Share your cooking disasters

[Trek420]

In my wayward youth I worked at Mesa Cafe' in Oakland. We were doing a Chinese 5 spice Duck Confit (sp) as one of the daily specials. Alison Negrin (chef) handed me her recipe and spices, off I went to grind the spices and prepare the duck fat. The spice mixture included kosher salt. I forget if that was one of the 5 or it's really 6 ....

Then I started working on the duck breasts, bone and skin them. We were doing something else with the rest of the duck and of course rendering the duck fat.

Another cook had the task of seasoning the duck with the spice mixture, then putting the seasoned duck breast into the duck fat that's also seasoned with Chinese 5 spice. With the more or less traditional duck confit we often did he'd always added salt. Why should this one be different?

For one thing 'cause the chefs 5-spice mixture was already "kosher salted to perfection" I'd also told him all the spices including salt are in there.

Did he try it first? Noooooo. And we ended up with a professional size vat of salty brined inedible virtually pickled duck