Cooking Segments That Went Totally Wrong

In the comfort of our own homes, it doesn't matter if we set our dinner on fire, or drop an entire bowl of spaghetti and meatballs on the floor. Maybe our kids laugh at us, or at worst, our dinner party guests witness the flub. Life goes on, right?

But for those who cook on live TV, a kitchen fail doesn't go unnoticed. It gets seen by hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of viewers, and in this day and age, gets immortalized on the internet for the rest of time. Viewers love a good fail, and these mishaps get watched over and over again. 

From amateur cooks to celeb chefs, it turns out that anyone and everyone is susceptible to a cooking segment gone wrong. Yes, even the likes of Julia Child, Rachael Ray, and Giada De Laurentiis are prone to disaster, just like the rest of us. Take a look...

If you're doing a live segment on The Today Show with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb, you'd think you would make it a priority not to insult the hosts — unless apparently, you're Sam Zien. 

In this cringeworthy clip, Kathie Lee and Hoda interject with their remarks while Zien, also known as Sam the Cooking Guy, tries to explain his dish. Noticeably frustrated by the interruptions, Zien finally snaps, "Please! Can I talk? I watch the show every day, everybody has issues with a lot of chatter back here. Pay attention one minute!" There's stunned silence for a moment, and the looks on Gifford's and Kotb's faces say it all, as Zien notes, a bit nervously, "Ooh, that seemed to work." While he attempts to charge forward with the segment, musing that this is likely his last visit to the show, the hosts are noticeably frigid. Awkward.

Julia Child might have been the master of French cooking, but that doesn't mean she was immune to a fail every now and then. The great thing about Child though, is that she rolled with the punches and never hid her mishaps from viewers. Instead, she showed the audience what to do if, inevitably, you experienced the same not-quite-perfect result.

In this clip, Child attempts to flip a large potato pancake and ends up with a mess all over the stovetop, saying dryly, "Well, that didn't go very well..." Undaunted, she scoops everything back into the pan, and eventually turns it out onto a plate, using a spatula to mash it all back together before covering it with cheese and saying that she'll just pretend that it was supposed to be a baked potato dish instead. 

Honestly, we would have loved to eat anything Julia Child made, even her so-called fails.

Back in the days of her edited Food Network shows, we never saw Rachael Ray set anything on fire. But thanks to her live talk show, we get to see the things that may have ended up on the cutting room floor.

During this segment of The Rachael Ray Show, we watch Ray grab a tray out of the oven, her back to the stove, and as she walks back towards it, she notices something is wrong. There's a pan on the range, and the dish towel draped over its handle is on fire. Time to freak out, right? Wrong. She very calmly walks to the pan, laughing, and says, "Look you guys, look. Um, note to self, don't put your kitchen towel too close to the stove." As the audience gasps, Ray casually tosses it into the sink, making us think this probably isn't the first time she's had to put out a fire. Handled like a pro.

Giada De Laurentiis is an old pro when it comes to cooking on TV, but this segment on Ellen probably didn't go quite the way she had hoped...

Joined by Nicole Kidman, De Laurentiis attempts to explain how to make her dishes, though not very successfully as Kidman and DeGeneres don't seem to be too savvy in the kitchen. There's a lot of awkward interactions as they talk over each other — and the word "anus" even makes an appearance — but nothing is as awkward as honest reactions Kidman and DeGeneres give the finished product. As Ellen struggles to chew through the foccacia, Kidman proclaims, "It's a little tough." De Laurentiis tries to explain that it's been sitting out "for like five hours," but that doesn't stop Kidman from making a face and eventually spitting out her bite. Seems like those Academy Award-winning acting skills could have come in handy here, no?

On this episode of BBC's live cooking show Saturday Kitchen, Si King and Dave Myers, known as The Hairy Bikers, attempt to unmold a formed pudding dessert, completely unsuccessfully. There's a whole lot of shaking and pounding and banging, but it just won't come out of its bowl. The duo takes it in stride, and after quite a fight, the fruit pudding finally plops onto the plate and immediately collapses. Myers takes the opportunity to provide some comic relief saying, "Generally it just relaxes a bit like when my wife takes her Spanx off." Cue the rimshot.

Acting as though nothing is wrong, the cooks take a page from Julia Child's playbook and dress the dessert with a generous topping of berries and a sprig of mint for garnish. And even though it looks like a total disaster, the taste tester deems it "utterly delicious," and really, that's all that matters at the end of the day. 

Most of the time, a fail on live TV is an unexpected event — who would want to purposely showcase their cooking mishaps? But one morning show host made a bold move and brought her fail front and center, and even made her colleagues taste it, much to their chagrin. 

The Global News clip starts with Leslie Horton explaining that her artichoke dip "isn't supposed to look like this," and one co-host can't help but make faces before he even takes a bite. Horton is undeterred, and as she hands out crackers topped with the dip she asks what her cohorts think it smells like. One host notes the overpowering vinegar smell (though oddly, there is no vinegar in the recipe), while another bluntly says that he thought it smelled "like a barn." Ouch. The taste test proves just how bad this fail is (with one host actually spitting it out), and Horton concludes by saying, "It's artichoke dip but something went terribly wrong." Apparently. 

In her cooking shows, Paula Deen always gave off a very relaxed vibe. Things were super casual in her kitchen, and if she had experienced a fail, we wouldn't have been too surprised — she seemed like one of us. Of course, we didn't get to see any of those fails thanks to editing, but her live Oprah appearance showed the world that the queen of southern cooking makes a mistake every now and then, too.

In the clip, Deen mans the stand mixer and notes that her sons, who are in the audience, aren't eating her food. Prophetically, Jamie Deen says that he's too nervous to eat, and just as the words come out of his mouth, Paula accidentally drops a small glass bowl into the mixer. Since the machine is running, the paddle attachment sends batter shooting out of the bowl as the glass clangs around before finally getting ejected. And although she's screeching throughout the chaos, she's a great sport about it, just as we expected she would be. 

A fail is funny no matter what language it's in, as proven by this cooking segment that went all wrong during a Swedish television show on Cheese Doodle Day. (Yes, there actually is a day dedicated to cheese doodles and it's March 5 — mark your calendars.)

In celebration of this extremely important holiday, a morning show host demonstrates — or attempts to demonstrate — how to cook cheese doodles. As she struggles to flip the pieces in the overfilled pan, her co-host suggests that she try to toss them in the air. Bad suggestion, co-host. She tries it, unsuccessfully, and cheese doodles spill out of the pan and onto the cooktop, immediately bursting into flames and causing some panic as fires continue popping up in the pan and on the stove. Ultimately, we learned how not to cook cheese doodles... Who knew those little suckers were so flammable?

After the Nicole Kidman incident on Ellen, we're guessing Giada De Laurentiis was hoping for a fail-free segment. But, when Ellen DeGeneres is involved, you can expect things to get a bit silly.

For this episode, De Laurentiis starts by telling DeGeneres that they're beginning with cocktails in the hopes that if she's drunk enough, Ellen won't care what the food tastes like. Sounds like a solid plan. As the comedian indulges in her drink, Giada is totally distracted by her antics and ends up putting about a cup of salt in her guacamole, and that's before dousing Ellen in lemon juice. Good start. But the real fun begins when the two decide to toss pizza dough to each other, and it doesn't take long before Ellen's dough ends up on Giada's face. Anyone else thinking that this might be the last time De Laurentiis does Ellen's show?

When you're an amateur chef, the pressure of appearing on live TV has to be immense. Add to that the pressure of completing a dish from start to finish in five minutes and it could be a recipe for disaster. 

That's what happened on the "Speedy Recipe" segment of this local morning show, when Rob Barrett of Cooking For Dads tried to make his easy egg roll in front of the cameras. The "egg roll" is a crepe-like dish, made by cooking a thin layer of egg in a pan, then rolling the filling into it. Feeling the time crunch, Barrett attempts to flip the egg before it's ready, and the result is more like scrambled eggs than a crepe. Try as he might to salvage the dish, it ends up looking a bit on the sad side, but hey, he made it under the five-minute mark, so that's a win. 

Once again, Rachael Ray proves to be oh-so-relatable during a cooking segment on her talk show, but this time it's not a kitchen towel on fire — it's the small appliances that give her trouble. 

After adding the ingredients for her taco sauce to the food processor, Ray tries to attach the lid, unsuccessfully. She turns it around and tries again, unsuccessfully, all the while declaring her hatred for the machine. After a few more frantic attempts to place the lid, she realizes it's actually the bowl that's on backwards. She struggles with that for a bit before finally getting it right and saying, "I love it when these little embarrassing moments happen to me on national television." 

Next time something goes wrong in your kitchen, just remember that it took Rachael Ray almost an entire minute to get the lid on a food processor — you'll feel a lot better about yourself.