S/O Proud kitchen moments -- Kitchen disasters

[Silversurfer]

I made the most amazing roast chicken and vegies a few years back. I was so impressed with myself when i opened the oven door and saw the perfectly brown crispy skinned chicken that i called my DH in to have a look.

As i was congratulating myself, i pulled the chicken out of the pan only to have the absorbent plasticy  black sachet thing fall off the bottom of the chicken. ( i now know from researching "Can you still eat a chicken if you cooked the plastic black thing with it?" that the plastic black thing is called a diaper. And no, you should not eat it.

[gramma dishes]

...   

I've had the thermostat on the oven go on the fritz.  The smoke alarm went off before the timer did.  I had a carbonized manhole cover instead of a pizza. 

Also had a shocking experience with a waffle iron.  Apparently there was a short or something in the wiring and when I went to pour the batter in, I got zapped and flung waffle batter all around the kitchen....twice.  The large CLANG heard next was that waffle iron hitting the trash.

I was once making a red velvet cake from scratch and used AP flour instead of cake flour.  Three red frisbees.

We sometimes put a teaspoon of powdered ginger into the chili when we are making it.  This is for approx. 2 gallons of chili.  The top came off the spice jar and somewhere around 1/4 cup went in.  I tried to scoop it out but the chili was so bad the dog tried to bury it.    She wouldn't eat even a little bit, and this dog was usually a mobile garbage disposal.

Not mine, but Aunt.  She was a so-so cook, good candy maker, but incredibly lousy baker.  Her pie crusts were so thick and tough that when I was cutting a pie that she made during a family thanksgiving dinner, I cut through the pan too. (I was having to use the point of the knife to perforate the crust before I could slice it.) Luckily, it was just a cheap foil pie pan.   ...

I didn't repeat your entire post (for space reasons), but I just wanted you to know what a kick I got out of reading it.  You're very good at making disasters into humorous anecdotes.  I laughed so hard (and often) while reading of your culinary escapades!

[wonderfullyanonymous]

I pride myself in my cooking and baking skills. While my mistakes are truly few and far between, this one would have been number in in the top 100, and would have ruined my granddaughters first birthday party.

I begged and pleaded with my daughter to let me make the cakes. She wanted store bought, but I told her home made would be so much better. She settled on chocolate with cream cheese frosting.

The party was on a Saturday, so I started the cakes on Fri, so they could cool properly before I frosted them.

I was part way through the second batch of batter for the first cake when I first burned the baking chocolate melting it in the microwave. (The microwave smelled for 2 weeks.) Thankfully, this gave me food for thought, when I looked at the dishwasher where my ingredients were laid out. I had to through out 2 batches of batter because I forgot to put the baking soda and baking powder into the mix. I was just glad I caught this before the cakes were cooked.

I also had another problem, the chocolate, because I was now very short. I have some cocoa powder in the cabinet and also some ghiardelli hot cocoa mix up there as well.  With fingers crossed, I ad libbed the new ingredients while altering the sugar content, I also had to use my made in Mexico vanilla which has a hint of cinnamon.  I also cracked one when I flipped it out of the pan, so it had to be moved carefully.

Surprisingly, while they were a disaster, they tasted pretty good, and everyone raved about them.

[snowfire]

Thanks, gramma dishes.  I'm glad to be able to give someone the giggles.  I can laugh about them now....

Despite what it sounds like, I'm a pretty good cook, but I keep a few of these, like the cake, in the back of my head for when I get a little too cocky.

(Evil Snowfire still snickers over Aunt's pie, but she and I despised each other. I was very relieved when we quit doing the big "Family" holidays.)

[afbluebelle]

I've had my mishaps, but the worst kitchen mishap I ever had was when I was making chili.

I make good chili, but that day I'd realized that my roommate had taken a bunch of my spices with her for the weekend. I was in the middle of a prepping for a pot of chili, and barely had anything to work with. The only thing open on base was the Shoppette (like a convenience store), where I sent a couple of my friends to see if they had anything. They grabbed the last packet of premade chili spice mix. They also brought beer.

The chili was in the pot and set to simmer after frying, chopping, mixing, and (allegedly) drinking. We were trying to think of a way to get the cayenne pepper to add some heat, when the genius hit us! We should just use bear spray!

http://www.amazon.com/Guard-Alaska-Bear-Pepper-Spray/dp/B002NWY3LK/ref=pd_sbs_sg_4


Once the horrible burning clouds of death had aired out of the room and our vision was mostly restored, we shuffled back in to try the chili. It was pretty decent.  I'm just glad I took it off the burner when I aimed it in the bowl... and that I did the shooting in my roommate's bedroom and not in the kitchen.   Bear spray clears the sinuses really well!

[workingmum]

The Devon Cake... my fellow Aussies will know what devon is.. but for everyone else, it is a lunch meat, kinda of a gross pinkish, grainy colour.

I was going to make my daughter's birthday cake and bought everything I thought I needed for this beautiful icing etc.... My sister and I are making the cake 9pm the night before her birthday. We just cannot get the almond icing to take the colour properly.. We made an extra trip to the supermarket to buy more icing in case the batch we had was bad. Still can't get it to look like the nice smooth pink in the book.,. What the hell, let's use it anyway we say (there may have been a few drinks consumed by this point)... so we ice the cake. Yup, it looks like a massive chunk of devon.. not very appetising at all! After re-reading the directions, turns out Marzipan is not Almond Icing  Who knew huh??

Cue a distraught phone call to my mother to pick up a cake on the way over in the morning. I'm usually pretty good in the kitchen and have made some stunning cakes.. but this is one my sister will never let me live down!

[twiggy]

When I was in high school, I had a friend who I had many "adventures" with. One day we were at her house and we decided to make some cookies. I was on board with this, because I was really interested in her brother, and what teenage boy doesn't love cookies? (I met him at school and was starting to be 'friends' with him when I met her. I didn't know they were related for about a month and a half)
So, back to these cookies. We were using her mom's go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe, guaranteed to be delicious. I was reading the ingredient list, and Friend was grabbing everything and putting it on the counter. It's important to note that Friend was child #5 of 6 in her family, so her mom bought almost everything in bulk. Things like flour/sugar/rice were in smaller, plastic bins.
We got to work, mixed up our dough, but we could only find one cookie sheet, so we resigned ourselves to baking several batches. But the first batch turned out really weird. Picture a fried egg. The center mass of each cookie (where the chocolate chips and nuts were) was bigger, but where the cookies had spread, was almost paper thin. Friend called her mom, described the problem we were having, and Mom said it sounded like we needed more flour. So, we added more flour. And more flour. And More flour. It was still not working. If anything our cookies looked worse. So we decided it didn't matter how the cookies looked, we would eat the misshapen monstrosities anyway. I mentioned that I liked her brother, right? Around the time we decided to just eat them, he came home. Before tasting them myself, I offered him a cookie. He took one bite, then ran to the sink and not only spat it out, but he kind of retched a bit as well. I was almost in tears, until I absently nibbled on a cookie, and ran to the garbage can. As it turns out, our cookies were indeed lacking flour. Friend had mistakenly grabbed powdered sugar instead. We made cookie dough with no flour at all, and about 8 cups of powdered sugar. They were terrible. I was embarrassed that I had offered one to the Love of My Life.

I don't think I'll ever live that one down. You see, Friend is now my SIL; I married her brother, and my MIL knows far too many embarrassing Teen Twiggy stories since SIL and I got into a great many interesting situations together.

*Edited to remove huge emoticons

[twiggy]

This was a triumph/failure, depending on your point of view. My little brother, for a brief period, wanted to be a chef. The only problem was that he didn't know how to cook. So, one night I agreed to help him get through a recipe for lamb chops from his Williams Sonoma cookbook. It was very labor intensive, involving grinding whole spices with a mortar and pestle, assembling a spice rub, convincing Bro that he could use his bare hands to rub the spices into the lamb, etc. It was to be braised for 3 hours in a wine based sauce. So, pretty time and labor intensive. As I recall, it smelled heavenly. The sauce was divine, and the lamb was so tender you could cut it with a spoon: a dull spoon, using your non-dominant hand. What we hadn't considered was neither of us had ever tasted lamb. After slaving over a hot stove for hours, Bro and I discovered that we don't like the taste of lamb. Dad was on cloud 9. He loved it and asked us when we were going to make it again. Bro and I ended up having McDonalds for dinner

[Diane AKA Traska]

This was a triumph/failure, depending on your point of view. My little brother, for a brief period, wanted to be a chef. The only problem was that he didn't know how to cook. So, one night I agreed to help him get through a recipe for lamb chops from his Williams Sonoma cookbook. It was very labor intensive, involving grinding whole spices with a mortar and pestle, assembling a spice rub, convincing Bro that he could use his bare hands to rub the spices into the lamb, etc. It was to be braised for 3 hours in a wine based sauce. So, pretty time and labor intensive. As I recall, it smelled heavenly. The sauce was divine, and the lamb was so tender you could cut it with a spoon: a dull spoon, using your non-dominant hand. What we hadn't considered was neither of us had ever tasted lamb. After slaving over a hot stove for hours, Bro and I discovered that we don't like the taste of lamb. Dad was on cloud 9. He loved it and asked us when we were going to make it again. Bro and I ended up having McDonalds for dinner

Mmmm... lamb.  Aside from some awesome ground lamb burgers a month ago, I haven't had decent lamb in over a decade.

[SDG31000]

I forgot about my attempt at making caramelised onion chutney.  I can make jams and jellies with no problems, but for some reason I cannot get the hang of making chutney.  I thought I would have another go as my DFIL loves them.  All was going well until I tried getting the stuff out of the pan and into the jars.  It was steadfastly refusing to budge.  After much effort I got it into the jars and then decided to try a bit.  It turns out I made onion flavoured toffee instead of something spreadable.  The stuff was terrible, I couldn't get it out of the jars and ended up throwing all 6 of them away.  Now I buy chutney for DFIL and stick to baking instead.

[Bethalize]

Rhubarb jam. I wasted 2lb of rhubarb to make two teeny pots of jam. Apparently lemon helps jam set. Victorian lemons must have been smaller because this jam set so hard I didn't bother scraping it out the jars. Into the bin they went!

[Emmy]

A recent disaster.

I was making chicken soup.  I prepared the stock ahead of time and added the chicken.  I was taking the stock out of the fridge when I somehow drop it.  The fridge is right near the dining room with beige carpet (not my color choice, came with the house).  The pot tumbles out of my hand, lands mostly in the dining room and the impact sent chicken and stock splatters all the way across the room.  Ugh.

When I was in high school, I had a friend who I had many "adventures" with. One day we were at her house and we decided to make some cookies. I was on board with this, because I was really interested in her brother, and what teenage boy doesn't love cookies? (I met him at school and was starting to be 'friends' with him when I met her. I didn't know they were related for about a month and a half)
So, back to these cookies. We were using her mom's go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe, guaranteed to be delicious. I was reading the ingredient list, and Friend was grabbing everything and putting it on the counter. It's important to note that Friend was child #5 of 6 in her family, so her mom bought almost everything in bulk. Things like flour/sugar/rice were in smaller, plastic bins.
We got to work, mixed up our dough, but we could only find one cookie sheet, so we resigned ourselves to baking several batches. But the first batch turned out really weird. Picture a fried egg. The center mass of each cookie (where the chocolate chips and nuts were) was bigger, but where the cookies had spread, was almost paper thin. Friend called her mom, described the problem we were having, and Mom said it sounded like we needed more flour. So, we added more flour. And more flour. And More flour. It was still not working. If anything our cookies looked worse. So we decided it didn't matter how the cookies looked, we would eat the misshapen monstrosities anyway. I mentioned that I liked her brother, right? Around the time we decided to just eat them, he came home. Before tasting them myself, I offered him a cookie. He took one bite, then ran to the sink and not only spat it out, but he kind of retched a bit as well. I was almost in tears, until I absently nibbled on a cookie, and ran to the garbage can. As it turns out, our cookies were indeed lacking flour. Friend had mistakenly grabbed powdered sugar instead. We made cookie dough with no flour at all, and about 8 cups of powdered sugar. They were terrible. I was embarrassed that I had offered one to the Love of My Life.

I don't think I'll ever live that one down. You see, Friend is now my SIL; I married her brother, and my MIL knows far too many embarrassing Teen Twiggy stories since SIL and I got into a great many interesting situations together.

*Edited to remove huge emoticons

I love that story.  I am also impressed you didn't manage to taste the cookie dough ahead of time.  I can't resist a little nibble of raw cookie dough, I'll even risk eating the raw eggs.

[Thipu1]

This story was told to me by my mother.

She was a child during Prohibition and her father made his own beer.  Home brewing is now a science and the brewer can control things very well.  However, back in the days when it was illegal, home brewing was hit and miss. The second fermentation was achieved by putting a few raisins into each bottle before it was capped. 

In this batch, the bottles were capped and put out in the unheated back lobby to age.  A few days later, an ominous popping noise was heard.  The bottles were beginning to explode.  Someone had to go in and throw them into the yard because the back lobby was also used as a food larder. 

My Mother's little brother was 'armored' for the job with a saucepan for a helmet, thick mitts and pillows strapped to his chest and stomach.  Think of the illustration of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum's battle. 

[perpetua]

I was once making a pasta bake which had a carbonara-type sauce to it. I'd made it before and it had been delicious, but this time while making the sauce, the lid came off the black pepper as I was sprinkling it and I dumped half a pot of the darned stuff in there. I scraped off what I could from the top - which was like the ashen remains of a very small volcanic explosion - but alas, most of it had already sunk into the sauce.

Not having anything else in the house for dinner and figuring I liked spicy food so it couldn't be *that* bad, I decided to bake it anyway. The sauce, when poured over the pasta, wasn't the nice carbonara-ish colour it was supposed to be, but almost dark grey. To counteract it, I put some extra soft cheese into the sauce, thinking the creaminess would balance out the heat and maybe make it less grey. Except, no - all it did was screw up the consistency.

The end product was something resembling a very peppery, grey, rubbery rock, and after I'd choked down as much of it as I could I went to scoop the remainders out of the pot; it was stuck so fast it wouldn't even come out with a spatula. I ended up chucking the whole lot away, pot and all, and it hit the bottom of the bin with an actual thud.

The indigestion - which at first was *so* bad I almost went to A&E fearing a heart attack - started twenty minutes later and lasted an entire week.

[Twik]

I once made a new recipe - pineapple cheesecake. Large size, in a springform pan.

As I was putting it into the preheated over, I ... dropped the pan, hitting the oven door on the side, and sending goopy pineapple-cheese mix all over the kitchen. Some of it, of course, quickly cooking on the heated door.

Not good at all.