Rating your plates: York freshers’ most disastrous dishes so far

As a new wave of freshers enter York Uni, so does a cohort of terrible, terrible cooks. Many come armed with a month’s supply of protein powder and beans as means of sustenance, but that pretty much covers all the food groups right? Whilst some freshers are whipping up lasagne and homemade ramen, others are barely hanging on with a diet of frozen nuggets and chips.

It’s clear that many students have had no experience boiling water or turning on an oven, or in most cases turning it off. As a first-year myself, I’ve seen my fair share of truly heinous crimes to the culinary industry. So here are some of York freshers’ most disastrous meals so far:

1. Roasties in gravy

Starting off strong, because personally I would scran this in a heartbeat. If you’re not drowning all of your food in gravy you’re absolutely doing it wrong. I would do shots of gravy if socially acceptable. But as a proud Northerner, it pains me to not see any Yorkshire puddings. If you’re going to do it, you might as well go all out.

2. Pizza??

This is genuinely impressive. You’ve managed to burn it so much that the cheese is darker than the countertops. But as someone who scrapes any sign of charring off of her toast, I wouldn’t go near this with a ten-foot pole.

Ellie Goulding was right, you are going to let it burn.

3. Rice and sauce

Whether you’re on campus west or east, it’s a LONG trek to Lidl for the weekly shop, so it’s understandable that you would bulk buy and have a little extra to spare at the end of the week. But that much mayo? And on rice? Jail.

I just know that there will have been rice floating around still in the kitchen sink, or worse yet there’s rice in the jar of mayo, and that actually makes me feel sick. That said, I really want to know if they mixed the sauce together, or just ate it as separate lumps.

4. You can’t even call this toast

This meal looks sad, in fact it’s made me sad. What did those potatoes and toast do to you to deserve such a fate? Although let’s be honest, that’s not toast, it’s just warm bread.

5. Chucked out the window

This fresher burned the cookies so much they had to throw them out the window before they went up in flames. I applaud the sacrifice of cookies to avoid burning down the halls, but I do have to wonder how they’re going to come down from there, or if the plan is to just let the birds snack on them.

6. Pasta with beans

Okay so hear me out, I don’t think this is the worst thing in the world. Plain pasta goes hard and beans are a staple so put two and two together and I’m rather tempted to make this later. Takes me back to doing the Duke of Edinburgh award, because there’s no doubt in my mind some weary year 11’s have made this before in their grotty Trangia’s after a long day of walking.

7. Vegetable soup avec spaghetti

In halls full of freshers consuming nothing but beige food, I’m happy to see some colour in this “soup”. It does kind of look like the strands of spaghetti just fell into the bowl by accident, but maybe the rest are hiding under the bagful of peas you’ve used there.

Also please clean your cutlery, it looks filthy.

8. Chicken and potatoes

Are we going through some sort of seasoning shortage that I wasn’t aware of? There’s no flavour in this picture, not even some squash in the water. The chair probably has more flavour than that chicken. Also, why is the steak knife necessary? Doubt it would require much force to slice through those mushy potatoes. Please do better, or just buy a Greggs.

9. Just hotdogs

I assume that this fresher was severely hungover, or else there are no excuses for this monstrosity. I’m begging you please google “vegetables” and buy some next time you go to Lidl, or else say “hello” to scurvy.

What’s worse is that I bet these were just plain old boiled, you can see the traces of the sweaty sausages on the plate. Yuck. Personally, I hate hot dogs, and this has done nothing to change my mind.

10. Mystery dinner

At least you can identify what the parts of the cell are but I genuinely can’t tell what the slop in that bowl is. There is something alluring about these mystery meals. For all I know this could be the best thing since Long Boi, though I don’t think even he’d stoop so low as to munch on this.

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