embarrassing kitchen moment

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I pride myself on being very "together" in the kitchen: everything in place, no spills, rarely cut, burn or otherwise injure myself or others. kind of get into a kind of hypnotic cooking zone and just make everything go.

ahem. so...getting things ready for my little solo dinner...kind of distracted...mind wandering...parboiling a sweet potato...and then, holding the colander BY THE BOTTOM, proceeded to pour sweet potato boiling water into strainer all over my hand.

friggin' genius.

will you please list here similar embarrassing kitchen moments so that I will feel a little bit better while gripping this dishrag full of ice?

― mayo apetrain (mayoape), Thursday, 30 September 2004 20:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Man, my hands are covered with cuts and burns, I don't know where to start. The most recent cut is a deep one in my left middle finger -- I took a step backwards, stepped on a cat's tail, she yelped, I jumped, wham, hit myself with the knife.

― Tep (ktepi), Thursday, 30 September 2004 20:16 (twenty-one years ago)

To be fair, I was like 12 when this happened to me, but I made Kraft mac & cheese, and since I didn't see the word "drain" when reading the instructions, I didn't drain the noodles between boiling and adding the cheese powder, resulting in some very very watery mac & cheese. My sister still makes fun of me for this (though I make fun of her in turn for making homemade mac & cheese with swiss cheese because we had run out of cheddar).

― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, 30 September 2004 20:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh yeah, I've done that! (Not draining it, I mean.) I also tried to make a cake on the stove instead of in the oven, for no reason I can remember.

― Tep (ktepi), Thursday, 30 September 2004 20:22 (twenty-one years ago)

in the morning I often pour boiling water into and empty fresh press (bodum) having forgotten to add the coffee grounds.

― PVC (peeveecee), Thursday, 30 September 2004 22:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Recently I made cookies, but I lost my head and put all the ingredients in one bowl rather than separating wet and dry ingredients. The cookies didn't quite work out, and just kind of spread into thing formless cookie blobs. It still tasted pretty good. I dubbed the broken shards of thin noncookie as "cookie brittle". The roommates ate it pretty quickly.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 30 September 2004 23:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Having made a thoroughly decent and very rich gravy from goose giblets and brandy, I strained it through a sieve to remove the giblets.

It would have helped if I had put anything under the sieve to catch the gravy, but instead I poured a couple of hours work down the sink.

In my defence, it was Christmas Day and I had been drinking since I got up.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 1 October 2004 11:08 (twenty-one years ago)

I happened to be drinking from a bottle of beer while chopping things for a stir-fry. I set the bottle down, chop chop chop, grab the bottle without looking and take a swig. It was olive oil, in a nearby and deceptively similar bottle. After the initial shock and realization, I calmly walked to the sink and spit it. I keep the olive oil as far from me as possible now.

― Vermont Girl (Vermont Girl), Friday, 1 October 2004 11:20 (twenty-one years ago)

I've pulled the sieve trick on several occassions!

There's also the 'not switching the oven on' trick....

― Vicky (Vicky), Friday, 1 October 2004 11:42 (twenty-one years ago)

And the converse of 'not switching the over on', which is the 'getting too involved in the video game you're playing to keep an eye on the clock' trick.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 1 October 2004 11:59 (twenty-one years ago)

God, we got a new gas bbq, and my uncle was round replacing windows etc. so i got some gorgeous lamb chops from the butchers, and put them on, with some sausages, had it on medium, and then went back upstairs into the flat. I sent Chris out to check up on them a while later, and they were incinerated. I was absolutely mortified, but we didn't have anything in the house to replace them with, so we all sat at the table, desperately trying to scrape the charcoal off, and find something edible there, to go with the veg. It truly was the worst meal I have ever cooked.

― Vicky (Vicky), Friday, 1 October 2004 12:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I think corned beef tins must be responsible for a high number of kitchen incidents. I managed to add a lot of unplanned protein to one of my corned beef hashs at uni, when i managed to slice open the pad of my finger trying to get the can open. It's embarrasing, cos it's so obvious that the potential for disaster is there.

― Vicky (Vicky), Friday, 1 October 2004 12:08 (twenty-one years ago)

I've been incredibly lucky around knives and sharp edges, though there've been some close calls. The worst cooking thing I did was make some orange cranberry bread when I was living in Phoenix. We had these orange trees in the back yard with lovely orange oranges on them that certainly smelled good when I grated them up and juiced them. Little did I know, there are two kinds of oranges - edible ones and strictly ornamental ones. The ornamental ones are nasty, bitter, horrible and the bread was the same. We fed it to ducks, which apparently don't have tastebuds.

I use this incident as complete justification for always tasting the batter.

― Jaq (Jaq), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:24 (twenty-one years ago)

We were having my five best friends and their husbands over for a late fall evening. We had all married within the last couple of years, people moved and it was a once a year or less gathering of my favorite people. I was planningto provide a winter night hearty stew/soup, fresh bread and a dessert. I had just gotten a large new crock pot and thought using it would be a great idea, as many of these friends are chronically late. I chopped and diced and put various things of a vegetable nature in the soup, heavy on some homemade tomato paste and carrots for heartiness. I threw in spices of various kinds, set it on medium and turned to my baking. The kitchen filled with warm smells of homey goodness as the sun set and the cold began to press in. Just before the pals were due, I tossed several handfuls of orzo to give a little more body. People straggled in, conversation was loud and hilarious and we didn't get around to eating for another 2 hours or so. The soup was thicker than I had planned, but still, with all those good ingredients, how could anything go wrong? We trooped into the kitchen, served ourselves buffet-style and landed back in the living room, seated at various small tables and TV trays. Exclamations of delight at the good smells and effort were quickly followed by the dipping of spoons. My first bite: tasty, tomatoey, rich... and familiar. Second bite, watching my friends as they ate... I've had this before, but where, when? My, it certainly is starchy... Third bite and I burst out with it "Oh no! I made SpaghettiOs!"

― Rabin the Cat (Rabin the Cat), Friday, 8 October 2004 01:14 (twenty-one years ago)

eleven months pass...

After whittling away at the sweet potatoes last night, I realized I had peeled a good sized section of my index finger down as well. Today it is shiny and fingerprintless.

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 3 October 2005 14:06 (twenty years ago)

I've often done the 'sieving precious stuff into void' trick too. My sister famously boiled milk in the kettle once. (Though in my heart of hearts I don't know why that is SO dumb...)

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 3 October 2005 15:38 (twenty years ago)

Today you must steal things, Jaq.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 3 October 2005 17:12 (twenty years ago)

Or, just touch lots of computer monitors and shiny stuff - no one will know it was me!

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 3 October 2005 23:07 (twenty years ago)

I made scones with plain flour once, and wondered why they came out so hard and flat. If I kept my flour unlabelled or something the mistake might be excuseable, but my plain and s/r flour are in labelled paper sacks! Gah.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 09:46 (twenty years ago)

I was making dr pepper cake, mixed all the dry ingredients, then mixed the wet, when it came to combining them I realised that something was very amiss as my electric whisk was bending and looking rather broken. It was then that i realised that I hadn't added the oil..... I did add it, but it knocked all of the air out. The middle bit was lovely and airy, but the outsides were as hard as rock

― Vicky (Vicky), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 09:58 (twenty years ago)

Most of my embarrassing moments are bad experiments:

At age 13:

'chocolate orange muffins' = bisquick, cocoa powder, orange juice

'american dessert royale' (!?) = gelatin, diet coke, canned mandarin orange slices

At age 19
'smoked garden vegetable soup' = what I called a roasted veggie stew I badly burned, when I served it to three of my professors.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Friday, 7 October 2005 16:26 (twenty years ago)

I've worked in a lot of restaurant kitchens.

In the line of duty I've burned myself dozens of times, cut myself minorly even more, sustained a concussion, sliced off the tip of my finger with a meat slicer, locked myself in a freezer.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Friday, 7 October 2005 16:27 (twenty years ago)

Wow Remy, just - wow. My "corn with powdered cloves" (age 8, I LURVED me some cloves!) pales in comparison to the chocolate orange muffin.

― Jaq (Jaq), Friday, 7 October 2005 19:15 (twenty years ago)

I once knew a guy who put sheets of lasagne in the oven, expecting them miraculously to sprout meat, sauce and cheese.

― Mädchen (Madchen), Saturday, 8 October 2005 15:20 (twenty years ago)

Gap in the market!

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 10 October 2005 08:34 (twenty years ago)

awesome

much like Remy I've worked in a bunch of kitchens, and have cut / burned / got a faceful of superheated steam when I forget that you need to stand out of the way of the combi when you open the door more times than I care to remember

my first attempt at making hollandaise is best glossed over, I think, bar my g/f's comment of "gosh, I've never had scrambled hollandaise before"

― Matt (Matt), Monday, 10 October 2005 09:59 (twenty years ago)

does anyone else not understand rabin's story?

― emsk ( emsk), Monday, 10 October 2005 16:29 (twenty years ago)

spaghetti-O's = canned disgusting over-cooked pasta circles in gooey sweet-ish tomato sauce.

Does that help at all emsk?

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 10 October 2005 16:32 (twenty years ago)

http://images.usatoday.com/money/_photos/2004/11/18/inside2-spaghettios.jpg

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 10 October 2005 16:33 (twenty years ago)

AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH! NOOOOO! Ppplllttth!

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 10 October 2005 16:36 (twenty years ago)

cheers jaq, it sort of does in that it confirms spaghetti-os are what i thought they were, but i still don't understand how they got in the meal or how it got so starchy. am i just being totally dunderheaded?

― emsk ( emsk), Monday, 10 October 2005 17:02 (twenty years ago)

I think Rabin thought she would make a delightful tomato-y soup with a bit of pasta in it, and instead it ended up exactly and unfortunately like SpaghettiOs.

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 10 October 2005 17:07 (twenty years ago)

ah, ok. aw. *creeps off quietly*

― emsk ( emsk), Monday, 10 October 2005 17:11 (twenty years ago)

I think the lesson is - don't cook orzo in the slow cooker.

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 10 October 2005 17:12 (twenty years ago)

I don't cook on autopilot, probably b/c I don't cook enough to be that casual, but my mother (a lifetime baker) once set out to make brownies, put the bulk of ingredients into the mixer, then called me over as it was finishing and said, "would you taste test this and tell me what I'm missing? It doesn't look right, I can't figure it out...." Took me about half a second to look and say, "YOU FORGOT THE COCOA."

― Laurel, Wednesday, 12 October 2005 00:58 (twenty years ago)

So, I get up to make bacon and egg butties for breakfast and I have the bread laid out on the plates and I do the bacon first and then put it on the bread and I turn around to pour the hot water on top of the tea bags before I get going on the eggs and I look back and one of the rashers is gone! I hunt high and low and it's not to be seen so I start getting freaked out and shout for the boyf who suggests that it might be - horrors! - a rat and my kitchen is a right old mess at the moment, with overflowing bin, and I guess he might be right. But I swallow my fear and I put the pan back on the heat to do him another bit of bacon and what's that burning smell? Oops, bacon stuck to bottom of pan, flat free of vermin, breathe easy, silly Madchen.

― Mädchen (Madchen), Saturday, 15 October 2005 13:44 (twenty years ago)

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