Oops

I decided to make myself my current favorite snack - Blue corn chips (they're thick and can also be used as crackers) with melted cheddar cheese on them and a dash of green salsa. I was thinking about doing a post about favorite simple snacks. Then I went back into the kitchen and looked in my toaster oven. All I saw was black. I forgot that, last night, I had programmed it for 425 degrees (farenheit, of course).

I'm pretty sure this has been done before but I thought I would do a post to discuss any recent oops people have had. Any volunteers?

(Yes, I'm a bit bored)

Way back when Julia Child was new to American television, she talked about how to make a proper crust on French bread. You need steam in the oven. If I'm not mistaken she put a roasting pan on the bottom of the oven, poured boiling water into it, then placed a brick that she had heated on the stove into the water. Steam arose.

I made the dough according to her recipe, used a roasting pan, poured boiling water into it, then placed something I had heated into it (I don't remember what I used, only that it was not a brick). Steam rose immediately, but I had pulled the rack that held the roasting pan halfway out, and still had to push it back. I did so, but with too much force, and the boiling water sloshed over the sides of the pan, some of it pouring onto the floor of the oven and beneath it, dousing the gas flame.

I had to take everything out of the oven in order to remove the sides and bottom, mop up the water, etc., and meanwhile the dough was becoming a giant blob as it continued to rise on the kitchen counter. No bread that day.

One does have to be careful in following recipes on TV. Julia made everything look easy.

I guess no one else here makes mistakes?

This thread isn't doing a lot for my boredom.

Eggs make interesting noises and smells when you boil them and all the water boils away. Minor explosions and brimstone smells.

I only did that once - many years ago. Put me off of hard boiled eggs for a long time.

Your favorite snack sounds delicious - sorry you burned that batch. Mention of green salsa reminds me of the first time I cooked with adobo peppers. An easy/quick toaster oven baked chimichangas recipe called for " 1 chipotle in adobo sauce (1 T minced) ". I used a blender to puree the contents of a can of adobos and put about a tablespoon of the resulting sauce in each chimichanga before baking. The chimichangas smelled and looked wonderful when removed from the oven 20 minutes later. But one bite proved them to be so spicy/hot that they were indedible, and the residual aftertaste took several rounds of toothpaste and mouthwash to neutralize. My spouse has made me vow to NEVER put adobos in ANYTHING, ever again.

Recipe - Rachael Ray Smoked Turkey Baked Chimichangas - Food Network Episode#: TM1D28
recipe here

Cooking tips I have amassed over the years:

4 cups of cooked rice is a (literally) huge difference from 4 cups of rice, cooked

Read the recipe carefully. Do not, for example, miss the direction to peel the pumpkin before mashing it and turning into pumpkin pie.

Follow the directions if you haven't made the recipe before. There is a reason why you are supposed to scrub oyster shells before using them to cradle oysters for baking. All that algae and plankton bakes, too, and you and your guest may not enjoy Eau de Dead Tidepool as a fragrance.

Do not trip while carrying a pot of boiling pasta to the sink. Especially if you are barefoot.

Raw food may be the latest fad, but putting a chicken into the oven and failing to turn it on is not the way to do it.

Ignore the kitchen timer at your own peril.

There is a reason why you are supposed to scrub oyster shells before using them to cradle oysters for baking. All that algae and plankton bakes, too, and you and your guest may not enjoy Eau de Dead Tidepool as a fragrance

I don't know about anyone else, but around here the oysters we buy also tend to have some mud on them. Washing them is crucial. Any good mistakes nutrax?

The thing was, I washed the oysters, but did not get out a brush & scrub them, as directed.

By "good mistakes" do you you mean something like accidentally using a wrong ingredient & discovering that it tasted better that way?

I usually end up scrubbing them with a brush. Otherwise the grit of the mud tends to stay on - yuck,

I was actually looking for good stories about bad mistakes. But, as this is mostly just a thread for entertainment, a story about a good mistake would be cool.

This was told me by a friend. When he was about 8, he decided to surprise his mother & make her a cake. A big cake, a really big cake. Starting with a whole 5 pound sack of flour (about 2.25 kg) and something like a dozen eggs. He needed something big to mix it in, and found the perfect thing.

The washing machine.

OMG!!! Please don't tell my daughter about that. I'm sure she would try the same thing, probably for Mother's Day. Then she would probably realized that our little oven won't bake a cake that big and scrap the whole project. And knowing her she would forget and I would be cleaning semidried cake dough out of our washing machine the day after Mother's Day.

When I was about 15 my folks left me home alone for the weekend. Having heard about wine sauces I thought I would give it a shot with my then favorite wine, Strawberry Hill. Had to throw the whole meal out. Fortunately my taste in wines has improved slightly since then.

I do a bit of bbq and one time at about three a.m. I was rearranging the hot coals in my smoker to be a better burn. I didn't notice that one fell out onto the wooden deck until I stepped on it with my bare foot. Not only did I have to contain my mouth but I had to get the hose out to douse the coal before the deck caught on fire; before I could tend to my foot. I had a nice whole in the bottom of my foot for a couple of months.

Boones Farm Strawberry Hill? It can just imagine what kind of sauce that was!

Ouch! You probably shouldn't bbq at 3am, Stan.

I remember having a real craving for cheesecake, which I had made many times with my mom's time trusted recipe.

Couldn't understand why it tasted so awful until I realized that I had used cracker crumbs instead of graham cracker crumbs!

That'll do it auntie!

When I was at school we made a quiche as part of our Home Economics class, I was 15 years old. A couple of weeks after the Home Ec class, I decided to give my Mum a rest from cooking and volunteered to make the quiche again; as it turned out ok the first time my Mum agreed.

During the quiche making, my friend telephoned so I chatted with her for about 30 minutes and took a break. I went back to the cooking and all went well, so I thought. I proudly served the quiche up to my parents and they both took a mouthful and as they were eating it they were looking at each other weirdly. I was then informed I had forgotten to put the cheese in, so it was effectively a ham and egg tart and it just didn't taste right without the cheese! I never attempted to make a quiche again after that!

My other mistake was attempting a chicken tikka masala after I had been taught it as part of a cookery course I went on in Kerala, India a couple of years ago. I followed the instructions but it turned out so hot we were crying as we ate it...it was almost inedible but we have a high threshold for spiciness, so it was sort of ok. I think this mistake was a case of the chillis being a different heat between countries, rather than anything I did wrong.

#16.re:"chicken tikka masala".Hope you did not use the infamous "ghost chillies" by mistake?
You and your family might all have been in hospital or worse if you used even a single whole "ghost chilli" :))

Using a shop bought SWEET shortcrust pastry to make a quiche.

Making a middle eastern lamb & okra stew, deciding that the okra couldn't possibly cook in the short time stated & ending up with a bowl of snot.

I made some quiches several years ago. I actually didn't expect them to turn out (I'm not sure why) but they were quite good. Unfortunately, my family isn't much into quiche so I don't do them often. You should try again loubby, but turn off your phone first. (I used a shop bought dough but it wasn't sweet)

A grocery store near me has frozen okra. I always wondered how in the world that could be edible. Okra is probably the most picky vegetable ever grown (can't be too dry or too mushy or it just doesn't work).

No, the Strawberry Hill wine sauce is not something I recommend, of course I am not sure you can even buy that stuff anymore.

Unfortunately when I bbq pork shoulder for pulled pork bbq it takes up to about 16 hours so cooking overnight is very common.

I think you still can. I heard someone talking about having bought it recently and they were about my age - go figure.

My husband and I often smoke food and were talking about doing a really slow smoke overnight sometime. At one point he dug a pit and we slow cooked pork wrapped in banana leaves in it. But the last time we did it, it rained during it. Knowing the rain was cooling things off we let it cook longer. When we took it out the outside looked lovely but the inside was rather underdone. Put us off on the pit.

I have never cooked in a literal pit. Well that isn't quite true. I have done it while camping, but not for bbq at home. I have had a couple of bbq "pits". The current one is a 22" Weber Smokey Mountain (not the same as the grill) and I really like it. I will run for a long time without me having to mess with it so I can get some sleep on the overnight cooks.

You should try again loubby, but turn off your phone first.

That last attempt was 18 years ago, well before mobile phones! I have really never tried since, it's no good now as I can't eat eggs and my boyfriend doesn't like quiche so I can't see myself trying again in the near future.

The pit cooked pork was excellent, but unless you plan to use the pit at least a few times, it's not really worth it. You have to dig it out (of course) and then line it with brick and or stone and you don't use mortar so you have to reposition the lining on occasion.

I understand loubby. My husband tolerated it when I made it. The last time I did was for an all girls party (nothing kinky just food and talk) so it went over really big. We don't do girls parties too much anymore so I haven't had the opportunit to make it again.

We have some of those mouse turd chillis. I've only used them a few times since they're so easy to overuse and can kill a person if you do. I'm the only one in my house who really likes okra so the only thing I use them for is jambalaya, which I don't make very often and I would never use a whole bag of them. So I'll have to take your word for it that the frozen ones are edible.

Digging a pit to cook meat or whole fresh fish/crabs/lobsters/mussels wrapped in banana/lotus/yam leaves on a clean sandy beach is quite easy and can be good fun especially if there is a group of friends and family.
Not too keen on the normal soil/clay or hot rocks style which is harder work and more messy.

Thanks tribolite! We are contemplating moving to New Mexico and I was wondering about doing a pit in sand.

I forgot the year my folks decided to cook suckling pig for Christmas, using a wild pig my dad had shot. It took at lot of work to prep and cook the thing. No idea what that pig (or its mother) had been eating, but the meat was completely inedible. Ever had a wild duck that had been feeding on some awful fish? This was several orders of magnitude worse. Even the dog wouldn't touch it.

The next year, they ordered a pig from a butcher and it came out perfect. The dog loved it, especially the skin from the belly that had not turned into crackling. However, all that fat upset the dog's digestion very seriously. The emergency vet clinic on Christmas Day is not cheap.

My husband wants to cook a whole pig but the logistics of it are rather daunting. I will keep your dad's lesson in mind about wild pig. Knowing my husband he just might try that some time.

My grandmother was a great cook, but a poor labeller. She took a bag of damsons out of the freezer to make a crumble, only to discover much later that they were in fact beetroots.

Ugh.

Oh no renegade! That had to be the world's worst crumble!

I was leaning down to shake the perfect amount of black pepper ontp the strips of venison jerky I was cooking on a smoker in the backyard when a sudden gust of wind blew a bunch of pepper into my eyes. I blindly staggered around and nearly knocked over the smoker before I could find the garden hose.

I had actually cooked the dish quite well...... a big Kedgeree ... smoked haddock and curry and riceand some veges... that sorta thing ... speshal request for my girlfriends party.

And then I tripped on the carpeted stairs of my block of units .... soaked in .... smelt baaaaad er each day .....wouldn't wash out ... not happy Jan .One neighbour just twitched when she sees me

Niner - were you able to rescue the venison jerky???? I love venison jerky. So far we've only made beef jerky and only in our plastic indoor smoker. We really need to branch out on our jerky making.

philistine - finished, dropped meals are the saddest stories of all. I hate when I spend time whipping up a beautiful meal and end up mopping it off of the floor. Fortunately, it doesn't happen often but when it does my heart breaks.

Oh, the dropped meal!

I was carrying a crockpot of beef stew in the back seat of my car. My brand new, two-week old car. You can guess what happened. All over the cloth back seat.

It was 4 days before I could get to a car wash to have the seat steam cleaned. In the meantime, since it was summer, that beef stew fermented beautifully in a hot car. When bacteria do their thing to proteins, they produce some amazingly aromatic chemicals. I could only drive the car with all the windows down and while breathing through my mouth.

Oh dear nutrax! That must have been awful!

You reminded me of 2 things (to go a bit off track).

The first (more on track) A friend of mine made matzo ball soup and offered to give me some to take him. He wanted to make sure I had enough but didn't any good large containers. The container he gave me leaked like a sieve (I was really glad I put it on the floor) and I still had way more liquid than I needed for the amount of matzo balls.

The really bad one was - one day my car started to smell horrible. I figure it was something I had in a bag in the back and threw it out. The smell went away. About 3 months later, Winter ended and the smell came back. I cleaned out my entire car to find that a box of butter (4 sticks) had fallen under the seat and melted all over. I had to clean it out with a cleaner that had bleach in it and sprayed it with Febreeze. The weird part is that the carpet never got discolored.