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Not so much a disaster than a slight cockup, but... I had a hankering for something vaguely Indian tonight. I baked some swai to serve over curried rice, and during the last few minutes brushed on a healthy amount of Sultan brand Tikka-Kebab Chutney I'd stirred into some melted butter. The result when I pulled it out of the oven: nuclear bright green fish, all the way through. Tasty as hell, if you closed your eyes; but if I looked, my brain kept expecting it to taste like chopped broccoli, because that's exactly what it looked like. 
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Mar 1, 2015 04:01
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 23:44 |
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My mom was a perfect example of this with her aversion to blue food. She loved Carvel cakes with a passion. Any excuse to buy a Carvel cake, she would. (Dog's birthday? Let's get a Carvel, even though the dog can't eat it!) But if you brought home one with blue "flowers" on it, she would be absolutely repulsed, even though it's the same exact ice cream cake as the one with pink trim, just with a different food coloring added. That blue steak would've probably sent her into shock. To stay a bit more on topic, lemme share with you what starts as a dinner disaster and later becomes a cooking cockup. Valentines Day, sometime in the 90's. My boyfriend of the time worked at a video store (remember those?) and was working until 11pm on V Day. The plan was that I'd order an rear end-ton of Chinese food delivered, buy a lot of alcohol, and have everything ready when he came over after work. Eat Chinese, get drunk, have sex. (Ah, the simpler times when I was in college.) I was already set on the drink front. Called in the Chinese order about an hour before my bf was due to come over. I'm busy tidying up the house, changing the sheets, primping myself, etc. Half an hour later, I note it's about time to get my wallet so I can pay the delivery guy. (Remember, this is the 90's, so strictly cash.) Uh, where IS my wallet? I start tearing the house apart looking for it. Checking every coat, every pair of jeans I found, flinging poo poo all around the house. Digging in the couch, checking my car. No joy. I'm starting to freak out. Chinese is on the way, and I have no way to pay for it. The delivery guy shows up, and I'm in tears at having hosed up what should have been a nice romantic evening. "I have no money, I can't find my wallet." He looks sullen (I don't blame him) and drives off. 15 minutes later, my bf pulls up. Now I'm outright sobbing, trying to get out the story in between my hysterical blubbering. It's now past 11, and even if he wanted to pay, the Chinese place is closed. General Tso is off the table tonight. Nice fella that he was, he tells me it's okay, let's just find something to eat here and have a nice night. Thing is, I barely have anything in the house, being a poor college student. "Let's make grilled cheese," he suggests. Okay, fine, I can do that. Not very romantic, but I can do that. I calm down a little and start pre-heating the stove while buttering the bread. Suddenly, and for reasons I still don't know, the stove catches fire. My best guess is some leftover grease, from whatever I cooked last, caught on the electric burner and started it. It is my first kitchen fire ever, I'm already in hysterics over having ruined the evening, and yet I still have the presence of mind to find the nearest pot lid to slap over the fire. There's a big Farberware stockpot lid sitting on the adjacent kitchen table. I slap it on the burner, problem solved. And there, on the table, is my wallet. It wasn't unusual for me to put it and my keys and such there on that table. Why I put that drat lid down OVER it, I still don't know, guess I was in a hurry to clean and figured "well that'll go in the sink soon enough" then forgot about it in my haste. That was the year we had nothing but the Toblerone he brought and red wine for Valentine's Day. Could've been worse, I guess.
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Mar 1, 2015 22:11
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Pooncha posted:Don't put salt in orange soda because you wanted a sweeter fix and didn't realize it wasn't sugar. I am guilty of all manner of food horrors in the name of personal taste, so I'm not judging, but: am I reading this correctly that you wanted to add sugar to orange soda?
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Jul 10, 2015 05:26
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Was beat last night after work and just wanted some simple linguine sprinkled with butter, parm, and black pepper to fill my belly before sacking out. Put water on to boil, go 4 feet away into the adjacent garage to have a cigarette. Suddenly something smells like burning, and it's not my cigarette. I go back to the kitchen and see a thin trail of smoke coming up from under the pot on the burner. Guess I something dripped on there last time I cooked; okay, keep an eye on it, it should just burn off, right? Suddenly the entire burner drip pan erupts into flame. Cover it with a pot lid, no joy (in hindsight: duh, it's still getting air from underneath). I'm tired and panicking and can't find the loving baking soda. Fortunately had a box of kosher salt right there from salting the pasta water, so I dumped it all over. It put the fire out, but the heat starts making the salt crack and jump like popcorn, so the pot lid goes back on. Immediate problem solved, but to add insult to stove injury, turns out my exhaust fan (which I haven't used in quite some time) isn't working. So I stand there fruitlessly trying to wave smoke out the window while listening to the "tink! tink!" of salt crystals bouncing like Mexican jumping beans off the pot lid. Kids, don't be like me: clean your drip pans on the reg, and have a box of baking soda right by your stove.  Smutbeast: got a chuckle from your story, and now have a hankering for bean salad. It's 92 degrees where I'm at (so a nice chilly salad sounds good), I have many cans of beans, and this does not require a stove.
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Aug 4, 2015 14:34
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Killingyouguy! posted:well it TURNS OUT when you're making vegan pasta sauce, you have to use unflavoured almond milk, not the vanilla stuff... Ha! Laughing with you, not at you. Did something similar when I was broke as gently caress and making do with off-brand boxed mac'n'cheese and "oh hey, here's a container of a dairy-ish thing". Probably could've sold it as some hipster ironic cheesecake, but dang was that a bowl of sickly sweet disappointment.
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Oct 3, 2017 00:09
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Arkhamina posted:Looking forward to Turkey Day comedy posts. From a prior Turkey Day: actually an anti-cockup, since I saved the day, but I once got a kosher turkey from Trader Joes. Even with my husband's employee discount, it was an expensive bird, being fresh and kosher and *~organic~* , not a frozen saline-injected Butterball at 49 cents a pound or whatever. So you can imagine how pissed I was when I unwrap that fucker Wednesday night to air dry in the fridge and 75% of its skin was missing. Thankfully, I don't keep kosher, so my solution was to give it a skin graft... with bacon. Yep, made a kosher turkey with a lovely bacon lattice on top. Worked a charm, and was goyim as gently caress. edit: mods, pls change name to "goyim as gently caress"
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Nov 23, 2017 01:27
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Croatoan posted:Ahh much like the urge to grab a falling knife. Or the guy at my job who was spot-cleaning the sides of the deep fryer, dropped the paint scraper into the 350 degree oil, and, well,  Grem posted:Tonight was the first time I burned a teriyaki sauce. Usually I make it about once every couple of months. Burning it turned it in to basically caramel, I guess. Not fun and I think I might have to buy a new sauce pan. Eeesh. When I was doing dish for the Army, a pot showed up in the dish pit with an inch of some sort of sweet, smoky tar on the bottom. When I hunted down who dropped it in the pit (because we had a loosely enforced policy of "you burn it, you wash it"), I had to ask "what was that supposed to be?" About a gallon of teriyaki sauce that had been reduced to a pint. Best believe I got a Sargent to back me up on that "clean your own hosed up pot" policy.
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Mar 6, 2018 16:11
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Astrofig posted:I dropped a raw egg on the floor this morning. I dropped a bowl containing roughly two dozen already-cracked raw eggs on the floor this morning. Granted, it was in the middle of cracking over a thousand eggs, so proportionately about the same level of disaster as yours. Christ, what a mess, though. (I work at a breakfast joint, and literally crack 3 cases, or 1080 eggs, on Fridays to get ready for the weekend rush.)
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Mar 16, 2018 19:41
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Yesterday at work a co-worker was making grits. We make roughly 15 gallons of grits at a time, and store them in 5 gallon buckets. It was the end of the day, and he'd just filled his last bucket with hot grits. He was about to take them over to the walkin, picked up the bucket, and the handle broke, dropping the bucket onto the floor. We heard his mighty "ffFffuuuUUUUCK" and for a moment couldn't tell if he'd dropped it on his foot, or spilled the grits he just spent 90 minutes making. No worries on the latter, because he had a lid on the bucket, phew. And his foot was fine. But the bucket's side and bottom actually popped in and was severely dented because the plastic was soft from the hot grits. Next thing I know, he's asking me for our giant roll of plastic wrap. I watch as he wraps his arm up, puzzled as to what he's about to do. Then, in slow motion for me, I watch him plunge his arm up to the elbow into a bucket of just-came-off-stove, flaming hot grits.  He achieved his goal of popping the deformed bucket back into shape, but not before making a face pretty close to , then hissing an incredible string of expletives through gritted teeth as he tore off the plastic wrap and glove he was wearing.
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Apr 10, 2018 14:26
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chitoryu12 posted:But....why? This was the first question our shift lead asked, though it was phrased, IIRC, "the gently caress, bro, why didn't you use a spoon or something?" I myself wondered why he didn't just grab another bucket and pour it in right quick. Bro's answer was a shrug and a smile and "I'unno, that wouldn't have been as cool?" He realized the idiocy of his plan after the fact, and was playing it off. That very same shift lead who questioned him once dropped a pair of tongs into the deep fryer and reached in to save them so he understood. Sometimes, in a kitchen, things get so frantic that your critical thinking just gets shut off, and next thing you know you're a feature in that infamous Canadian safety PSA. As of an hour later when we clocked out, his arm was a little pink and he didn't seem any worse for wear, though I know from getting hot fat burns all the time, that sort of thing will creep up on you. I'll get splattered by the fryer and think nothing more than *wince* "ouch" at the time, but then the next time I have to put something under a heat lamp, it's "oh poo poo poo poo poo poo my arm loving hurts".
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Apr 11, 2018 00:02
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Sweet cuppin' cakes, dino, that is a helluva story. The kitchen I work in gets hella hot, and I've heard it's so bad during summer that at least two people fainted last year during the hot months. The other day when it was 80 outside and I was working fry station with the sun beaming in through the plate glass windows, I got a little woozy. My boss, who is notoriously stingy with breaks, was quick to bark at me "go chill out in the walk-in!" It's my greatest nightmare that I'm gonna faint and drop forward into the fryer. I don't want to be lasagna (or in my case, fried chicken) girl. Edit: now Ive got a morbid desire to do a remix of Throbbling Gristle's "Hamburger Lady", but with lasagna instead JacquelineDempsey fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Apr 30, 2018 |
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Apr 30, 2018 16:10
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Do narrowly averted cooking cockups count? At my restaurant, we smoke and pull our own bbq meat. Whenever I pull meat, I bring the bones home to make stock. Yesterday I pulled about 8 whole chickens, and despite being bone-tired (yuk yuk) and brain-dead after a brutal shift, decided to make stock when I got off work. Once it had cooled a little, I stuck my biggest colander in the sink to strain out the bones and bits. I just started tipping the pot when some still-functioning part of my brain made the "red alert" noise from Star Trek and screamed "YOU IDIOT, YOU HAVE NOTHING UNDERNEATH THE COLANDER TO CATCH THE GALLONS OF STOCK YOU JUST MADE". Phew! I only lost a cup or so of stock, but if I'd followed through and lost the whole batch, I probably would've just sunk to the kitchen floor and cried.
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Jun 23, 2018 22:51
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TITTIEKISSER69 posted:My cats were none too happy about the messy air I am having a shitacular night, so thanks for the laugh. loving loved that bit. Fun fact: did you know that if you've been cutting habaneros, with gloves on, and then wipe away tears with your t-shirt , THAT might still be weaponized? Even after washing it with milk, my right eye currently looks like a loving cherry tomato
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Oct 15, 2018 01:14
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Dirk the Average posted:Do nitrile gloves help? If so, they're cheap and disposable. We use them to protect against chemicals a lot nastier than capsaicin. Oh, absolutely, and that's what I was wearing. But that was my point: here I thought I was safe, but apparently some habanero-ness had gotten onto my shirt sleeve, and when I started crying I was using that to whipe away my snuffles. I guess I need like a full Tyvek suit next time I make hot sauce.
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Oct 20, 2018 12:09
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Fleta Mcgurn posted:I once ate some pizza with Tabasco, finished, washed my hands (apparently) poorly, and then went to take out my Diva Cup. Fleta Mcgurn posted:Cinnamon does that to my skin. I can eat it, but it'll actually leave welts. On a somewhat related note, my boss had to make a run to Sams Club for something the other day. Whenever she does that, she'll bring back treats for us, usually some big jar of candy or some such. This week it was a huge jar of Atomic Fireballs. (If you're non-US or unfamiliar, they are potent cinnamon hard candies about the size of a gumball). That brought back a childhood memory that my CNY buddy Fleta might share --- remember when Wegmans first started doing the bulk food section? Holy poo poo, cheap candy by the pound! First thing I got was a big ol bag of Fireballs, and I spent that day eating them, well, like candy. Musta ate like 25 of them. Next day, I think I lost about a pound of flesh from the inside of my mouth. My palate and inner cheeks were shedding like a python. Not allergic, but apparently there is a limit to how many Atomic Fireballs a 10 year old's mouth can stand. Fake edit: Wow, and now I'm recalling the time I binged on watermelon flavored Nerds, and it made my tongue turn black from the green dye. Christ, it's a wonder I have any teeth left.
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Oct 20, 2018 18:42
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 23:44 |
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Do cooking cock-ups that didn't turn into disasters qualify? Was drunk in the wee hours and wanted some simple pasta with butter and lemon pepper. Noodles came out fine, added butter, grabbed the yellow-capped jar of lemon pepper seasoning and gave it healthy shake. I had instead grabbed the very similar-looking yellow-capped jar of jerk seasoning. It was... Actually kinda tasty? Jerk noodles, OC, do not steal
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Mar 11, 2019 23:48
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