Contest: What’s Your Worst Cooking Disaster?

My girlfriend, T. Rebel, tried to kill me once.

Her weapon of choice? Exploding meatloaf. She claims it was an accident, but I know better. The whole scene went down like this.

She offered to cook me dinner, which should have tipped me off from the start. I do most of the cooking, so this was a rare occurrence indeed. As the meal was coming together, I was in the kitchen helping out, which generally consists of me saying, “That’s not how I would do it.” (I never said she didn’t have a good motive.) She pulled the meatloaf from the oven, sat it on the stovetop and asked me to stir the risotto simmering on the back burner. I started to lean over the meatloaf when I realized there wasn’t a spoon in the pot. Just as I turned to the sink to grab one, the meatloaf and its glass dish exploded sending sizzling hot ground meat, boiling tomato sauce, and shards of glass into the space my face has just occupied. It would have been a painful, yet poetic, way to go.

Turns out, T. Rebel had “accidentally” placed the glass pan on a still-hot burner. We both now know this is not a good idea. Luckily, at the time, T. Rebel lived across the street from a pizza joint, so we didn’t go hungry. Though to this day, I still develop a nervous tic whenever she offers to cook me dinner. Call it kitchen-related PTSD.

I’ve had my fair share of kitchen disasters as well, including the time in college I used some cold wine to deglaze a too-hot pan. Pretty sure one of the reasons I lost the deposit for that apartment was the wine stains on the ceiling and cupboards. Then there was the time, just a year or so ago, when I was chopping ice for a photo shoot for this blog and stuck a tine of the meat fork I was using (couldn’t find the ice pick) right through my finger. I still have a scar from that incident, as well as plenty of others caused by knives, broken glasses, hot pans, etc.

If you’ve spent any amount of time in the kitchen or near a campfire, you probably have your own cooking-disaster stories. Let’s hear the worst of them. The winner, as chosen by T. Rebel and I, will when a Camp Chef square Dutch oven as well as a box of goodies from Hi Mountain Seasonings, Cabela’s, Justin’s Nut Butter and Kind Snacks. To be eligible, post your story by Wednesday, April 24, at 6 p.m. Mountain Time.