Help! What Happened? 10 Reader Questions About Cooking Disasters

Exploding potatoes, curdled soymilk, bitter chicken stock, uncooperative bread dough — we all experience the occasional disaster in the kitchen, and it is always followed by the same thought: how can I make sure that doesn’t happen again? That’s when our readers step in, offering knowledgeable advice about what might have gone wrong and how to avoid the same problem next time. This year they tackled a wide variety of cooking missteps, from runny cakes and smelly kale to cracking dutch ovens and no-longer-nonstick pans.

• 1 Why Does My Kale Smell Rotten?
• 2 How Can I Prevent Soy Milk from Curdling in My Coffee?
• 3 Help! Why Does My Dutch Oven Enamel Keep Cracking?
• 4 Help! Why Do My Jars of Frozen Chicken Stock Keep Breaking?
• 5 Help! Why Are My Potatoes Exploding?

Why Are My Scrambled Eggs Sticking to My Nonstick Pan?

• 6 How Can I Tell When Milk Has Gone Bad?
• 7 Help! Why Are My Cakes Always Runny in the Middle?
• 8 Why Are My Scrambled Eggs Sticking to My Nonstick Pan?
• 9 Why Is My Previous Awesome Bread Suddenly Not Rising?
• 10 How Can I Save Bitter Chicken Stock?

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From December 21 through January 3 we are rounding up our favorite (and your favorite) posts from the past year. We’ll also share guest posts, special holiday features, and a sparkling Winter Glam Cocktail Party, the final installment in our 2013 Gatherings from The Kitchn. Happy Holidays!