DESPITE being embarrassingly simple to prepare, there are certain foodstuffs you’ll always manage to screw up somehow. Like these:
Rice
In a moment of arrogant madness you decided to stray from the faithful boil-in-the-bag rice and get loose grains. Oh Icarus. Be prepared for your dinner to be an utter travesty. The rice will end up sticking to the pan, before turning into a sort of gruel that will be somehow both wet and crunchy.
Microwave popcorn
If you survive being blinded by the steam when you tear open the bag, you’ll be greeted by either a smouldering mass of charred popcorn or a mountain of unpopped kernels. Unless you sit with your ear pressed to the microwave listening to the pops like you’re cracking a safe, you’ll make a balls of this.
Pasta
You enter the kitchen with the intention of making a reasonable amount of spaghetti for your bolognese this evening. You follow the instructions on the packet, exactly. Yet 15 minutes later you’re huddled over the sink straining enough pasta to feed a large Italian village.
Toast
Despite owning a machine whose sole purpose is to make toast, your bread will regularly be obliterated. Just when you’ve got the settings right, your twat of a flatmate will come along with a doorstopper piece of rye bread and set the toaster to max, incinerating your bread when you next use it.
Porridge
In a vain health kick you’ve ditched the Frosties for porridge. But since you aren’t an 18th century farmhand getting up at 6am to put oatmeal on the stove, you use a microwave. After a couple of minutes you’ll hear a loud bang and find the inside of your microwave coated in a sort of molten Scottish magma.
