The Confessional: the hall of blown dinners, ruined meals, and other disasters

Wow that is quite a story Bob. About as well handled by the restaurant as could be and you and Mike seem to be great sports as well.

Amazing story Bob. I have a restraint story ill keep for another day.

No REALLY good stories, but I have very publicly screwed up many dishes for guests that I've never had trouble with before. Risotto is one I normally make beautifully, but bone up from time to time. Once it was the terrible mushrooms, a few times it was overly floral wine, sometimes the onions cook down a little sweeter than they need. Ever over salted your risotto? If you don't pay attention to the stock, butter, cheese and additional salt you sure will. Ever salted the pasta water after your wife salted it? Mmmm, Mmmm, Mmmm, salt strings in tomato sauce. Leather steaks have happened a few times, but not too many. I've completely hosed my fair share of sauces too. Oh, the sauces...that reminds me, the most recent one...


King crab legs went on sale this New Year's Eve and a friend and I decided to cook and throw a party. We bought enough legs for 8 and picked up a beef tenderloin primal to go with it. Asparagus was the side. So, crab, steak and asparagus...you're thinking bearnaise sauce, right? I know I was. Steak oscar, crab legs and asparagus with bearnaise, all with champagne to wash it down. Awesome. I gave the sauce the love and attention it needed and made a stellar bearnaise. It was one of my best. While this was going I was working my filets on the cast iron on the stove. Everything was coming along beautifully, timing looked good. In went the crab legs, down below in the oven, in a roasting pan with a little water to steam them. So, here I am, at the 4 burner stove with 2 cast iron pans working filets, timed so that they'll all get one last quick sear right before plating to serve them to each persons' temp of preference, nice and hot. The crab is in the oven, cracked, so I don't forget about it, the bearnaise is staying warm in its pan, getting the occasional stir next to the burners, but not on them. Now the asparagus goes on. It was just going to get a quick toss in the pan with some butter and lemon. Steaks are good, crab is out of the oven and being plated, asparagus is going down on the plates and the scrambled eggs....wait....who made scrambled eggs? Oh hell, the once beautiful Bearnaise got bumped onto a burner in the shuffle and quickly turned into a clumpy, oily disaster, RIGHT before serving. So, now we have perfect steaks for 8, cooked to order, an abundance of cracked king crab legs, perfect, bright green asparagus and goop to top it all off. The champagne was good

Every cake I've ever tried to make looks like it was run over by a garbage truck.

I blame it on the high altitude (almost 7700 ft.) and I don't try to make cake anymore.

Cause cake is bad, mmmmkay?

Sunday roast:
Beef bourguignon, delicious sauce, but I didn't catch the boil soon enough: leather bourguignon

I've got a few.

Marinated pork in soy sauce for a few days....pretty sure it was mummified the amount of salt in it.
Tried making sauerkraut a few weeks ago; heavy cutting board being used as a weight fell and shattered the glass container.
Several pots of squirrel and duck gumbo ruined due to not picking lead shot out of the meat. Lets not forget the chipped teeth.
Messed up "just add water then bake" cupcake mixes in high school.

Once my dad and mom decided to hire a new cook as the one that was with us for several years had to leave. Broke my heart as a teenager as I really liked her cooking. So in came the new cook and she was a wonderful German lady with a beautiful accent and attitude. One day my parents brought home pizza and Gretchen, our cook didn't see, look, know or maybe was having a bad day because after taking it out of the oven and one bite into it I realised what I was eating. You know that syran wrap on the pizza? She had left it on there while cooking in the oven! Lol. I thought it was so funny!! I'll never forget her reaction. She put her elbows on the counter and put her face in both hands. That peanut butter jelly I tell you is AWESOME as a backup when your hungry.

rxonmymind said:

Once my dad and mom decided to hire a new cook as the one that was with us for several years had to leave. Broke my heart as a teenager as I really liked her cooking. So in came the new cook and she was a wonderful German lady with a beautiful accent and attitude. One day my parents brought home pizza and Gretchen, our cook didn't see, look, know or maybe was having a bad day because after taking it out of the oven and one bite into it I realised what I was eating. You know that syran wrap on the pizza? She had left it on there while cooking in the oven! Lol. I thought it was so funny!! I'll never forget her reaction. She put her elbows on the counter and put her face in both hands. That peanut butter jelly I tell you is AWESOME as a backup when your hungry.

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Your family hired a full time cook? And they had her reheat frozen pizzas?

-dave- said:

Your family hired a full time cook? And they had her reheat frozen pizzas?

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No,no,not frozen! It was fresh made to go & bake from a local mom & pop pizza place. I loved pizza! Still do. Their calazone was something else! Fresh goat cheese, meats from Europe. Oh, man that was delicious.

Mmmm pizza

Sunday night, decided to try an excellent gumbo recipe from a friend of mine. His entire family is from Louisiana, and he assured me this was the real deal.

Start off with a roux, obviously. Now, this is the first time I've done it in a good while, so I struggled a bit. I wanted it on the dark-ish side, and after nearly an hour, I had what I reckoned was a nice final product. The rest of the gumbo went swimmingly and I was quite happy until I tasted it.

The roux was ruined. The entire gumbo tasted like almost burnt toast. Funny, though, I tasted the roux and it tasted fine to me. No black specks to suggest it was burnt, either.

Oh well, I ate it anyway

Smoked a turkey way too hot without stuffing tons of butter under the skin. Ended up with turkey jerky. Also lost a brisket when my entire smoker went up in flames because the water pan went dry and I brilliantly added more water while leaving it in the smoker, which immediately boiled and popped grease into the flame and of course the entire inside of the smoker was coated in grease which all caught fire. I clean the thing thoroughly before each use now

When new to my Big Green Egg I kept reading about delicious crispy skin...it needs to be spatchcocked and as high up in the dome as possible. Got the BBQ rocking at 425F degrees and in go the chickens on my elevated grill, right up to the top. After 40 minutes of frustration I couldn't get the temps above 120F no matter what I did or how much I opened the vents I finally opened it up to take a look (and perhaps add more charcoal) and found the problem...the birds were so high up the dome thermometer was sticking into the meat! Fortunately I was able to drop them lower down and salvage the meal.

I was given a bag of what was supposed to be cinnamon buns. They weren't glazed. They were so soft. But they were also bland and tasteless, like a plain dinner roll. Not wanting to waste them or throw them out for the chickens, I decided to toast a couple to break up and use in my meatloaf. There is nothing more odd that cinnamon flavored meatloaf. Funny the things you tend to ignore when you are super hungry and have a pot of fresh brown gravy!

Had a weird day today. My coffee maker decided to back up . . . filter clogged, coffee grinds going back in the tank and into the finished coffee. Bread I was going to toast was moldy. Cracked an egg like I usually do . . . and it just went splat and poured out over the stove top. Never happened to me before, the egg thing. Soy milk I made yesterday somehow was off.

Good news . . . I cleaned out the coffee maker and made more coffee, cooked some other eggs etc. Just one of those days.

Had a small, trimmed leg of lamb. Too small for my roasting pan, so I used a saute pan. After removing the meat, I went to deglaze the pan and forgot to grab a towel. Ouch! One hand on a gallon size freezer bag of ice, the other chopping garlic for the sauce. Then 15 minutes with my hand under cool water in the bathroom sink while I brushed my teeth and did a quick one handed cold shave. The moral of the story is, pay extra attention when you try new techniques.

BTW...

Greg1911 said:

Every cake I've ever tried to make looks like it was run over by a garbage truck.

I blame it on the high altitude (almost 7700 ft.) and I don't try to make cake anymore.

Cause cake is bad, mmmmkay?

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Pierre Herme's Chocolate Desserts has some great recipes for fallen cakes, including a plain chocolate cake using only 1/3 cup of flour. On my first try, I cut a slice and by the time I went back for seconds the cake healed. I blame the cheap apartment oven, but you can adjust--my later tries are coming out more like cake than pudding.

I had eggs and leftover shrimp scampi...shrimp scampi omelette? I almost threw up.

dannymayo said:

I had eggs and leftover shrimp scampi...shrimp scampi omelette? I almost threw up.

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I guess in theory it didn't sound that bad- sort of carbonara with shrimp. But I'll take your word for it.

It just wants bacon!!

Serve over rice noodles with curry and you get a poor man's Singapore noodle.

I had been in the Marines for less than a year. I had never used or even seen a microwave and I never cooked at home. Most of my meals I ate out in town or at the chowhall, my extent of cooking was heating water in a coffee pot and pouring it in a cup of noodles. It was 3am on a saturday night, I was on duty in the barracks the other guy who was on duty with me at the time had went to bed. So I went back to my room while out making my rounds and borrowed a can of spam from my roommate (no big deal we borrowed stuff from each other all the time and nobody cared as long as it was replaced.) The directions on the can said to take it out of the can, place on a plate, slice it, and heat in the microwave. Not having a plate I went back to my room and got my canteen cup. I sliced the spam put it in my steel canteen cup and put it in the microwave for 2 minutes and walked across the hall to do some paperwork in the duty office. I heard what sounded like a gunshot so I run into the other room and saw the microwave on fire and the door to the microwave across the room also on fire. I pulled the fire alarm grabbed the fire extinguisher and sprayed the fires. The fire dept and Military Police showed up and evacuated the entire building (at 3 am saturday morning.) The fire dept made sure the fire was out and the MP's brought a bomb dog through the barracks. Afterwards the FD did their investigation, they asked me if I saw anyone but grease and a canteen cup in the microwave. I said yes I did, but it was spam in a canteen cup. It was explained to me (in front of my commanding officer all the way down to my team leader) that you can't put metal in the microwave. I didn't get in trouble but my commander banned me from using any microwave on Camp Lejeune again, ever.