17 Times We’ve Failed at “Cooking” in Dorms

College students have a reputation for food fails and kitchen fails. You can’t really blame us. After all, cooking in the dorms is really “cooking” with a microwave. We’ve set off fire alarms the night before exams, messed up brownie mix, and broken various cooking utensils.

Here are 17 times we’ve failed while “cooking” in dorms. All in the name of food.

1. 3 am pancakes

“My freshman year I lived in a community dorm that only had 3 kitchens in the whole building. Someone on the top floor decided to make pancakes at 3 in the morning and consequently burn them, setting off the fire alarms for the whole building. 500 of us were shivering outside for an hour in 20°F weather because someone couldn’t make pancakes.” — Colby

2. “Not suitable for microwave”

“Someone microwaved frozen chicken pot pie for 35 minutes during dead week at 5 am and made the whole dorm evacuate. The box was clearly labeled ‘this product is not suitable for microwave; use conventional oven only.’” — Eileen

3. Possible evacuation

“Someone burnt a cookie in our dorm microwave last year. There were some tense ‘Is the fire alarm going to go off from the smoke?’ moments.” — Mollie

4. Combustible Easy Mac

“One night, my old roommate wanted Easy Mac for dinner. She stepped away from the microwave, and all of a sudden I smelled smoke. So, I called her from the other room to check on it and I started hearing screams. I turned around and smoke was billowing out of the microwave, quickly filling our apartment. I was able to put out the fire (she ran) but not before the smoke alarm went off in the whole building. Everyone had to evacuate and it was 10°F out. Once we got back in, we looked at the Easy Mac. It was completely black, the plastic had melted, and it was hard as a rock. Turns out… She forgot to add the water to the Mac and apparently that makes it combust.” — Alison

5. Frying Oreos in the lounge

“Last year someone made fried Oreos in our lounge and basically set the whole stove on fire. We couldn’t get back into our rooms for an hour and a half.” — Shannon

6. Crispy potato chips life hack fail

“I microwaved potato chips at 10-second intervals because I was told it was one of those ‘life hacks‘ to make them crispy, but I filled the whole room with smoke! Thankfully, it didn’t set the fire alarm off.” — Eileen

7. Grease fire

“Freshman year, I had 3 of the worst roommates you could imagine. One day while I was out of town, my roommate decided she wanted to cook fries so she put grease in a pan. While the grease was heating up she had the brilliant idea of taking a shower. She got out of the shower and surprise: There was a grease fire in our kitchen. She poured water on it (rookie mistake), and instead of looking for a fire extinguisher or calling 911, she ran to the RA’s room only to find she wasn’t home. We all had to switch rooms for the rest of the semester because there was too much damage to the room.” — Delaney

8. Not brown sugar…

“I once mistook Chinese ginseng powder for brown sugar and put that in banana bread.” — Valerie

9. Burnt sugar

“One time, I was trying to make chocolate-covered strawberries and I set the chocolate on fire in the microwave because I didn’t want to do 10-second intervals. Lesson learned: Nothing smells worse than burnt chocolate.” — Emma

10. Broken gas line

“While I was making biscuits in the dorm kitchen with my roommate, we dropped the pan while taking it out off the oven rack. When it fell, it cut the gas line in the oven somehow and caught fire. We didn’t know what to do. We started to panic when the hose began to swing around.

We calmly walked to the RA and told her what happened, leaving the fire unattended, and she didn’t know what to do either. We ended up calling the firefighters, and the entire dorm got evacuated at 10 pm. When the fire was put out, the firefighters questioned us (while laughing at our burned biscuits) and let us get our things from the kitchen area. For the next couple of weeks, the kitchen was ‘off-limits to students.’” — Sofia

11. Melted pans

“I most definitely left a pan in the oven while it preheated and melted the handle. Oops.” — Claire

12. Broken microwave glass plate

“One time, my freshman year roommate tried to make popcorn in the microwave and the bag somehow got stuck inside, so the glass plate fell off the tracks. We heard a really loud bang. When she opened the door, the plate fell out in a million pieces onto our floor.” — Marie

13. Incense-flavored popcorn

“We were having a movie night, which obviously requires popcorn. The microwave somehow burned the popcorn, so we chucked it in the common room trash can. Five minutes later, the RA came to ask us if we were lighting incenses. Since when does burnt popcorn smell like incense? Even our friends thought the room smelled like burnt popcorn for days.” — Jocelyn

14. Expired fish

“These 3 girls would use our common room kitchen to cook whole fish. Not even good fish — it smelled like expired fish. They would cook it to death and leave all kinds of junk on the burner, so whenever you turned it on, it smelled like fish. After making the entire floor smell like bad fish, they would then take their food and leave the floor. They didn’t even live on our floor.” — Joey

15. Burnt instant noodles

“My suite-mate burnt 2 bowls of ramen because she forgot the water TWICE and had to throw it out the window.” — Lauren

16. Hockey puck brownies

“I made brownies with box mix with my friends one night. After mixing everything and baking for the allotted time, we pulled the tray out of the oven to see oil bubbling out of the muffin tray. We tried eating a few, but they were too oily for our taste. 20 minutes later, the “brownies” were hard as hockey pucks and entirely inedible.” — Smita

17. Mint marijuana air freshener

“I put a mug with a tea bag in the microwave without water. It caught on fire and blew up. And the whole 10 floors of the building smelled like mint marijuana. I had to tell my RA that it was tea.” — Amanda

Moral of the story? College students shouldn’t be allowed near microwaves or ovens after 10 pm because they forget to add water and set food on fire. Whoops.

• Dorm Lyfe