S/O Proud kitchen moments -- Kitchen disasters

[mmswm]

I just remembered one of my favorite stories from when I was a kid.  My father was making a stir fry.  He had an outdoor gas burner that got *really* hot.  He came in with the wok and set it on the kitchen counter.  Did I mention that the gas burner got hot?  And the pan over the flames also got really hot?  It was hot enough to singe a nice little hole in the kitchen counter.  The best part though was his solution to the burn hole in the middle of the counter.  Instead of replacing it, he cut out a chunk of the counter and inset a glass cutting board.  I must say that cutting board was my favorite feature of that kitchen, and my mother liked it so much that she's had my father do that to both the houses they've lived in since then.

[andi]

I love Pyrex but it does scare me now. I blew up a bowl in the microwave a couple weeks ago. Cooking rice - same way I always have - it just exploded about halfway through the normal time.

My brother started 2 different grease fires in our old house - forgetting the stove was on and went doubt other business. My oaernts were not amused. (brother was in his 20's so old enough to know better)

[gramma dishes]

I love Pyrex but it does scare me now. ...

Pyrex used to be so sturdy.  Then a few decades ago they stopped using the kind of glass they had been using all along and started using a different kind of glass.  Their theory was that the "old" glass was more like to break on impact and they thought that would be more dangerous than having glass shatter into pieces with the (supposedly) more rounded edges of the newer glass.

The only Pyrex piece I ever broke was a small ramekin sized dish (oversized custard dish) that I dropped from about two inches off the floor while putting it away in a lower cabinet.  It hit nothing else going down and the floor was cushioned vinyl (so not super hard like tile).  I was stunned that it would break so easily. 

Interestingly, I think Pyrex baking dishes manufactured in Europe STILL use the older glass. 

I still have a couple of really old Pyrex dishes that were my Mother's.  I feel safer with them than my "new and improved" Pyrex pieces.  I use the newer ones, but maybe a little more carefully.

[Giggity]

I made bacon jam Friday afternoon. YAY! I doubled Martha Stewart's recipe, so I fried up three pounds of bacon. You're supposed to pour off all but a tablespoon of bacon grease. I grabbed the closest container ... flimsy Tupperware. It doesn't hold molten bacon grease as well as you'd think. The entire bottom melted out and yeah, bacon grease down the side of the cabinet.

[gramma dishes]

I made bacon jam Friday afternoon. YAY! I doubled Martha Stewart's recipe, so I fried up three pounds of bacon. You're supposed to pour off all but a tablespoon of bacon grease. I grabbed the closest container ... flimsy Tupperware. It doesn't hold molten bacon grease as well as you'd think. The entire bottom melted out and yeah, bacon grease down the side of the cabinet.

   I must confess that I've never heard of bacon jam.  How is it used?

[Hmmmmm]

I made bacon jam Friday afternoon. YAY! I doubled Martha Stewart's recipe, so I fried up three pounds of bacon. You're supposed to pour off all but a tablespoon of bacon grease. I grabbed the closest container ... flimsy Tupperware. It doesn't hold molten bacon grease as well as you'd think. The entire bottom melted out and yeah, bacon grease down the side of the cabinet.

   I must confess that I've never heard of bacon jam.  How is it used?

We put it on homemade buttermilk biscuits.

[jedikaiti]

My guess is that the Pyrex cracked and exploded, since it isn't designed for direct heat, such as a burner. Then, the brownie came in contact with the burner and ignited.

But what a mess! And no brownies to comfort yourself with.

Yea, pretty much. I was just really glad nobody was in the kitchen at the time.

[Luci45]

Early in our marriage, my husband, the science teacher, put a Pyrex container of left-overs on the gas stove. It shattered, rice and glass shards shot all over the place. He did manage to clean it up. (I don't know how he did it, but I truly admire that.) I asked him what he was thinking, and it was that his beakers in the lab were Pyrex made by Corning and they went on the Bunson burners all of the time. How can I gripe at him about that? I just explained that cooking and lab equipment were made for different purposes, and he said he had just learned that.

I got an email years later - one of those that are full of misinformation, usually - about different years and Pyrex. I checked on Snopes at the time, and it seemed to confirm the email. I just looked for it again, and Snopes seems to be not quite so sure - check 'Exploding Pyrex' in their search. I do remember that the Pyrex in question was about the new stuff and mine was old.

I've always known not to shock Pyrex, like putting it from the oven onto a damp cloth.

[MissRose]

This happened to my sister not me (but her cooking skills have greatly improved, and she now makes great chicken soup and lasagna among other things)

*I came home from work during my uni years and she had a fire under the burner where she was deep frying food.  I moved the pan and put out the fire with baking soda

*Another time during the same time period mentioned, she was cooking a box of broccoli and cheesy rice.  Our mother's stove heated things really fast and my sister did not remember that.  The garage stunk of burned cheesy rice that took a while to be removed from the cooled pan!

[Snooks]

The only time I've had a pyrex bowl break it split clean down the middle, we think it was caused by vibrations on the worktop.  My mum and I just stared at it in shock, thankfully it was empty.

[Giggity]

I made bacon jam Friday afternoon. YAY! I doubled Martha Stewart's recipe, so I fried up three pounds of bacon. You're supposed to pour off all but a tablespoon of bacon grease. I grabbed the closest container ... flimsy Tupperware. It doesn't hold molten bacon grease as well as you'd think. The entire bottom melted out and yeah, bacon grease down the side of the cabinet.

   I must confess that I've never heard of bacon jam.  How is it used?

In and on everything! It's good on eggs, burgers, grilled-cheese sandwiches ... a dollop in your soup ... heck, I figure that's why God created all the spoons in my silverware drawer.

[Carotte]

Not really a cooking disaster, more like a post cooking.. I had tried to make deep fried donuts (they weren't great) to take to a party. went to the party, forgot to turn off the fire under the oil. No one was home, fortunately nothing happened, but since then we have a fire extinguisher at home .

(That might be why now, when I leave my SO's apartment (he leaves before me) I'm always deeply afraid I've left a burner on and have him come back to a burned up building. I need to start double checking before leaving or I'll end up too afraid to even use it to boil water.)

[Outdoor Girl]

I made squash soup.  It had finished cooking and the last step was to puree it.  It was getting close to my bedtime so I decided to go ahead and do it in batches in my blender.

Except it was too hot.  The first batch squirted out a little so the next batch, I didn't put as much in.  It EXPLODED - all over my face and chest.  I quickly took off my shirt.  Thank goodness I was wearing my glasses because I ended up with burns on my forehead.  Without glasses, I'd have had burns on my eyelid, if not my cornea.

I still make the soup; I still blend it.  I use the hand blender first, let it cool quite a bit then put it in the blender.  The hand blender leaves it too chunky, for my taste.

[lady_disdain]

Since we are talking about sisters...

My sister was not a cook when she moved out on her own. Her routine was to stop by the supermarket, pick up frozen lasagna, put it in the microwave for 25 minutes, shower while it cooked, eat a hot meal.

One day, instead of frozen lasagna, she decided to pick up some kind of savory pie. Instead of reading the instructions, she just went on with her script: put it in the microwave, shower for 20 minutes, come out to find the apartment filled with black smoke, the microwave turntable cracked from the heat and a lump of charred pastry.

The pie only required 3 minutes, since it wasn't frozen. She has yet to live that one down.

[mmswm]

Pre-Disaster:  My 13yo, the same one who blew up the well pump yesterday, is attempting to make brownies on his own.  Stay tuned for a future disaster story!