Lethal Chef / Western Animation

"What? It's just an ordinary Krabby- OH MY GOODNESS!"

Lethal cooking in western animation.

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• A slight twist was done in The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin. Everybody hated Grubby the Octopede's food, but that was because he always used tree root as a main ingredient: A favored taste for Octopedes but disliked by everybody else. His root stew in particular was also literally lethal at times, in that it made a great form of ammunition which quickly became a standard weapon for the heroes. Subverted once, however, in an episode where it turned out that root beer is the one recipe where roots are actually tasty to non-Octopedes.
• In the Angry Birds Toons episode "Cordon Bleugh", Matilda makes soup for the other birds. The soup is a chunky brown liquid that's so repulsive, it kills plants. Naturally the other birds hate it, which depresses Matilda. When she dumps it off a cliff, it lands on some pigs. The pigs lick it up and love it, making her happy again.
• Arthur: Arthur's grandmother Thora's one fault is that her cooking is downright inedible. As much her grandchildren love her, they usually do everything they can to avoid eating her meals, and even the adults would prefer that the cooking isn't left up to her. She probably wouldn't be such a bad cook if she weren't distracted by the other things she tries to do at the same time. (Buster Baxter gobbles her cookies right down, though.)
• Grandpa Max from Ben 10, mostly because being one of the plumbers exposed him to some very odd cuisine. While his cooking may not strictly be lethal, it's generally... rather strange and somewhat unappetizing, the first example being a wriggling bowl of marinated mealworms. This is a Running Gag for the series. At one point, Max pulls a grubworm out from under a log at Yellowstone and eats it, much to the disgust of his grandchildren. Naturally, alien plumber Rook considers him a Supreme Chef.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Subverted. Early in the show, Zuko once attempts to make tea. Iroh describes it as "bracing", which is an understatement. However, after working in a tea shop, Zuko's tea-making ability improves substantially to the point where he makes tea for his friends with no complaints.
• Bob's Burgers:
  • Teddy doesn't know the difference between a vegetable peeler and a spatula. When he has to host his family's Thanksgiving meal in "Thankshoarding", he asks Bob to help, but Bob ends up doing all the preparation. All Teddy has to do is follow the heating instructions, but he still screws up and burns everything.
  • Linda Belcher tends to make food at least edible, though it's implied to be a result of learning from her husband, a Supreme Chef. When she tries something different, like a muffin or sweet potato pies, the end result it rather unappetizing.
  • Jimmy Pesto should not have a restaurant with as much popularity as it does because, while he has excellent atmosphere and does far better in management and marketing, his food is said to be terrible. While he has a staff that does the cooking for him, it's more than likely his own recipes. The food he serves has given people food poisoning, along with Mickey the bank robber shooting them and calling them crap on television.
  • "Are You There, Bob? Its Me Birthday" has Bob tag along with Hugo to inspect a sandwich place while Linda is preparing Bob's birthday party. When Bob questions if the restaurant is really as bad as Hugo claims, Hugo makes a wager with Bob—whatever happens in there, Bob will eat a wrap once the inspection is over. Bob takes the bet without question, but quickly regrets it when Hugo finds such violations as chicken being stored above 40 degrees, a cleaning rag that has never been washed, and rodent droppings right next to the salad prep. When Hugo makes Bob follow through on the deal while reading off every violation he found, Bob predictably ends up with food poisoning; and concedes that, while Hugo might be a dick about it, health inspection is actually a pretty important job.
• The 2015 reboot of Bob the Builder has turned this into a well-recurring gag for the titular character, who often couldn't cook even if his life depended on it; he's a One Note Chef who can really only make sardine sandwiches which both Leo and Wendy dread when offered some, and even the machines don't think too highly of them. In fact, even with the help of a professional chef, Bob's attempt at an omelet was at best barely palatable, which isn't helped when another episode reveals that he has a bland sense of taste.
• Bugs Bunny tends to do this on purpose. "Wild Turkey Surprise" consisted of a small powder keg and two sticks of dynamite, arranged and dressed up to look kinda like a turkey. The surprise? He lights the fuses. Why such a delicacy? He was feeding a Tasmanian Devil — that would otherwise have had Bugs for lunch.
• Camp Lazlo zigzags it with Chef McMuesli, the camp chef who is a Straw Vegetarian. He's obsessed with eating healthy vegan food, but usually whatever he prepares for the campers is disgusting and inedible and ironically no better than the junk food he's shown to tyrannically confiscate. However, many times campers and camp staff alike are shown eating his food without complaint, suggesting he can cook edible food, but when he goes on his vegan crusades, his cooking skills go out the window. On one occasion, Lumpus ate his diet food which he deemed delicious, but unfortunately since he was trying to gain weight at the time, he rejects any more of it.
• From Care Bears:
  • Mr. Beastly once tried to make cookies by following the instructions on Grams Bear's cooking show. Despite making an utter mockery of the recipe, the lone cookie he manages to make comes out of the oven perfectly fine. And fifty feet tall. The next time we see him, his monster cookie is chasing him across the landscape. Of course, we never learn if the cookie is actually edible or not, but it's probably safe to say that only Godzilla could answer that question.
  • An evil pieman named Sour Sam created some apple pies that make whomever eats one become grumpier than even Grumpy Bear... apparently, Tenderheart was one of the victims. but if it weren't for Grams' Happy Apple Pies.....
• Food produced by V.I.L.E. in Carmen Sandiego tends to be as bad as their name. One of their schemes was to wipe out the rice crops of Indonesia to force the populace to pay for their imitation rice at a premium. Carmen remembers trying the "rice" as a child and was driven to tears by it.
• Catscratch has Gordon (being Scottish and all) but Waffle managed to do worse in the episode where he was asked to make the soup and used the wrong book — instead of using the recipe book he used the book of the dead and zombies rose from their graves because of this.
• Gadget from Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers may be a great mechanic and inventor, but everything she cooks tastes like machine oil. Dale on the other hand isn't allowed to cook, period; being a Cloud Cuckoolander Bumbling Sidekick, he's more likely to set everything on fire.
• The one time that Chowder decided to make a dish without the assistance of master chef Mung Daal, he accidentally dumped a whole bottle of poison in it, and then unknowingly tried to sell it on the streets. It even managed to burp out the warning "You... will... die!" when Mung was almost forced to taste-test it. He manages to redeem himself in the Grand Finale, although everyone else is scared to try the food he made due to it being a Mess on a Plate.
• Implied for Jeremie Belpois of Code Lyoko in "Triple Trouble". He informs Odd that he has a surprise for him and Odd states that he hopes it's not food because Jeremie can't cook. And considering Odd is a bottomless pit normally, that says a LOT.
• Two examples from Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • Granma Stuffum is a very extreme example. The food is literally alive and acts as her helpers, forcefully stuffing themselves into kids' mouths. And also that giant sandwich creature Slamwich is one meal that could probably make a meal out of you.
  • Lizzie, Numbuh 1's girlfriend, is also pretty bad. When "Nigie" is sick, she makes him soup that he later uses as an explosive weapon. When he goes on a retreat in Jamaica, she follows with a pie she baked for him. One bite of the pie knocks the pilot unconscious. And then the replacement pilot. Not helping matters is that she just ignores anyone that tries telling her how bad the cooking is and that she finds her concoctions tasty when called on to test them. With The Reveal in the Galactic KND promotional video that she's really an alien disguised as a human, it makes more sense — of course the food she cooks would taste weird to humans.
• Cow and Chicken: In "Happy Meat", the Red Guy works at the cafeteria of the school Cow and Chicken go to disguised as a lunch lady named "Mrs. Barderriere" and serves only ketchup for lunch just to torture the students. Cow and Chicken then rebel by opening their own stand.
• In the Daft Planet episode "Snitchy and the Phobe", Ched and Hudson get jobs at Hudson's dad's TV station where they expose several restaurant chefs in Maple City as this. Notable examples include the chef of a Mexican restaurant who was smoking while stirring a pot of chili, causing the ashes of what he was smoking to fall into said chili, and not caring if his bird poops in it. There's also Il Giovanni's Ristorante, which passed off baked sock scum as parmigiana.
• Darkwing Duck:
  • Morgana McCawber is an example. Having come straight from Monster Mash land, most of her dishes look like they came straight from The Nightmare Before Christmas, looking quite unpleasant and almost always still moving. Oddly however, in-universe, the only one who ever has any problem with this is Darkwing himself.
  • Launchpad is another; in "Can't Bayou Love", he bakes brownies which immediately send Darkwing to the water cooler for a long drink. He does mention that he couldn't find all the ingredients and had to substitute some, although what exactly he substituted is never made clear. However, Jumbalaya Jake's alligator, Gumbo, finds them tasty.
• Dave from Dave the Barbarian is actually considered to be a good cook, however, in one episode where he lived out his dream of opening a bistro, the term "Lethal Chef" got taken to a new level when he used a cursed cookbook called "The Cuisinum Mysterium Cookbook" to help him — the recipes are cursed (the food comes alive and takes on a life of its own) and later on while making "Armageddon Souflé" the souflé comes to life and becomes a rampaging monster dessert.
• In Detentionaire, Lee's dad claims he can't even boil water.
• The Dick Tracy Show: In "Cooked Crooks," Joe Jitsu disguises himself as a French chef to fool Mumbles and Stooge Viller, who are out to steal the chef's famous recipe for chocolate la goo-goo. Joe pours ingredients such as antelope's hooves and bee's knees in the concoction, then when Stooge and Mumbles add the secret ingredient to it, the stuff explodes on them. (The secret ingredient turned out to be gunpowder, leading that the other ingredients must have been quite volatile.)
• In the Doug episode "Doug's Cookin'," Patti Mayonnaise is revealed to be a terrible cook. Between her lack of any culinary skill and Doug's status as a One-Note Cook who can only make grilled cheese sandwiches, Hilarity Ensues when they try to make a cake for their school's bake-off. By the end of the episode they make a good pizza, though, and the later episode "Patti's Dad Dilemma" shows Patti making meatloaf well. Presumably, the success with the pizza inspired her to keep practicing and improve in the kitchen.
• The Fairly OddParents! has several examples:
  • Timmy's mother. That being said, her food generally tastes better than it looks. Some examples of her cooking:
    • It once defied the laws of physics and collapsed into a pink mess. In a world where the concept of color did not exist.
    • She sets a bowl on fire while pouring milk in it.
    • Exaggerated in one episode, where her food looked like it was cooked using an Eldritch Abomination, among other things, so everybody was scared to death to try it. And then? The trope is subverted when it won an international cooking competition.
  • Her son is no better; in one episode where Timmy tries to cook, it exploded.
  • Jorgen once made a pizza with toppings that include grenades, landmines, and barbed wire, and yes it explodes in your face. The Pixies made a pizza with money on it and you vomit money when you eat it. The Anti-Fairies have a Friday the 13th pizza which causes bad luck when you eat it.
• Peter Griffin from Family Guy is a literal version of this trope: In an episode where he starts his own restaurant, it was revealed that the last time he made food, he baked cupcakes that blew up the heads of people who ate it, which was also implied to have shut down his business.
• Fireman Sam
  • The series had a Running Gag in Elvis usually being the designated chef at Pontypanty's fire station. Usually something went wrong before anyone could actually eat it, but the characters often talk about how horrible his cooking is. Sam also tried at least once to build an elaborate machine to get around the problem, but it only made things worse. Of course, given that neither Sam nor Station Officer Steele ever try their hand at cooking themselves one can only imagine how much worse they are.
  • In the CGI series, Elvis has gone through some Character Development into a much better cook, while instead, the series offers up some literal examples through Bronwyn and Trevor, who are generally decent at cooking (or grilling, in Trevor's case), but their inattentiveness often leads to disaster.
• A 1972 short subject of The Flintstones has Barney helping Fred whose boss, Mr. Slate is coming to Fred's for dinner with his wife and a client. Barney creates his "chili con Barney," but the result is so torrid when the boys taste it that they drink every drop of water from the swimming pool to douse the burn.
• Futurama:
  • Bender Bending Rodriguez, being a robot, has no sense of taste and a limited knowledge of organic biology. As a result, he has trouble understanding why humans dislike food that only contains 90% of a lethal dose of table salt. He even ended up accidentally killing his Obi-Wan Kenobi-esque culinary teacher with a dish that made his stomach implode, though his mentor at least declared it "acceptable" before dying. He also once made drinks that melted through the floor when spilled. However, in "I Second that Emotion" Bender bakes an amazing cake. So it seems that he can make good food if he follows the recipe to the letter, but he has a tendency to experiment, so...
    Leela: Oh, dear God!
    Fry: That's the saltiest thing I ever tasted, and one time I ate a heaping bowl of salt!
    Amy: Bender, is this saltwater?
    Bender: It's salt with water in it, if that's what you mean.
    Fry: My vision's fading... I think I'm gonna die!
    Bender: There was nothing wrong with that food. The salt level was 10% less than a lethal dose.
    Zoidberg: Uh-oh. I shouldn't have had seconds.
  • The episode "A Leela of Her Own" featured aliens called Cygnoids, whose bizarre physiology and foreign culture led to many problems, including "wine" made from crushed rats. (However, their pizza crust made with wasps seems to be a real hit).
• G.I. Joe:
  • Heavy Duty takes this to another level; he likes to use grenades to barbecue. This is an intentional contrast to his cousin, world-class chef and gourmet Roadblock.
  • Gung-Ho's Cajun gumbo is pretty bad; the other Joes used it for Skystriker fuel once.
  • The episode "Raise the Flagg!" features Cobra mess cook B.A. LaCarre, who once gave a squad of Strato-Vipers ptomaine poisoning.
• Jon Arbuckle, in Garfield and Friends, is frequently portrayed as a Lethal Chef; his "new recipes" invariably end up as something that looks like it belongs in a low budget horror movie, although he is also usually capable of making normal food when he's not trying to get creative. However, sometimes he even fails at that. Jon's specialty, deep-fried pig's liver with chocolate sauce, is so revolting even GARFIELD won't eat it. In one episode, he prefers eating the pictures out of a cookbook.
• The Garfield Show: Mama Meany's Pizza Palace may be successful, but that's largely due to coupons, promotions, and excessive advertising. The actual pizza (made entirely by machine) is completely horrible — it's so tough and rubbery you can't bite into it, and Jon compares the taste to cardboard (and Mama Meany freely admits that the pizza Jon's eating is supposed to taste like styrofoam). Garfield does eventually find something the pizzas are good for: as ammunition against Mama Meany when he tries to stop a much better pizza from reaching the city's top food critic.
• The only time we see Dr. Holiday make any kind of food in Generator Rex, her cake is so overcooked it can't be cut with a knife.
• Get Ace: Mrs. McDougal, due to being a fitness nut who prioritizes nutrition over taste, resulting in her food being flavorless mush that's meant to be healthy. Even Lunchbox, the family dog won't touch it.
  Hugo: That glop has all the gastronomical appeal of a knuckle sandwich.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): Orko is not a good chef when trying to cook for others, to the point of dangerous recipes. In "The Good Shall Survive", his attempt at making a pie ends up with a pure baking soda filling instead. It actually ends up saving the day, as the disaster of a recipe is stolen along with other foods from storage, leaving the thieving Tycons with horrible stomachaches. Despite this, pre-made food that he summons for himself always seems to be a safe bet.
• Invader Zim:
  • There are often jokes about the lethality of cafeteria food at the Skool, including missing livers if the kids are lucky. One of the more notable dishes is Ketchup and Rice. Another is some unknown sludge-like substance stored in a tank in the Skool cafeteria ceiling that crawls inside the students' eye sockets after being served.
    Dib: (looking at his sickened classmates) "Look at them! And it's not even Corn and Mayonnaise Day!"
  • After Zim discovered the one human food he could consume, waffles, GIR made some. With peanuts and SOAP.
    "GIR, your waffles have sickened me! Fetch me the bucket!"
  • Robomom's idea of "dinner" is dumping a bag of flour on Zim's head.
• Johnny Bravo has Pops, the owner of a local diner who uses all sorts of strange things in his dishes, including possums and bald eagles. When Johnny runs in desperate for hair gel because Mr. Kevin's triple-strength hair tonic has been discontinued and is nowhere to be found in town, Pops responds with a cheerful: "Sure! Mr. Kevin's is the main ingredient in my Five-Alarm Chili!" Another episode revealed that his chili is full of asbestos and his meatloaf is contaminated with radon.
• Johnny Test:
  • While not a lethal chef per se, Johnny's father Hugh loves to cook meatloaf and though he loves the resulting meals, it's next to indigestible for anyone else. His attempts to bake healthy cookies taste like dirt according to Johnny; Hugh forces him to taste dirt for a better comparison, forcing him to admit he stands corrected — dirt tastes better.
  • Being a lousy cook seems to run in the Test family. Johnny once tried to make mint chip ice cream out of mint-flavored toothpaste, potato chips, rocks and salt (instead of rock salt) with disastrous results, and another time ended up completely botching an attempt at making cupcakes which were completely burnt and, according to Dukey, "smelled like turd". His mother Lila along with Susan and Mary are arguably even worse, as they have so little experience with cooking that they aren't even sure what a spatula is or does and end up making a meatloaf that comes to life and attacks Hugh because they "used too much DNA".
• June of KaBlam! is such a terrible cook that she had to be kicked out of her scouting troop because of this.
• Everybody from Kaeloo is a terrible chef, the only exception being Kaeloo herself. Stumpy makes stew by stomping his feet in it◊, Pretty serves dishes with (live) worms in them, and Mr. Cat cooks eyes.
• From Kim Possible:
  • Kim herself. She can do anything...except cook. Cooking is one of the few skills where Ron excels over Kim.
  • Also the lunch ladies in the school cafeteria.
    Ron: Behold, the cafeteria, where I am told you can get a hot nourishing meal. I haven't yet, but your mileage may vary.
• Pleakley in Lilo & Stitch: The Series. He's pleased by the fact that dog food makes its own gravy.
• The titular Madeline and her friends attempt to cook a great meal at the start of "Madeline at the Cooking School", but their recipe poisons Lord Cucuface, kicking off the episode's plot.
• A Mickey Mouse Works short, Mickey Tries to Cook, has Mickey Mouse trying to cook something other than sandwiches, and ending up causing an explosion when he doesn't realize his fan is flipping the pages of his cookbook when he isn't looking.
  Book: Cut Carrots
  (Mickey cuts some carrots)
  Book: Whole Carrots
  (Mickey takes the cut carrots and glues them back together)
• Jacob from Motorcity. Chuck still eats his mayonnaise muffins, even if he can't stand them.
• In My Goldfish is Evil, Beanie's attempt at cooking breakfast for his mother includes using mayonnaise as a substitute for pancake mix and topping her coffee with pickles.
• My Little Pony:
  • A few examples from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, being kids, clearly aren't up to the task of cooking just yet. Apple Bloom's attempt at making cupcakes in "Call of the Cutie" produces oddly shaped, half-burned lumps that Pinkie Pie says "look much better than the last batch" and a big mess in the kitchen. In "Sisterhooves Social", Sweetie Belle tries to make Rarity breakfast in bed and manages to completely carbonize everything, including the juice and a bowl of what Rarity guesses to be applesauce. "Nope, toast!"^note She shows some improvement at the end of the episode, producing something that at least looks like a pie, though the giant cloud of smoke suggests she still has room for improvement.
    • In "Applebuck Season", Applejack becomes one after working so hard at the farm (several days in a row, with no time to sleep) that she's delirious and mishears every ingredient Pinkie Pie reads off to her. They end up making "muffins" out of potato chips, soda, lemon juice, and worms. Oddly, they somehow still come out looking (and apparently tasting) like muffins, and nobody notices until it makes them all sick, including Pinkie Pie, who had no problem eating the above-mentioned cupcakes made by Apple Bloom. Spike loved them, though. It's also stated that she's normally a very good baker.
    • In "The Cutie Map Part 1", the muffins that Sugar Belle makes for the Mane 6 look like lumps of charcoal and taste bad enough that Pinkie Pie hates them. When Pinkie Pie is forced to eat them all to give everyone an excuse to go meet her in the basement of her shop, she laments that she's "accidentally eaten cardboard tastier than that" when they get downstairs. Subverted when Sugar Belle gets her cutie mark back in Part 2; baking is actually her special talent and she was only a lethal chef before because the equal sign cutie mark Starlight Glimmer forced on her was suppressing her talents.
    • Despite Rainbow Dash previously being shown to be above average at baking cakes, her later attempt at making a pie is nothing short of revolting.◊ It has gross brown sludge filling oozing out of it and rotting fruit and vegetables inexplicably being part of the recipe. It also stinks badly enough that Pinkie Pie could smell it from the top of Sugarcube Corner. And as for the crust...
      Pinkie Pie: Is this crust or some kind of concrete?
      Rainbow Dash: Yeah, honestly, I have no idea.
    • In "A Royal Problem," it is shown that Celestia makes her own breakfast pancakes every morning. At the end, Princess Luna makes some pancakes as an apology... except they are clearly only slightly edible. Celestia tries to pretend they're good, but Luna just laughs and says she can tell the truth. Celestia immediately throws them out.
  • My Little Pony: Make Your Mark: Queen Haven is revealed to be a terrible cook in "A Little Horse", which is why she buys Pipp's Special Sick Day Soup from The Souper Ladle Food Cart and passes it off as her own cooking. Pipp is aware of this, but she still appreciates Haven's effort in cheering her up while she's sick.
• In one episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Pooh has to bake a cake for a party. Being a bear of little brain, he uses flowers in place of flour and thinks that a "dash of salt" means a huge pile of it. We don't get to see anyone actually taste the final product because when his mixture is put into the oven, it explodes inside it.
• That frog cook with the handlebar mustache from the old British Nickelodeon claymation shorts. He makes probably worse food than the Swedish Chef, though he seems to do alright with seafood.
• In the Noah and Nelly in Skylark episode "During Tea", Noah refuses to make breakfast on the grounds that if he does, they wouldn't be able to eat it.
• In the Peanuts animated special It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty tries to teach Marcie how to make Easter eggs, but Marcie can't get a handle on how to prepare the eggs. First, she fries them. Next, she tries cooking them on a waffle iron, then a toaster, and then putting them in the oven. Finally, with help from Patty, she boils them... but cracks them open first, resulting in "egg soup".
  Peppermint Patty: AAUGH!!
• In The Powerpuff Girls (1998), the Professor is an okay cook, except when he tries to cook chili. A flashback in the episode where he tries to do so for a chili cookoff reveals that last year's attempt caused a disaster, and the current attempt doesn't seem any more promising. After adding Chemical X to it, it tastes good, but still causes a disaster, in the form of a methane monster.
• Oscar Proud from The Proud Family is constantly shown to be this in regards to his food product "Proud Snacks", resulting in the person ingesting it either choking, getting cramps, breathing fire, or simply just falling extremely sick. In fact, of all the people on the show who've had his snacks, only one is explicitly shown to enjoy his snacks, a kid who is Wise Beyond His Years. How Oscar continues to run his business despite it clearly being unliked by virtually every single person in America is unknown.
• Recess:
  • One episode has Gretchen talking about Tomato Surprise (no relation). She later uses the Tomato Surprise to destroy the hinges and the lock on a door so she and the rest of the gang can free TJ.
    Gretchen: The tomato surprise isn't without its useful properties.
    TJ: You mean this stuff is safe to eat?
    Gretchen: No. I mean if you let it age, it can burn a hole through a concrete floor.
    Vince: (inserts spoon into Tomato Surprise and it dissolves) It doesn't have too far to go.
  • The Tomato Surprise turns out to have an even more surprising use in the Halloween Episode — it's acidic enough to wipe out a whole room full of zombies.
• In The Replacements, about the only thing that omnicompetent superspy Agent K can't do is cook; she once attempted to use a laser from one of her spy gadgets to cook a meal in the oven, burning it to a crisp. Todd considers his adoptive father Dick to be a better cook simply because he cooks like a normal person.
• Heffer Wolf on Rocko's Modern Life is a variation: while the meal he cooks for himself and Rocko in one episode tastes decent enough, it looks disgusting, is made from thoroughly unappetizing ingredients, and actually tries to crawl away from his plate at one point.
  Rocko: Heff! This is bonza! What's in it?
  Heffer: Well, let's see, there's...pickled banana shavings, gym socks, canned haggis, beetle bladders, real processed head cheese, saltpeter, reconstituted corn sweat, the finest barley and hops...*stops food from moving*...Hmm, now where was I? Potash, sulfur, monosodium glutamate, and vegetable cartilage as a binding agent!
• There are several awful chefs in The Simpsons:
  • Lunch Lady Doris routinely serves truly abominable food to the students at Springfield Elementary. It's implied that her incredibly poor cooking is caused at least in part by the ridiculously low budget Springfield Elementary receives from the state, but part of it is her own apathy and incompetence. Some examples of her culinary failures:
    • From Season 4's "I Love Lisa", she serves beef hearts to the kids (it's Valentine's Day)...after the delivery guy reluctantly dumps them on the dirty floor. If you listen closely, one of them is still beating.
    • In a Season 5 episode, she's shown preparing a meal that consists entirely of testicles. Why? More testicles means more iron. In a disturbing turn, she's surprisingly animated about that one.
    • From Season 7's "Lisa the Vegetarian", it's revealed that LLD doesn't cater to vegetarians (except for giving them a plain bun and deadpanning, "Yum. It's rich in bunly goodness.") and that the meatloaf she makes isn't made of meat.
    • She has also been known to use shredded newspapers and gym mats. Skinner justifies the former by saying they add "roughage and essential inks". Doris' only complaint is that there is very little meat in the gym mats.
    • One episode has Lisa find a battery in her mac 'n' cheese. Doris claims it "counts as a vegetable".
    • She was once seen serving WWII rations. They were probably slightly past the expiration date.
    • Taken quite literally in "Treehouse of Horror V". Let's just say the kids would have preferred the Grade F meat ("Ingredients: Mostly circus animals, some filler") over Sloppy Jimbos and Üterbraten if they knew that they were made from their own classmates.
  • Homer Simpson himself cannot cook, feeding into his general ineptitude:
    • When he was attempting to cook breakfast for Mr. Burns, everything he tried to make caught on fire (including combining corn flakes and milk).
    • When he became a "me-gan" in "Treehouse of Horror XXVIII", he began cooking bits of himself.
    • On the Season 4 episode "Marge in Chains" (where Marge is put in jail for 30 days after accidentally shoplifting bourbon due to being stressed out from her family being sick), Marge flashbacked to the last time Homer tried to cook for the family. He served fish that weren't quite dead — and the lobsters attacked him. In the same episode, he gave Bart a pack of sugar and some peanut butter smeared on a playing card as a school lunch.
    • When Marge became The Gambling Addict in the episode "$pringfield", groceries run low at the Simpsons' house, and Homer attempts to make "breakfast" by mixing together cloves, Tom Collins mix and a pie crust. He takes one bite, before telling Lisa they're going to get Marge back in a disturbingly calm voice.
  • Marge Simpson herself is implied to be kind of an uninspired chef ("Eight spices? Some must be doubles! 'Ore-gahno'? What the hell?"), but as her family just shovels it down anyways, there are no complaints. There's also a mention of her making Bart butterscotch chicken (which, oddly enough, people have actually made) on the Season 8 episode "A Milhouse Divided". Which is odd, since Bart had previously been established as being allergic to butterscotch...
  • Mr. Burns seems to be rather bad at it, judging by the expression on Smithers' face when he tastes a cake that Burns baked in the episode "Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield". "I pickled the figs myself."
  • Luann Van Houten is heavily implied to be a bad cook in "A Milhouse Divided." When Luann mentions the time some high school punks egged her husband's Bonneville, Kirk (the husband) snarks that the punks should have hurled some bacon so he could have a decent breakfast for once. Also, Kirk mentions that he hasn't eaten this good (or that noisily, according to Luann) since he was in the Army. It's from these two instances that gave the audience (and the characters) an early clue that the Van Houtens' marriage is on the rocks.
  • The Springfield prison chefs are known to be horrible, even by prison standards. In the episode "The Seven-Beer Snitch", the prisoners were fed "horse meat...with traces of jockey meat". Cue camera to a box of "Churchill Downs Mystery Meat".
  • Nelson's mom once sent her son to school with a drywall sandwich for lunch.
  • Krusty's burgers contain no real meat or vegetables. But then again, they're better than the diseased burgers in "Treehouse of Horror XX", which caused a Zombie Apocalypse.
• Numerous examples from SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Squidward Tentacles seems to be something of a gourmet (albeit one with an affinity for canned bread and marzipan), and, in at least one episode, is seen eating an elaborate and tasty dish that was by all indication prepared by himself. However, when asked to sub as cook at the Krusty Krab, all he manages to do is burn everything to a crisp, suggesting he's at least a lethal fry-chef. Some examples from "Pickles" and "Hooky" respectively:
    Customer 1: Hey, he burnt my Krabby Patty.
    Customer 2: He burnt my fries.
    Customer 3: He burnt my shake!
    
    Customer 1: PEE-YOU! You call this food?
    Customer 2: My sandwich tastes like a fried boot!
    Customer 3: My sandwich is a fried boot!
  • Likewise, the main reason Sheldon Plankton is always trying to steal the Krabby Patty formula is because his own cooking is highly unappetizing. One episode had Karen (Plankton's computer wife) paying a guy to eat at the Chum Bucket (Plankton's restaurant). He gave her money back because he had to get his stomach pumped three times. It's that bad. Also, chum is literally dead fish, which would explain why so few people come there in the first place.
  • Mr. Krabs was also shown making a terrible dinner once, which came to life and tried to eat him and some customers ("Squilliam Returns"). In the same episode, we learn that he only cleaned the bathrooms on the S.S. Gourmet — but that he was the head chef on the S.S. Diarrhea.
  • In the episode "Something Smells", SpongeBob SquarePants wants to eat an ice cream sundae on Sunday but he doesn't have any ice cream. Not wanting to give up on his plans he uses the next best thing — ketchup. For his special sundae, he can't use just bananas or cherries, no, he uses freshly chopped onions. And finally, he tops it off with the shriveled peanuts he was growing on the windowsill along with the dirt he grew them in. No wonder it gave him bad breath.
  • SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs deliberately become this while making the Nasty Patty in order to scare off the health inspector, due to believing he was a fake. But that's NOT what knocked him out. He simply choked on a fly and hit his head, something that continually happens to him before he even realizes what's going on.
  • Spongy Patties, a Krabby Patty that Mr. Krabs was promoting to capitalize on SpongeBob's popularity, were made from expired patties.
  • The time Mr. Krabs and Plankton just straight-up fed everyone grease and made them sick. It got to the point where SpongeBob decided to bring in the health inspector to stop the madness.
  • In the spinoff Kamp Koral, Plankton's camp food is always terrible. It's seen as an unappetizing Mess on a Plate that is vaguely sentient. Even when he does try to cook a fancy meal, it ends up giving everyone food poisoning.
• The lunch lady at Stanley and Mary-Jane's school in Staines Down Drains. She's called Typhoid Mary for a reason.
• From the 1980s Strawberry Shortcake:
  • The Peculiar Purple Pieman from Porcupine Peak. When on a cooking show, his own oven groaned at the thought of baking his cookies, and one taste of his entry had the judge calling for a doctor, an ambulance, and the Marines. Fortunately, Strawberry's cooking was the antidote.
  • Other specials suggest his baking is so bad, Even the Rats Won't Touch It, and he knows it. In one, he tries to set a trap on a road for the heroine using pies that turned out like super-glue. (Naturally, he only ends up trapping himself.) In another episode, he suggests using them to bait a trap for a wild beast. After Sour Grapes expresses a small expression of doubt, he admits that's a bad idea.
• Both of the girls on Teen Titans (2003) are lethal chefs, but whereas Starfire might be a good cook by Tamaranean standards, Raven is just plain terrible. It does not cheer her up at all when the alien on the team is the only one who enjoys her pancakes. Cyborg and Beast Boy are good cooks on their own, but consider each others' tastes to be lethal on principle: Beast Boy is a strict vegetarian whose dishes are 90% tofu, while Cyborg is an avid meat-lover. Their fridge has a strange, blue, living substance in it (that apparently tastes quite nice).
• Michelangelo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012). In one episode, when he's complaining about no pizza shops being open, Donatello sarcastically suggests he make his own; Mikey actually does, and his brothers are pretty revolted by what he comes up with, which includes worms from the garbage and a hot sauce called "Devil's Vomit".
  Raphael: You take disgusting to a whole new level.
• There are several examples in Total Drama:
  • Chef Hatchet's job is to deliberately make terrible food for the campers. He'll actually make some pretty good food if it's for himself and/or Chris, or if the challenge calls for it (such as in "The Big Sleep", where the challenge is to see who can stay awake the longest after everybody had just eaten a huge turkey dinner).
  • In the episode "Who Can You Trust?", two contestants have to prepare poisonous fugu blowfish to feed to a teammate. While Bridgette makes a perfectly edible meal (even presented as sushi rolls), Lindsay made a glob which sent Trent to the infirmary. He survived (don't ask us how).
  • One of the competitions in Total Drama Revenge of the Island involved the contestants finding food on the irradiated island and cooking it. All four dishes were repulsive in different ways, and only one was edible in the end. During the preparation portion of the contest, Zoey's salad actively tried to kill her.
  • Season two of the revival has the contestants split into three teams to bake a cake. Aside from Julia (whose parents run a bakery), the efforts leave much to be desired. Priya’s team uses Ripper’s sweat as a substitute for yeast, and M.K’s team runs out of ingredients right away, so they use garbage.
• A Treasure In My Garden: The episode "The Pot" is about a boy and man chef team making a stew. When it's eaten, they get sick.
• In Trollhunters, in contrast to her son's expert cooking abilities, Barbara is a terrible cook.
• The T.U.F.F. Puppy episode "Dog Daze" has the Chief try to make pies. According to Keswick, they taste like shoes.
• Ms. Mush from Wayside. She actually comes from a land that makes very odd cuisine. She even has a dead rat who was killed by her food. Her worst dish is the "Mushroom Surprise", which is so powerful that one bite will put you in a hallucinatory state or make you fall in love. It is called this because "it would be a surprise if you try it".
• A running gag in The Weekenders is Tino's mother "experimenting" with healthy foods...with disastrous results. Tino often tries to avoid getting a parental lecture by commenting on the food instead with comments questioning the ingredients and sometimes even implying that the food is alive. Case in point: Tino and his friends once cheerfully (so to speak) ate pot scrubbers because they thought they were cookies she had made. They don't find out the truth until after.
• Taranee from W.I.T.C.H. prefers to stay over at Irma's house whenever her father cooks.
• It's strongly implied in X-Men: The Animated Series that Jean Grey's skills are lacking in the kitchen given Gambit's reaction when he tastes her cooking. When Gambit offers to spice it up with his Cajun recipes, Jean gets so annoyed she busts out her Mind over Matter power to stop him. Given Gambit is a Supreme Chef in the comics, it's probably wise to trust his taste buds on this occasion.
• X-Men: Evolution's Kitty Pryde is an example of this early on (her muffins either bounce off the walls or leave dents in the floor, poor Kurt), but gets a little better with constant practice as the series progresses.
• Mrs. X from The X's is clearly not the best cook, as shown in one episode where Mr. X becomes a mailman and she gives him two items for lunch that are burnt beyond recognition (for the viewer, but oddly not for Mr. X). In another episode where she comes home after achieving inner peace, Homebase is shocked when he sees her cooking using the oven instead of a flamethrower.

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