Food and Cooking

I went to spend Christmas with my in-laws about ten years ago and ruined their meal.

I'm not a bad cook, I know my way around a kitchen, my mom ran a fast food joint when I was a teen and she taught me how to work my ass off in a kitchen. From that start I've developed into a pretty good cook (or so my wife and friends tell me). I'm not the best but I do know how to cook. I know how to make prepare and serve a full Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings and desserts on my own if I had to.

At my in-laws place for Christmas I knew I should help so I just started doing dishes without asking. The place was hectic, the in-laws barely know how to cook and none of them seem to appreciate any spice other than salt or pepper. Everyone was happy I was helping and I kept the kitchen clean as the cooks worked. It was familiar for me and it amazed everyone else.

After a couple of hours of helping I thought I'd do more. They were making gravy and all it was was thin water from the drippings mixed with flour which made a white watery tasteless gravy. I thought I'd amaze them by making a roux with the own drippings, thickening the liquid, browning it to a golden color, adding salt, pepper, spice, a drop of maple syrup, soya sauce and a dash of Worcestershire. I kept tasting it and to me it was delicious. I had practiced for years and I knew how to make it taste good.

The in laws came in and the room went quiet, even the Christmas music stopped .... they all looked at me like I murdered the cat and I was cooking it.

They were all upset that I had changed "Ma's gravy" and turned it into something else. Everyone was either disappointed at best or just sneered at me like I had thrown a brick into the living room window.

I didn't burn anything, didn't over salt, didn't make anyone sick, no fire, no explosions, blood or burns ... I had just ruined "Ma's gravy" of basically water and flour that everyone ate and somehow enjoyed every Christmas.

It was the weirdest TIFU in the kitchen I ever experienced.

Decided to make fried chicken. We rarely ever eat fried foods, and so I don't have fancy things like deep fryers. What I had was a large cast aluminum pot.

Filled it about half way with oil, made amazing delicious fried chicken.

I also don't have a stop top. Use a single eye burner. Needed the burner for something else, so sat the pot on the counter next to the sink.

Moved wrong, knocked the pot into the sink. Boiling oil goes down the drain.

Know what's at the bottom of the drain? A trap full of water.

Water met boiling oil as I matrix dodged our of the way and a geysey worthy of yellow stone came flying out of the sink, both sides, shooting boiling oil and steam everywhere. Covering the ceiling, the walls, the floor. Even the dog got hit (thank God for long, thick fur!). I had splatter burns on my legs, which was the only part of me not under the counter when it landed. It came up with so much force it threw the pot out of the sink.

I rubbed my eyes after cutting habaneros. 🥺

I'm sure everyone's absent mindedly grabbed the handle of a cast iron pan they've just taken out of the oven, and had that quick "Oh no!" thought in the milliseconds before the pain registers.

For some reason I have a hard time with which knob goes to which burner on a range. Couldn't tell you why. Got home from a 12 hour shift at work and my wife, who didn't work that day, told me she expected me to make dinner. I go into the kitchen and it is a much bigger mess then how I left it the night before. So with my last bit of mental capacity I put things away enough so I can cook. But apparently there were some plastic lids under a glass lid on the back of the stove. Started a pot of water and went to the other side of the kitchen to chop some veg. The kitchen started to smell weird, and I'm looking around trying to figure what it is, and figure out I had turned on the wrong burner. Picked up the glass lid and my lungs were assaulted with plastic fumes. I'm coughing and hacking and wheezing and almost passing out on the floor. It was so hard for me to breath I felt like I was dying. This brings my wife in and she steps over my body and finishes making dinner. Serves herself some, and takes it into the bedroom just as I'm barely able to stand again. That's when I realized, I had fucked up. Shouldn't have married her. Been divorced 2 years today.

Cat food pasta.

I often buy wet cat food, as a treat for my cats. I blend it with some water (they like it this way), freeze it into cubes, and put them in an old ice cream container. Everyday 18:00 I unfreeze two of those cubes for their dinner.

I also buy tomato paste in 1kg cartons, and freeze it into ice cubes. It goes to another ice cream container in the freezer.

Well. At night, distracted, preparing tomato sauce for the pasta. Added actual tomato paste cubes into it, got distracted, tasted it, "meh, still too runny", went back to the freezer, picked the contained that I thought to be tomato paste, didn't check the contents, added two more cubes to the sauce. And as it dissolves and bubbles I think "wait a minute this is smelling like cat foo... oh shit".

It isn't something harmful or contaminated, so I... ate it? 6/10 it didn't make me go full "bleeeergh" but not doing this again.

Sort of.

I was making a gigantic batch of mead. Like 5 gallons of it, boiling away merrily. I carefully prepared my glass carboy ahead of time and poured the must (aka: that-which-will-be-mead-after-yeast-farts-in-it) into my carboy. This was fine. All according to plan.

The bucket of ice and cold water I added to the sink to cool it down faster so that I could throw the pitched yeast into it... also according to plan.

What was not according to plan was a gunshot sound going off, shards of glass shooting through the air like a grenade, and honey water cascading out over the edge of my sink all over my floor.

I've never felt more broken.

That reminds me of another time I was making chilli and came up with a great idea of getting frisky with my wife. Needless to say, it killed the mood.

If only one...

I was going to make fries 🍟, put a couple liters of oil in a wok-like frier 🍲 on the stove ♨️... and a short phone 📞 call later, came running into a cloud of oil smoke 💨 filling the kitchen, and flames 🔥 bursting just as I quickly slammed a lid on it. Take lid off, flames burst 🔥, put lid on, only smoke 💨. PHEW!... but I wanted fries! So... DISCLAIMER: do not do this!!... got a cinder block, put it in the middle of the kitchen, and veeeeery carefully, with the lid on, took the whole thing with the oil at flaming point, off the stove, onto the cinder block... took the lid off, flames burst 🔥, put the lid on 💨... but I still wanted fries! So... DISCLAIMER: seriously, NEVER do this!!... I took a jug🏺, filled it with water 🌊, and very carefully, started pouring it onto the cinder block under the thing full of flaming oil. A few jugs later, and a lot a steam, and a wet floor, and an incredible amount of luck 🍀 later... took the lid off... finally no fire! So... DISCLAIMER: y'know the drill... veeeeery carefully, I took it off the cinder block and back onto the stove... waited a while for it to stop smoking, poured the fries in... and some minutes later, had freshly made fries!🍟 And a kitchen floor to mop up.

9/10, tasty, with a slight risk of a horrible death and burning the whole house down.

Then, this other time... I was feeling hungry, so decided to make a bowl of pasta 🍝, with some sour cheese 🧀, with scrambled eggs 🍳, with some strawberries 🍓, and some sugar to top it off... only instead of sugar 🍶, I picked the flour 🍶 jug (white is white, right?... right?)... several minutes of blowing flour off the bowl into the sink later... I said "f it"... added some actual sugar, mixed everything thoroughly, and ate it like that.

8/10, was hungry, raw flour tasted bad, but mixed up together it got kind of masked.

Another time, decided to make pasta, so put a large pot of water on the stove... but was really tired, so set an alarm for 10 minutes, about when it should get boiling (this was on a gas stove without a timer), and went to take a quick nap... something like half an hour later, woke up to a nasty smell coming from the kitchen, ran into it, and of course all the water had boiled off, the pot was getting burned ♨️... and I just overheard a cop 👮 on the balcony in the apartament next door, saying "yes, send the firefighters 👨‍🚒 to..." which is when I jumped out crying "no need!! everything under control!!"😳. They still wanted to see what happened, so had to let them in, show the burned pot... they looked at me with commiseration, "yeah, I know..." I said. Thanked the neighbor for calling for help and excused myself, she still looked pissed. Oh well.

1/10, got no lunch that day, barely got on time for work, but the house still didn't burn down, and firefighters didn't have to break in, so that's something.

And once, I was going to make coffee, fished out a jar from the back of the cupboard, no expiry date, opened it to take a whiff... and just that moment my mom comes into the kitchen, bumps into me, and I get a full snort of coffee. It wasn't stale. I kept smelling it for a day or two...

4/10, coffee is fine, but everything smelling like coffee, from salad, to cheese, to orange juice, is a bit much.

This was not actually my mistake, but last year we bought an expensive fresh turkey two days before Christmas, and unbeknownst to me, my husband decided to store it in the oven (mistake #1) then my son turned on the oven to cook something else, causing the turkey's plastic bag to melt to the turkey (mistake #2).

We had ham for Christmas.

I once while very tired put salt in a batch of cookies as a substitute for sugar. Two cups of salt....

Was making an alfredo a few weeks ago. Wanted it really cheesy. I'm there with my thing of cream and my shredded parm. Got greedy and added way more parm than I had cream to counteract. When it cooled it was basically rubberized.

Years ago I accidentally confused baking soda and baking powder... Not a good look.

I was trying to make guacamole for lunch once. I decided I wanted a little bit of spice and dumped in some chili powder without looking at the bottle, but it turned out to be cinnamon. I ate the guace anyways with some toast because who what's to waste perfectly good avocado?

3/10, Would not recommend.

Making up coconut curry chicken one evening, accidentally grabbed a can of sweetened coconut cream, not coconut milk. Did not taste good. At all.

I forgot to turn off the stove with some pork and sauerkraut on low heat, and went out drinking. Many hours later I came back to a smoke filled house, with a pot filled with solid charcoal that ended up in the trash because I just couldn't get it clean enough. I had to trash a couple things in the cabinets above the stove, because I couldn't get the smoke taste out.

More recently, I preheated a pan too much to sear a steak. I always wondered what kind of idiot starts a grease fire, now I know. The avocado oil took about 5 seconds to ignite, and it ended up destroying a splatter screen I'd set on the pan from the rapid temperature change. Luckily I remembered to cover the fire to put it out.

I was heating oil to deep fry some jalapeños. I put the cover on the pan so it would heat faster.

After a few minutes I took the cover off... and the oil instantly burst into flame.

I was fast enough to just drop the lid back on the pan, which killed the fire before it got worse... but yeah, don't heat oil with a cover on. And have a fire extinguisher in your kitchen, one that's properly rated for grease fires. Know how to use your fire extinguisher. Do not store it right next to the stove - you need to be able to reach it if there's a fire.

You can also smother a grease fire by dumping baking soda on it. Do not dump flour on it, flour is flammable.

I was a little drunk and decided to make a sandwich. While cutting some cheese I cut part of my index finger off. Doctors were able to mostly fix it, and now I got a narly scar and only partial feeling with it.

On the summer camp I cooked there were few as always.

We made halušky (Slovakian national dish) and water didn't boil enough so first batch was ruined.

Cooking related - we forgot to order bread and noone can deliver it.

One accident with chilly in food.

My whacky experimental oatmeal (it was edible).

Similar story: I went to bloom some dried chillies and black pepper for stir fry. Well, I used too much oil and waited too long so it got too hot. The spices aerosolized instantly, fumigating the kitchen. Then when, I put the meat in hoping to cool the pan down, hot spicy oil started aerosolizing and splattering every which way.

And just the other day: while I was blanching some beef, I noticed that the burner knob was precariously balanced between between OFF and HI, so i nudged it to HI to make sure the water on kept boiling. Halfway through, I noticed that the plastic container I was setting the blanched beef into into was shrinking. Turns out that the knob I pushed to HI was actually for the burner under the cast iron pan that my container was setting on. Thankfully the wet beef kept the plastic cool enough to be just softened and wilty instead of melting to the pan.