Share your cooking disasters

[Melalvai]

This idea was inspired by my mother. No, she doesn't have a plethora of cooking disasters. She wants to make one of those cookbook collections of recipes from each family member. I thought "Well, that's nice, only I know I won't use most of them." As the discussion continued it dissolved into cooking stories. Now that, I thought, would be a valuable collection to hand down the generations!

Unfortunately we haven't turned up lots of stories just yet. So I am turning to my Team Estrogen friends, whom I suspect will have more stories than I know what to do with. (I don't plan to do anything with these stories, I just think they'll be entertaining.)

To start off, I'll share my favorite story so far. This isn't mine but my cousin's. Her mom, who is an excellent cook, had had an unusual spell of bad luck with several batches of brownies. The final incident involved flames in the oven. They visited our uncle in Florida, who turned to the kids after hearing this story and said seriously, "Kids, your mom was confused in the 60's. She burnt the brownies and put marijuana in her bra."

I will also note that our supper tonight suffered slightly as a direct result of me writing this post instead of paying attention to what was happening on the stove!

[sundial]

Should it involve a fire extinguisher?

[Irulan]

how about pea soup and a busted blender lid

or, the time my food processor bowl exploded while doing carrots?

[Blueberry]

How about my dad's thanksgiving pie? When I first got an apartment, I decided I wanted to cook Thanksgiving. My dad was the only one who would come, and he wanted to bring a pie. I had a premonition and bought a back up pie

He decided he wanted to bring a sugar free pie, and put 2/3 cup of sweet-n-low in the pie instead of the equivalent of 2/3 cup of sugar. ICK! Was glad to have the back up pie

When I was little and learning to bake, I put baking soda instead of baking powder in a cake. Double ick.

[Running Mommy]

I once caught the oven on fire making a peach cobbler.

Overall I'm a very good cook, so there aren't many disasters. And the few times I do ruin something I get so mad at myself that children and small animals flee in horror. ha ha ha

[Flybye]

Let's just say that if you are using oats that have been around for awhile, it is best to check for little buggies before adding the oatmeal one cup at a time to the mixture as you sample the dough. I was making a HUGE batch of monster cookies - called for 18 cups of oats -and when I got to the bottom of the cannister - there was only about 2 cups of oats left in the bottom, I noticeD LOTS of bugs. LOTS. AND I HAD BEEN SAMPLING THE DOUGH AS I MIXED THE OATS IN. Now that I ride my bike so often, I look forward to swallowing the occasional bug - hack, hack!

Also, when the turkey instructions say "do not stuff the turkey the night before you put it in the oven", well, you should probably take their advice.

It is also best to remove the plastic wrap off of meat BEFORE you put it in the slow cooker.

And, you can't put a pyrex 13x9 baking dish directly on a burner without having it shatter into a bazillion pieces.

I.AM.A.GOOD.COOK.REALLY!

[shootingstar]

My partner gets paranoid that I will accidentally burn some of the lovely made-in-France stainless steel pots. So I don't use some of them since some of these pots aren't cheap.

I'm not kiddin'.

Probably my problem is not babysitting the cooking process occasionally.

BTW if any of you visit, I promise...it is a good meal that I do prepare.

[milkbone]

I don't really have my own story, since I tend to know my limits when it comes to cooking and baking, although I'm a pretty good baker if I do say so myself

When I was a kid, my mom was making Thanksgiving dinner, and she kept commenting on what a "funny looking bird that is", well she put it in the oven to cook and hours ticked by and the same comment kept coming from the kitchen - well dinner time it was and my father went to carve the turkey, yup funny looking bird it was since it was upside down the whole time! LOL...poor mom, but it does make for a funny story.

[Dogmama]

Worst thing ever. Still a joke at the house. Know the dog toys called "Chew man?" They're that pale off white color. We call it "Chew Man Soup"

[malkin]

Exploding Pyrex is always dramatic.

Pureed squash popping the not quite seated lid off of the blender can make a pretty orangy stain on on the ceiling.

Oatmeal Flambe, created by boiling over and then catching fire from the gas flame can create an unusual and enduring pattern on the side of a 'stainless' steel pan.

[TJ_Relic]

Exploding Pyrex is always dramatic.

I knew a munitions guy when I was in the AF. He was cooking something in a pyrex dish and as moved it from oven to counter, he saw that a plastic spoon was about to fall onto the floor. He dropped the hot glass dish and went for (and missed) the spoon. It was quite an impressive shatter, and I never quite felt safe on base ever again, knowing this klutz was working with live munitions.

[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

[frnz]

Once my sister somehow managed to take a pot only partway off the burner, part way on the counter, and left the burner on. The counter was on fire, and left this HUGE burned semi-circle.

[TJ_Relic]

I tend to use recipes only as rough guidelines, and to change a recipe slightly each time I make it. My husband does not appreciate the creative cooking process. Spoil sport.

I've only had a few real disasters, though.

Burnt cheese soup. It took three months of soaking and scrubbing to get the black off the bottom of the pot.

Baking-soda and salt cookie cake. I mixed up two batches of choc. chip cookie dough and made two large cookies for my birthday, in high school. In one, I added too much baking soda or something, and my grandma tried to "fix" it by adding loads of salt. It was famously disgusting.

Canned air on the edible car. Last month we (Society of Physics Students) hosted an edible car race. I worked for two days to develop my masterpiece of biscotti body, spaghetti bundle axles, and caramel wheels. Race day was HOT and I worried that it would melt before our run, so I used canned air (like for your computer) to chill the wheels right before. It helped, but when time came to eat it tasted horrible! All sugary goodness tasted horrible! I forgot that canned air has added bitterants, to discourage huffing. I was nauseas for several hours.

[berkeley]

1. Hard corn taco shells are flammable. Very flammable. One lost toaster oven and one drained fire extinguisher later....

2. Brownie mix is very difficult to get off of a ceiling.

3. It is possible to burn couscous.

4. The lever on the stove starts the cleaning process. Best not to engage that when cooking cupcakes.