 

Jacqui Bellefontaine - Cookery Writer and Food Stylist

It was a long time ago, but I remember for a roast I would use a boned breast of lamb rolled and filled with stuffing. Leftovers eaten cold the next day with chips and tomatoes. And for a midweek meal, leftover mash levelled in a frying pan, with eggs dropped in the little hollows I made in it. I'd cover the lot with cheese, then cook with a lid on top until the cheese had melted and the eggs were done. 

Laure Moyle - Food Blogger

I was actually fairly successful, and would still recommend the three meals I cooked as a student...

1. Lasagna al forno - still my fallback plan for weekday meals. I cook batches of bolognese and freeze them ready to be used when short of time. Then it's just a quick white sauce, plenty of grated cheese, obligatory generous grating of nutmeg and off we go! I often used to eat the same dish for a whole week.

2. Pain Perdu - bread/brioche/croissant/pain au chocolat often went stale at my flat, so I'd transform them into Pain Perdu with the addition of milk, sugar, butter, eggs and my grandmother's raspberry jam.

3. Vermicelli soup - just boiling water, a chicken stock cube, and a lot of dry angel hair pasta. A meal ready in just five minutes.

Taken from studentbeans.com 

Buffy, Plymouth University

I once got excited about cooking duck for the first time. It was on offer so my housemate and I bought one between us. He fancied himself as a bit of a chef, and soon began suggesting all different ways of cooking it - redcurrant jelly, red onions and port... so naturally we fired up the gas hobs and chucked everything in. Then he started shaking the pan Jamie Oliver style, until the alcohol in the port caught fire! We ran about like headless chickens for a while before chucking a fire blanket over it to put out the flames. After a bit of thank-God-we're-alive giggling and drinking of the remaining port, we had a lovely dinner of my first Duck Flambé. Not bad once you got past the bits of fire blanket!

Simran, Coventry University

I tried to fry some fish fingers, but as soon as they went into the pan the hot oil started to spit everywhere. Oil even went under the pan and onto the gas, and out of nowhere the pan burst into flames! The fire reached the extractor fan which was above the cooker and made it even worse. Long story short, the firefighters were at my door within 15 minutes of me cooking!

Yasmin Mahfouz, Cambridge University

I almost burnt down one of Cambridge's oldest campuses on my first day with a microwave pizza. The porters weren't impressed...

Andrew, London College of Fashion

I was cooking pasta and thought everything was going ok - the pan was under a low heat, and I soon heard the water boil. I thought, ok; time for a shower - it was a lovely long one, lasting 40 minutes or so. Of course I had burnt the pasta in that time... it takes skill (and stupidity) to burn something so simple. The hob was and still has burnt crispy bits around it, but I still use it as a reminder never to wander off again.

Joanna Norford, Canterbury Christ Church University

I wouldn't necessarily say it was a kitchen disaster, but in my first year I constantly ate eggs, curly fries, beans and sausages every day for about three weeks. When I tried to eat something else I was so violently sick that I had to go to the doctors and be weaned back onto normal food!

Molly, University of London

I cooked a curry once and the recipe told me to put cinnamon sticks in it... I'd never used them before, so I assumed I had to break up the cinnamon sticks and that they'd soften up in the cooking or something. They didn't. My friends and I spent the whole meal picking bits of cinnamon stick out of our mouths.

Can you remember your student cooking disasters? Share them in the comments box below, so we can all have a laugh together.

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