Best Kitchen Disasters?

[eteller]

Whatcha got? The wife tried to make these 'Butter Mints' from a Pintrest recipe, I watched. They consisted of a lot of powdered sugar, she just dumped the bag in the bowl. A little cream cheese (way to little) and it called for a 1/8tsp of peppermint extract NOT a glug. She said the tasting results were as I predicted 'Scope in solid form'.

 

[Bstable]

My worst kitchen disaster was last year when a girl drove her car through mine causing $75,000 damage.

Oh, you mean cooking...That would have to be when I was 11 and tried to make fudge with no supervision. I somehow made some sort of hard chewy chocolate stuff that resembled peanut brittle. My dad was the only one that are it.

 

[toxcrusadr]

Bstable wins, but let's see, maybe I have something fun.

My dear wife has a habit of putting things in the oven or on the stove and forgetting to watch over them. She once tried to make her mom's pecan rolls (a holiday tradition that only mom can do right), and burned them. We had a good laugh over that.

One that I recall is more of a brewing story. One of my early batches of wine was a Strawberry Chablis because someone gave me a big box of fresh strawberries. I didn't let it ferment out long enough before putting it into gallon jugs, which I stored in the correct orginal boxes (4 to a box), stacked them in the downstairs pantry closet and went on vacation. One exploded, soaking the box and the one underneath, the soggy boxes sagged under the weight, the stack tipped, and the box with the remaining 3 intact gallons fell off onto the concrete, breaking at least one more gallon. I came back to a sticky mess! A gallon of liquid can go a long way on concrete or seeping under unglued carpet squares.

The stuff that survived was a great strawberry champagne though.

 

[Hajidub]

My young daughter put a Cup O' Noodle in the microwave for 4 minutes (instead of 40 secs) and forgot to add water. Took 2 weeks to get all the stains and 4 weeks to get rid of the burnt smell.

 

[JHS2RT]

The time I put Dawn liquid dishwashing soap in my dishwasher.

 

[Danimal]

Best Kitchen disaster? Every time my wife steps foot in that room. She is under the impression that the smoke detector is the oven timer.

 

[Bstable]

The time I put Dawn liguid dishwashing soap in my dishwasher.

Oh I forgot about that one. I had a roommate do that as well. He tried to hide the evidence except all of my base cabinets swelled up and crumbled. It ruined everyone of them. This was right after my upstairs remodel that was done in part so that we could have an electric dishwasher installed (so we no longer had to wash by hand) I even went over that you NEVER put hand soap into the new electric dishwasher. He paid for new cabinets and my labor.

 

[getright99]

I took off a fingertip in a big old Globe slicer, slicing lemons to top it all off. Also, the broiler guy set off the Ansul system over about $1000 worth of meat, fish, and my entire sauté station. Another was a kid refilling a fryer without closing the drain on the bottom. Not fun to clean up. I've also seen some disasters when waitresses load trays to heavy. Also not fun because it all needs to be re-cooked.
Great thread.

 

[getright99]

Best Kitchen disaster? Every time my wife steps foot in that room. She is under the impression that the smoke detector is the oven timer.

:lmao::lmao:

 

[toxcrusadr]

I boiled some eggs for egg salad and the first one I cracked open was not hard enough. I thought I could cook one the rest of the way by microwaving it half a minute. Took it out (with a hot pad) and tapped it with the back of a spoon to crack it. It exploded, flinging shell fragments and superheated egg in my face and all over the kitchen. It was like an egg-bomb! Good thing the spoon was between my face and the egg, probably saved my eyeballs.

 

[mhardy6647]

Mrs H and I used to do a lot of Chinese cooking - we got pretty good at it (my thesis adviser and his wife were Taiwanese). We used to 'cater' dinners for 4 to 6 people which we'd auction off as fundraisers at "time and talent" auctions, e.g., for our church.

One time, we decided to go whole hog and include a home-made Chinese dessert. We found some recipe for some kind of little deep fried balls containing sweet bean paste. Susan made these things; they looked like cherry bombs. As it turned out, they didn't just look like 'em. When dropped in hot oil to cook, the air and moisture in these hermetically sealed time bombs expanded quickly and explosively; the suckers were going off and spewing shrapnel all around the kitchen.

We managed, somehow, to rescue a few... they were pretty tasty.

Fortunately, no eyes were damaged nor any permanent harm done to cooks or kitchen.

 

[kneeOhFight]

The best I've seen is when the gasket somehow failed on a very large pressure cooker full of beets. Deep purple stains on the walls, ceiling, counters, floors, everywhere. Thankfully, no one was in the kitchen when it popped, so no one was scalded.

 

[toxcrusadr]

I burned the last of the Tahini (sesame paste) in the microwave trying to soften it up enough to get it out of the jar. Smelled terrible. Mrs. Tox put a candle inside the microwave to help burn the smell out of the air. The candle was tall enough that it melted a 1" diameter hole in the the plastic roof the oven. Still worked, we used it that way for years.

 

[toxcrusadr]

The best I've seen is when the gasket somehow failed on a very large pressure cooker full of beets. Deep purple stains on the walls, ceiling, counters, floors, everywhere. Thankfully, no one was in the kitchen when it popped, so no one was scalded.

In college we used to drink Cragmont soda in reusable screw cap 1 Qt. glass bottles. One hot day me and the roommate walked to the store and brought home a bottle of Black Cherry soda. It got good and hot and shaken up. He set it on the desk and opened it, and it erupted like Vesuvius, most of it going 360 degrees horizontally as the cap was lifted off, like a firehose aimed at a wall. We were finding sticky red droplets on the walls and furniture for months.

 

[RT Fan]

Remind me never to let any of you chowderheads near my kitchen! Great line about the smoke alarm, I'll have to run that one by my wife.
Not in the same league but I attempted to make seared duck breast with a sherry peppercorn reduction. The duck fat gave off tons of smoke, so I had to open every slider and the front door to clear the house. Smoke was pouring out the front door, so much so that I went outside to wave to the neighbors to let them know it wasn't a chimney fire. Of course it was the middle of February. Somehow the duck still tasted pretty good.

 

[trhee]

Take your pick:

1. A cook, using a deli slicer, not using the safety guard but using his hand instead accidentally chopped off his thumb clean thru while not paying attention. In the panic, he was sent to the hospital without the severed thumb packed in ice. By the time he got to the emergency room, the surgeons said it was too late to go back and get the thumb because the severed thumb's nerves would have already died. They gave him the choice of being without a thumb or amputate his big toe and attach it as a "thumb". Being a lifetime cook, he chose the latter since without a thumb, you can't do much in a kitchen. He came back to work around 6 months later and the big joke in the kitchen for awhile were variations of "I smell toe cheese" jokes.

2. Young cook who was new to shucking oysters but being trained one night found himself "in the weeds" buried under a mound of tickets with more incoming. Instead of using a rag to protect his hands, he felt he could go faster with no protection. As he was trying to open a particularly stubborn oyster, the oyster knife slipped and impaled his open palm and came out the other side. He went to the emergency room and came back to work a week later with a hand so swollen that we started calling him "Mickey Mouse". A few weeks went by and one night the same guy who was cleaning out his station and the inside of his chef table refrigerator, all of a sudden, started shaking while smoke was coming off him and then dropped down with a thud. There must've been a wire short somewhere and the water being splashed around along with the wet floors basically got him electrocuted. Ambulance came again and although he was alright, he decided to quit working in kitchens.

 

[cubby01]

Man, you guys have me topped, about the biggest disaster recall is turning on the blender without the top on it.

I do recall once doing my regular weekend made-from-scratch pancakes. We keep flours etc in large jars in the pantry. I managed grab 3 cups of corn startch instead of 3 cups of flower. I thought the batter seemed rather thin but it was only after I tried to cook the first ones I realized what I had done. Not wanting to waste what was mixed up I kept adding stuff to the mix until it was somewhat edible. I think we made and froze pancakes to last a month.

I somehow made some sort of hard chewy chocolate stuff that resembled peanut brittle. My dad was the only one that are it.

As a dad I know, Dads will eat most anything. :yes:

 

[eteller]

My brother gave me a pasta maker once. We decided to try it one night and I grabbed what I thought was the semolina, it was actually the corn meal. Not good eats.

 

[JHS2RT]

I still laugh at what my Grandfather did in 1969. Put some popcorn to pop on the stove ---forgot to put the lid on and left the room for a few minutes----My Grandmother wasn't amused at all.

 

[fishoz]

My mom got her boob caught in a Veg-O-Matic (Don't ask how). From what I was allowed to see it looked pretty nasty - you could see what attachment she was using...french fry cutter!