I don’t think the Jell-o was in the final dish. Welcome to Mythical Kitchen, where dreams become terrible food from Reddit. You know, they say the true test of a chef is to make a perfect soup. Escoffier used to make his cooks do that, but I believe the true test of a chef is to be able to recreate any dish, good or bad. And today we are focusing on the bad from taste alone. So I have challenged myself to try and recreate one of the worst, most heinous-anus recipes from the internet. We had the kitchen crew search through r/BadFoodPorn, recreate one of the dishes perfectly, and I will taste it blind and try and recreate it, as Lily, the only person here who has ever worked in a Michelin-starred restaurant, will judge me for it. Lily, bring out the olives! What’s under the cloche? You’ll see. Okay. I will now put on my cat themed blindfold. Actually you won’t see. Oh gosh. I feel blind. Yeah, no, my eyes are messed up, dude. I can’t see now. All right, Lily, please lift up the cloche. Wait, do you want a fork or no? No, I’m gonna touch with my hands. Okay, I’m immediately smelling chili powder, some sort of, maybe, cumin. I’m gonna touch it with my hands. It’s in a bowl. It’s wet. It’s incredibly sour, but sumptuous. Holy smokes. Why, oh, why is that so sour? What is in this? I’m fingering it. I think it’s a pierogi. I’m tasting an incredible amount of sour. Not a lot of heat. ‘Cause I thought it might have been a jarred salsa mixed with a pre-made sour cream. Is this a dumpling, or is this just a really overcooked egg? Splitting it apart. Oh, there’s two. Hold on let me go back in. Wait, can I have a fork? Yep. Thanks. It’s too late for that. I think we’re dealing with some sort of awful iteration of, awful, but again awfully delicious, iteration of lasagna with corn, refried beans, sour cream, salsa. I feel ready to cook this. I feel equipped, and also kinda good. Tastes like when you would mix all of the school lunch together, and just mash it into a paste and eat it. Take this away before I finish it all. So my official guess as to what this dish is, I think they would call it something like Mexican Lasagna Surprise. I reckon this was a person who really wanted to make lasagna. They may have been under the influence of something, and the only lasagna ingredient they had were lasagna noodles. So they ended up using a bunch of bean puree. And then they may have tried to make, like, guac or something, but didn’t have all the ingredients. ‘Cause there was like a real chemical quality to it. And I think they substituted other gross things in there like pre-made taco seasoning, even though that is pretty good, but has an unmistakable chemical quality. So that’s what I’m gonna run with. The Kitcheneers have loaded a pantry behind me. I have not seen what’s actually on it yet. They’ve also loaded some ingredients in the fridge, but there’s a lot of red herring ingredients. So I have no idea what the heck is actually going on. And literally I have no idea what this dish is. I’m just gonna cook my heart out and cook with passion and women’s intuition. We’re gonna put 30 minutes on the clock. And it starts in three, two, one, go! Ah, I’m also gonna have sous chefs help me grab stuff, so I don’t have to run off camera all the time. Nicole, grab me the pot, the pot of water. Pot of big water. I’m gonna get this. Okay. Let’s look at the pantry right here. Lasagna noodles. I knew it was lasagna. I thought it might have been really thick ravioli at first. There was definitely sort of bean puree. Get these black beans going. We’re gonna open that up. Where’s the can opener, dude? There’s so many drawers in this effing kitchen. I swear to G, dude. Where are the can openers? Where the- Gonna make some sort of bean puree. Again, the bean puree had a very chemical quality to it. I’m gonna see if there’s any sort of, like, taco seasoning and what they may have used. There was like a distinct citric acid in here. I feel like lime Jell-o may have been in there. I thought I tasted corn. I’m gonna check the fridge. Move your A-double-hockey-stick, Trevor! I’m so scared! Did they freakin’ start with pre-made lasagna? Oh my god. Oh my god, okay. We got this. There was ravioli, dude. They did. They made a freezer surprise. Okay. I think I know what’s going on here. I tasted corn. If there’s not any corn in here, I’m still using corn. I wanna give a rats A-double-S-S. I’m gonna combine every pasta thing. ‘Cause, like, the first thing I thought I had- well I thought I had a pierog, singular. Pierogi, of course, is plural. I thought I had a pierog cause it was fat. But I think I was munchin’ on about eight of these bad boys stuck together. ‘Cause it had the denseness of an exploding dwarf star, but still I’m gonna take some of these lasagna noodles. Can someone get me a 9×13 baking dish, please, Chef? Okay. Thank you, Chef. And I think what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna get some lasagna sheets boiling. Piss off. And I’m gonna take- God dang it. We’re gonna boil some of those bad boys too. ‘Cause I think what they’ve done is they’ve added pre-made pasta. That’s too much. Now we’re gonna get to making our filling. Again, everything was just a mush. I’ve been told that there were various textures in there. I’m gonna dump a whole can of beans in. And then I think what they did, if I’m being honest, I think they just dumped a bunch of stuff into a baking sheet. We used to do that when I worked for a catering company in college, We made something that we used to call- wait, does this account for bake time? Imma preheat the oven, screw it. We used to make something when me and all my roommates worked for the same catering company in college that we called Catering Casserole. Which is where we would take all the leftovers, we just mashed it up in a casserole dish, and eat it with like a brick cream cheese or something. And one time it was like spaghetti, and like barbecue pulled pork, and I made pancake bread crumbs and put it on top. Pretty good, man. So I’m gonna use that as my inspiration ’cause all cooking really- oh I’m pureeing black beans with a can of chicken noodle soup. I’m starting to feel a lot better. This is gonna boil in about an hour and a half. And so that’s really great news. What else do we got on here? I feel, like, okay. Prunes. No, ’cause those are my breakfast prunes. I know there was, a creamy component, and I think, can I get a cutting board and a knife, Chef? Not gonna use that. No, I don’t think there’s pre-made. No, I didn’t. Well, shoot. Did I taste meat? Lily, did I taste meat? I don’t remember any meat. I’m gonna get these avocados open. I’m gonna make an avocado, lime Jell-o mix. ‘Cause, again, I tasted that citrus acid in there. Bro, where did the limes go? Thanks, man. Takes a village. Hold on Nicole, can you grab me a bowl? Yes, sir! And can you rinse out the Vitamix? I need to puree more things. ‘Cause there were so many mushes. There’s so many purees that are going into this. And now, yeah, water’s ice cold. That’s cool. Thank you, Chef. Thank you, Chef! All right, we got our lasagna filling right there, which I feel very good about. One avocado down. I’m gonna make a sort of avocado creme situation that I don’t know if it was baked into it, or if it was just on top as a creamy, refreshing garnish. But I will say everything in there was ice cold. Like I actually need to know if that’s part of it. Because that’s a confounding variable because the inside was ice cold, and I just don’t know if that was intentional. I feel like it wasn’t, but we’re doing it. Dig out the inside. A fun tip on avocados is to use a spoon. Thank you for coming to my cooking show. All right, where’s the lime Jell-o at? Buy the aprons, you schmucks. All right. Did I grab it? Okay, we got the apron plug in. We’re worried about not getting the apron plug. I don’t have a trash can. I’m gonna throw it from far distances. Come on Jell-o. Okay. How much time do I have? Oh, 23 minutes, dude. We are so golden on this. We’re gonna put a little bit of lime Jell-o in here. That, I believe, is what gave it the citric acid tang. Imma look for some dairy in the fridge. Maggie, come here! I know this wasn’t in the original ’cause this is my breakfast yogurt. This is the yogurt that I ate for breakfast. You can tell it’s probably, yeah, just dig it out with the spoon directly, and there’s avocado in it. That’s that’s fine. ‘Cause it’s me. You know, it’s like how, if you get like peanut butters streak in the jelly, as long as you peanut butter streak, it doesn’t matter. You know what I mean? I put some water in this. There you go. Buzz this up. Am I gonna create a dish worse than the worst dish on Reddit? I don’t think the Jell-o was in the final dish. I’m like at Jamba Juice when they shake out your thing, and they’re just rattlin’ it around. You’re there for 30 seconds. You’re like I got stuff to do. If I didn’t have stuff to do, I’d be getting a real lunch. Not bein’ at the God dang Jamba Juice. It’s like, you’ve had 30 years in the smoothie industry, and you can’t figure out a better way to get your smoothies out than to just bang it? All right, cool. We got our avocado lime crema. We got our beautiful black bean, canned soup filling. There’s probably nothing else pureed in there. Stations clean. You go ahead and crank this up. Pasta is almost done. Gonna put that back in there. It’s good stuff. The raviolis are already cooked. What else do we think we got here? There was a textural- hey, you. There’s a textural contrast in here. I thought it was corns, and I’m not seeing any corns. I’m gonna go with green beans. There was something sweet in there. I’m gonna open up some green beans. Can I get a strainer, Chef? Strainer and a bowl? Thanks. Appreciate you. You guys are nice. Does anyone want this Stouffer’s Lasagna to take home? I’ll eat it for dinner. Trevor, here, take it. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. I appreciate you. All right. We got some cut green beans. I felt little, but they were little. ‘Cause I feel like they were crunchier than green beans, but I’m still gonna use these. So we’re just gonna run our knife through ’em. Do like a nice little rough chop. How much time do I got 20 minutes? Hey, we should probably just bro this, right? Like what are we doing, our oven at 400? No, no, no. This is going right to broil. The oven shut off ’cause our stuff doesn’t work. That’s okay. So I’m gonna go ahead and put it. Dump out the green beans. Piss off. We do a nice little rough chop. I’m trying to think what else I tasted. We had the chemical sourness, chili powder. I felt like I tasted chili powder, but I don’t know where that could have come from. It could have come from a prefab can of chili. I didn’t taste any meat, but here’s the thing about cans of chili, you don’t really gotta chew ’em, you know? And so I don’t know where this is going. Push that off to the side. That’s pretty good. I got my bean juice. Gonna throw that in trash. Ramen’s interesting. We have ramen here, which could be a red herring. I don’t think I explored the entire dish with my tongue as I should have. And so what I’m just gonna do is we’re gonna dump. ‘Cause there was, again, there was, like, that chemical MSG flavor in there, which you kind of really do enjoy. So I think it was just a mixed bag of pasta that they had. And so I’m gonna dump that in, and then definitely a bean filling. There was a spice though. There was a certain spice. There was just so much lemon. It was so acidic, and I don’t know where it was coming from. And so I’m gonna rock that. Was there any of this? Were there tortillas in it? I just, like, maybe they just did this. I think they were in their kitchen and they were like, “What starches can I boil?” Because, like I said, it was so dense. It was almost like when you go to the Sizzler, and the tortilla, ’cause you get the salad bar Sizzler, you don’t order the steak. Lily, you should know this is a Michelin starred chef. You don’t order the steak. You only get the salad bar, and the tortillas that’ve been sitting in there in steamer for so long, they just form this, like, sort of dense little star. I think that’s what happened. We got that going. Stir in the lemon juice to the crema. And I’m trying to figure out where to go from here. Cause we need to move on this before it turns into Jell-o. I won’t cut anything with that. Don’t worry. Don’t neglect the fridge. Oh, the fridge! Oh my god. There’s more pasta, dude. Dude, did they really just like boil nine pastas together, and stick it together with like beans and cans with soup? Geez. I don’t even know anymore. Green beans. Where’s the corn? You’re gonna look at me in the face, and say there was no corn in that dish. Answer me. Someone answer me. We can’t. Why? You’re a person. I’m a person. You’re all staring at me. It was there. I cry tasted a corn. Was it? Was it? It wasn’t that! It wasn’t that! There was corns. There were certainly corns. I know corns when I taste them. Where are the corns? Where are you hiding the corns? Where are you hiding the corns. So sorry. Where? Do we have any corn? The frick is the corn. Oh, you know what? Mystery solved. Mixed vegetables. All right. Okay, cool. So there was corn in there. I’m a pretty good chef. I can identify a corn when I have one. So we’re just gonna cook these off. There we go. All right, that’s good. Now we’re gonna shut this off. We’re gonna drain it in this little colander. Do we have a bigger thing? Like a bigger strainer. All right. Okay. Now what we’re gonna do? I think I’m good. There was cheese in there. Certainly there must have been cheese. I just can’t figure out what. A soft cheese. I saw feta in the fridge. This is a legitimate lasagna stacking technique. I’m telling you, I think they baked the crema in there, and then started layering down lasagna noodles as good lasagna noodles are undercooked. They do need more time to bake. So I wanna get this in as fast as possible. It was dense. So just like one little layer of that. There we go. And then, ow, oh my god. Ow, yeah, kind of, pissin’ in the wind at this point. And then, yeah, there we go. Keep that going. Beautiful. Kinda shake some more. Yeah. All right. Scatter the ramen noodles. ‘Cause you don’t want to get ’em in every bite. Gonna kinda wet it through the sides. I have one more layer. So I felt a corn on the top. And so I want to be able to have a top corn, and then I wanna go one more layer of the crema because I feel like I tasted that all throughout. And so here is now what we’re making. It would, you know, it’d be a shame just let the green beans go to waste. So we’ll put the green beans on. And I didn’t salt my pasta water! And one more layer on top. There we go. Here, check it out. Corn on the top. That’s what I tasted. Hey, on a real note, I’m learning this is way more difficult than I thought it would be. I thought this was gonna be a home run. I was gonna be like, “Hmm. Taco with cat food.” And then I’d, like, make it. Nope. I have no idea what it is. So this is what we’re doing. Cool. Couple dollops like that. Beautiful. I need a nice sprinkle of flaky salt on top. Did I get the tortilla? I put tortillas in the pan, right? I like vaguely remember that. I needed cheese. Excuse me. I needed cheese. All right, a couple dollops of hummus on this is definitely not meant for the show because, Nicole, is this is just your lunch hummus? It’s fine. Yeah, I need it. So because there was hummus in the dish. It’s fine. Expeller pressed soybean oil, huh? How much I need at least 15 minutes in the oven. I feel pretty good about what this is. So we’re gonna go into the oven with it, and then go on the little bottom. Okay. Can of chicken breast, garlic, kiwis. Well, here we go. We’re gonna make a little kiwi peanut pico de gallo. I didn’t taste any textural contrast, none of that, but I’m gonna make it. And that’s what we’re doing. Let me kinda get, cause again, I still don’t exactly know where the sourness came from. Peel off that kiwi. Why the kiwis though? Why would there have been kiwi? I get all the other stuff. I get all the other stuff. You got a bunch of pastas in the fridge and you think, like all pastas the same, especially after you bake it together, why would you need to separate them? I’m gonna put it all in a pot, especially, like, with tortillas. Believe me. I totally get that. But where would the kiwis reasonably have come from? I don’t know, but I’m making a kiwi pico de gallo. And that is what I know. In life, sometimes you just have to hold on to what you know to be true. And what is true is that I’m currently chopping up kiwis. Well, these are my snacking peanuts. Well, that’s good. We got that mixed in there. I’m gonna take the hummus spoon. Kind of just mash that up. How’s this doing in the oven? How much time we got six minutes? We’re golden. Cheese is getting nice and melty. My real goal isn’t to melt the cheese, it’s to let everything coagulate. Tahini? I don’t reckon there would’ve been any Tahini in there. What do we think we have? We’re gonna stand here and drink a Diet Coke for the next five minutes. Oh, she’s looking nice. We use the pre-shredded cheese. So it just turned into, like, a leather. Lily, you want a corner piece? Sure. Cool. Yeah, there we go. I kinda like what’s going on here. Well, and lost a tortellini. And, oh, eight seconds? Golden. And a nice scoop of the kiwi pico on top. All right. So here we have it. This is my finished recreation of apparently the worst food on Reddit. I’m gonna give it a taste. See if I can, sort of, like, remember what I tasted blindfolded earlier. It feels just as dense in the middle as the other one did. So I like that. I’m gonna get some of that lime crema on there. Some of the lasagna noodles. Lasagna’s a little bit al dente. Do you remember when I scored a bunch of lemon juice all over everything? Still didn’t make it as sour as the first one. So I don’t know what the deal is with that. I’ll tell you the kiwi, I dunno, there’s a nice little refreshing bite. I think I was in a bit of a ballpark. Ehh, maybe? I have some top corn, but Lily bring in the OG dish. See what we’re working with. See how good I did. All right, Josh, are you ready? God, I’m so ready. Here it is. What in the ever loving hell is this supposed to be? What is this cream? So this is a ravioli with hummus, pureed spinach, Danish feta cheese, and frozen vegetables. Oh, okay. Well I was, there’s only one type of pasta. Yes. Just ravioli. Just ravioli. There was so much in there that it was so dense. And it’s all stuck together. Very dense. Very interesting. Okay. The hummus was where all the acid was coming from. I put hummus in mine ’cause I tasted the beans, for sure. But I thought it mighta just been a lime puree. The feta. Unexpected twist. I should have known that. I saw the feta in the fridge. That is the sourest pasta I’ve ever had. Somehow combining all of the ingredients together, made it more sour than all of them apart, which is truly what a chef should do. Lily, you’re a chef, you can attest to this. The goal is to elevate the ingredients beyond what they’re individually capable of. And they’ve done this, and frankly, I haven’t. Lily, you taste both. Okay. There’s no spinach in that. There is a dash. What do you mean? A dash? Just a little dab will do ya. What do you mean a dab of spinach? A dab of spinach doesn’t do it anything. Just give it a little color. You have a whole box of spinach. It already reduces down to a dash. So it was a dash of a dash? It was dash to make it a little gray. Oh, that’s what the gray was. That makes sense. Well, taste both. Lemme know which one you prefer. Okay. I’m gonna taste yours first. Thank you. Get some of the kiwi. Well get a tortellini though. The lasagna is a little under. I’m not gonna lie to ya. I feel like I’ve hit rock bottom of my culinary career. The good news is it’s only up from here. Well, no, we can sink deeper. Wait, this is so good. Yeah? No. Oh. She got me. This is somehow appalling even though I love all the ingredients together. Yep. Yeah. Soak it in, Lily. Soak it in. Did the hummus turn? Are we not sure that the hummus didn’t turn. I’m gagging. Well. You know what Lily get back in here. You’re you’re part of this. Lily, get back in here. I thought it was gonna be like cat food enchiladas. You know what I mean? The incredible thing is that you made a poor, professional person gag with an earnest attempted food. I believe this was earnest. You, whoever made that out there, are truly the worst chef alive, and significantly better than me at being a terrible chef. Her eyes are watering. Look what you did. I was gagging. This is worse than chicken nuggets. No one say nothing. Lily, thank you so much for being my guide on this very stupid journey. You are welcome I guess. And thank you. Are you supposed to gimme a score? I rate it, good- Thanks, dude. Out of 10. Thank you for stopping by the Mythical Kitchen. 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