Kitchen Disasters

RECIPE FORUM General Chat
1

we’ve all had them. let’s share some of our memorable kitchen disasters…

…like putting chicken in a bag to toss with flour and having the bag break?

…or the first time i made perogies…had invited a couple of friends over for homemade perogies. was going to town rolling, filling, folding and sealing. as i was making them, i was just tossing them into a bowl one on top of the other not realizing that the entire mass was sticking together. ended up having to pull the things apart, pick out the filling and reroll and restuff. i have a tendency to experiment (make things for the first time) whenever i have guests coming over for dinner. lol

…or the time i had a 10lb roast pork in the oven and 5 friends over for dinner.
went into the kitchen to check on the roast and the next thing everyone heard was me cursing up a storm. everyone asked if i was ok. i said sure, no problem at all. i had pulled the roast out to check it and had dropped the damn thing on the floor. roast went skidding across the floor and pan juices everywhere. i picked up the roast, put it back in the pan and oven, cleaned up the mess and served dinner. never said a word to anyone.

…made a stuffed pork tenderloin that called for fresh bread crumbs. i had no idea what they were. thought it was bread crumbs freshly made. so i dried out some bread, turned it into crumbs and used it to stuff my roast. no wonder the roast turned out drier than a popcorn fart. i had no idea that it was fresh bread, crumbed. lol

…made some chicken cordon bleu for my roommates one night for supper. the recipe called for paprika sprinkled over the top of the chicken before it was tossed into the oven. i had grabbed the cayenne by mistake. talk about a taste totally different than what you expected.

…was making my chocolate cake one day and decided to make it a rum cake.
so, i replaced some of the liquid with 1/2 a cup of rum. when i pulled that baby out of the oven, i had a mass of something. it sure wasn’t cake and it didn’t rize either. lol

… a friend had asked me to make my chocolate cake for a birthday party he was throwing for his roommate. me being the procrastinator that i am, left baking the cake until the last minute. needed that puppy to cool quickly so that i could make it to the party on time. put the cake out on the balcony to cool down, it was winter and around 30 below. made the icing went out to grab the cake. well, lo and behold, i didn’t have a cake anymore. the entire thing had fallen. called my friend and said, oops, i’ve had a disaster. will be a little later than i expected. told him what had happened and threw another cake into the oven. lol

these are just a few of my memorable disasters. let’s hear yours.

rho

3

that’s too funny.

4

Here’s one that my husband and I still laugh at today. About 18 years ago (my hubby was my boyfriend back then), I decided to make supper. I wasn’t much of a cook back then. I made hamburger patties in gravy. I had no idea what the heck I was doing. Anyways, supper was done and we sat at the table to eat. I took one bite, and OMG! It was SO AWFUL! I couldn’t eat it. When I asked my hubby what he tought of it, he said “Oh, it’s good.” and he continued to it eat. I said, “Come on, don’t tell me it’s good. It’s awful!” He said, “No, it’s good.” I couldn’t believe that he liked it. I kept looking at his facial expressions after every bite he took… he was swallowing hard! I then said “Come on, you HAVE to admit it’s awful.” He finally did. We both laughed at how awful it tasted. My hubby brought the dish to our neighbour’s dog for him to eat it. When my hubby returned to the house, he was laughing so hard and said even the dog wouldn’t eat it. What big dog doesn’t like MEAT??? Needless to say, I’ve never made that dish again and to this day, we still laugh at it. I was also touched at how much he wanted to please me.

Aline

5

i lmao at that one. yeah, it’s pretty bad when even a dog won’t eat it. lol

rho

6

i just thought of another one…i was at a friend’s place and had made a nice lasagna for dinner. the lasagna had just come out of the oven and had sat for 15 minutes. i picked it up, walked through the living room to the sun room to serve it. i wasn’t really paying attention to where i was going, was more concerned with carrying the lasagna. you guessed it. someone had closed the sliding glass doors to the sunroom and i walked right into them. lasagna everywhere. the living room had white carpet, white walls, the furniture was black. there were lamps on the end tables with black shades and the insides of those shades were white. that lasagna was up the glass doors, splattered on the walls and there was even some splatter inside the lamp shades, and needless to say all over that white carpet.

i looked up at the 3 people on the other side of those darn glass doors. they were killing themselves laughing while i was standing there with a shocked look on my face in the middle of lasagna mess. what a mess it was. i was so embarassed.

rho

7

ready for your chuckle of the day? decided to make this sour cream pumpkin bundt cake recipe that i found on the net.

part of the recipe calls for 3 CUPS ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR, 1 TBSP GROUND CINNAMON & 2 TSP BAKING SODA and then says MAKE BATTER BY COMBINING FLOUR, CINNAMON, BAKING SODA & SALT IN MEDIUM BOWL.

now how hard can that be? real easy you’d think. well, 12 cups, yes 12 cups of flour later.

measured out the flour and added 2 tsp of salt in error. into the garbage that went.

measured everything out again then turned around to put the flour back into the cupboard. guess what? as i was turning around to put the flour away, i knocked the bowl with the flour and spices in it onto the floor. out came the vacuum cleaner to get that mess. god, flour sure spreads far when it’s dropped from 3 1/2 feet up.

measured out everything again, turned around to put the salt back and when i turned around and looked at the bowl, i couldn’t remember if i had added 1 or 2 tsp of salt. into the garbage that went.

finally got it right on the 4th try. measured the salt first and put the bowl well back from the edge of the counter. lol

8

…

9

You know those little packets of cheese powder that come in mac and cheese mix? I was opening once, and somehow I ripped it in such away that the entire contents went airborne. I was finding bright orange cheese powder in weird nooks and crannies for weeks.

10

I can imagine. With the colour of that stuff, I’m surprized that it doesn’t glow in the dark.

12

Years ago, I placed a plastic bowl (generic tupperware type) of pancake batter on one electric burner and turned on the burner under the skillet. Or so I thought. The bottom of the bowl started smoking. I snatched it away. The bottom of the bowl stayed on the burner, the rest of the bowl came away and pancake batter went everywhere. What a mess.

I ended up turning the burner back on and scraping the melted plastic off with a metal spatula as it heated up. This was a coil shaped electric burner. No permanent harm done. Except to the bowl. :wink:

13

This was a kitchen disaster we attended at Thanksgiving at a relatives home.

This happened about 15 years ago. My wife’s cousin and family had recently moved into a large, two story, rental house about 30 minutes away from us here in northern California.

They decided to host a large Thanksgiving get together for the extended family and about 20 people were invited. They had just moved here from the east coast so we had not been to any of their dinners in the past and didn’t know what to expect.

It was a cold and drizzly Thanksgiving afternoon when we arrived at their house. It was in the low 40’s outside. Inside the house
it wasn’t much better. They said the furnace wasn’t working very well and thought something was wrong with the thermostat.
We all sat around in our coats, shivering. I offered to have a look at their thermostat, having recently replaced my own.
They said, no that’s ok, they had adjusted it and thought it would warm up on it’s own shortly. Very cold air continued to come from the forced air ducts. We sat around for an hour shivering and I again offered help. Finally they said ok. I checked their
thermostat and found that they had it set to air conditioning instead of heat. We had been freezing for two hours because
a switch was set to Cool instead of to Heat. The cold air blowing from the forced air ducts had been air conditioning.

That wasn’t the end of trouble. They had been in the house less than a week and had not tested the electric oven. Only the broiler worked. The oven heating element was not working. They had been trying to cook the whole, intact, turkey and pumpkin pies under the broiler and not told anyone. We could have baked the food at our house and brought it over if we had been informed.

They served a turkey (yes they served it) that was overdone and dry on the outside and had raw pink meat on the inside. They tried to carve the bird and serve the cooked parts. The pumpkin pies were not much better. The food was awful.

They stayed in California about a year and moved back to the east coast before the next Thanksgiving. That saved us from
another Thanksgiving dinner invitation.

That was our worst Thanksgiving ever. So far.

14

Years ago I wanted to make some chicken salad. I put a whole chicken in the pressure cooker, turned it on and went into the living room to watch TV. I fell asleep and woke up to a house full of black smoke. Luckily the rubber gasket had melted and released the pressure. I put the pan in the sink and ran cold water on it. When I opened it there was nothing but charred bones left. I put the box fan in the window on exhaust to get the smoke out. Shortly afterwards I heard sirens and looked out the front window to see what was going on. You guessed it, the fire department were there because of the black smoke billowing out of my kitchen window. I didn’t use a pressure cooker for 40 years after that. My pressure cooker now is electric.

15

I created cheese pizza patties in gravy. I had no concept what the besides I was doing. Anyways, dinner was done and we sat at the desk to eat.