Do you remember your greatest cooking success? Do you remember the worst cooking disaster? Boy, I got a few...
Mini-meme today..
1. What was the best, most complimented dish you ever made?
2. What was the worst kitchen disaster you ever had?
I will admit, you tend to remember the defeats longer than the successes... we tend to be our worst critics!
Me first!
1. I have had many, ranging from pizza to BB-Q, but once I made a chili that people could not get enough of!
2. A peppermint cheesecake that tasted like mouthwash. A prime rib that was tougher than Kelsey's nuts. A green bean casserole you should have eaten with a spoon. Evolution is learning from our missteps.. Natural Selection is stupid people being weeded out of the gene pool!
Keep learning, people... I don't want any of my blogger friends to be weeded out!
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26 comments:
Hi UncleBuf!
Oh you would ask this. ;)
1. Best--I absolutely make kick ass kebabs. I think it's just really hard to mess up food on a stick.
I also once made some apple crisp for work that the guys nicknamed "the devil". The pan was clean by the end of my shift. ;)
2. Worst: I have the top two terrible food creations--one was I had to make crepes for my french class. I made them with jelly and wrapped them up, and by class, they were so soggy, they were not edible, and I was too embarassed to turn them in. I got a zero for my project.
The second was the time I had to make green bean cassarole for my family's thanksgiving get together. I mistakeningly made it with frozen green beans and when we scooped it out, it was still frozen inside. Go Snow!
Of course, honorable mention was not too long ago: the time I tried to make pesto with dried basil. Not good.
--snow
I cant remember the best but I do remember putting pasta in a crock pot once - many years ago- and coming back a few hours later to a gallon of paste....
You nailed it with "we tend to remember the bad more than the good" and being our toughest critic.
1) My best - Probably the ribs I made that caused my martial arts instructor to go buy a smoker and start learning to cook this year. They were a personal best.
2) Disaster: Most of mine have come from not being ready on time when I first started cooking for big groups. That was a miserable feeling when I was cooking for our neighborhood pool party and dinner was 1+ hours late for 50 people.
A close second, just a few weeks ago, when my friends spent a few days with us, I smoked three racks of ribs in the Egg in a rib rack using a new thermometer. I was having fits keeping the temp up. Around 1.5 hrs in, I opened the lid to be scorched by a 400f fire. Turns out the new thermometer had a 2" longer stem and was touching the meat the whole time! The ribs were ruined. Fortunately, I had already made great fillets and salmon earlier. But it was embarrassing.
Snowniece- When something is good, I call it "Stupid good"... Neat how we pooched the same simple green bean casserole!
DogB- My wife did that when we were first married! God bless crock pots....
Chris- My Brinkman had a useless temp gauge when first purchased.. You trust something to do it's job, and it fails... Paul Kirk has always said, "Cook with your smoker and learn it"...You will know what it does and does not do. I cook a lot, but seldom am impressed as the people who eat it!
probably the best was the Ina's steaks i made a few months ago. i usually screw up the simplest of steaks. the worst was a recipe by rachael ray. a moroccan stew that normally takes all day to make. her version was 30 minutes and you could tell. we threw it out. oh and one other time i was left to watch ribs on the grill for a 1/2 hour, had a little too much vino i had neglected the smoke rising out of the grill... the ribs had vanished by the time my old knuckle head got back. we ordered pizza that night.
4:40 PM
Deb- You think Rachael Ray is pretty good... I think she wings it to get it done in thirty minutes! I have ordered pizza after a food disaster- but everyone in the house knew better than to point out I screwed up dinner!
There are too many bad to mention. I think one of the best things I make is my coconut cake. It is soooo good.
Worse than blowing up a bowl and getting shards of glass in my sister's behind?
Maybe the time I made what would have been delicious banana bread -- if I'd remembered to put in the sugar.
There are few worse smells than burned potatoes.
And the time I made a pot roast when Anne was a toddler. I can still remember that rosy-cheeked sprite chewing, and chewing, and chewing and finally snapping her neck back to get it to go down. (Hmm -- I may have just figured out how she became vegetarian.)
And the time I made the chocolate chip cookies that turned out so hard the dog used them as a toy -- not a chew toy, because she couldn't bite into them, but a roll-it-around-on-the-floor-and-chase-it toy.
Oh, was I supposed to just do one?
I actually have some sterling successes, too, but they're not funny.
No one jokes about my pot roast. It is always requested and there are never left overs.
Failures? The year I got three fire extinguishers for my birthday because I'd had so many kitchen fires in the last year. And I wasn't even drunk.
Best complimented dish sweet would be carrot cake sandwich cookies, savory would be me between two sheets, KIDDING, had to say it, would be my stove top stuffed peppers, or chicken scarpariello.
Worst was my attemt at cappucino, I used chili powder by mistake instead of cinnamon, lovely.
I can't remember my best creation, but one time as camp cook, (always my role)I made a Chile so hot that it had to be diluted with gobs of crackers, and watered down!
The next day as the Chile made it's bodily exit, I was bitched out a second time!!!
Denise- I like coconut a lot, but certain people in this family hate it..
Jeanne- I seldom use tempered glass for cooking, because when it goes- it goes everywhere! Love to have been the Med Center doctor on Corningware in butt accident!
Kate- A good pot roast is easy and a crowd pleaser! I set our table on fire at a chili cook-off once- and adult beverages were involved!
Donna- Cookies sound great, as do your other specialties... I have a bad habit of putting excess spices into other empty spice containers I keep.. Mistakes have been made..
G-man- The only pepper in the world that comes out of you hotter than it went in, is the Jalepeno!
My best has been my key lime pie, for years and years. My worst... I don't know, I don't cook that much to have worsts. I guess blah food is common, when I'm not inspired, but disasters, as in no one could really eat it, not that I remember.
Jen- Love Key lime pie! No mishaps in the kitchen? You gotta cook more- you will have them then!
You are so right about remembering the disasters.
My best was Chicken Orleans...I get a lot of requests for it.
My worst disaster was trying to make gnocchi. I wound up with a lot of squishy potatoes.
i usually only cook for my son and he can't complain..
but my mother was famous for making live 100 different ways and tried to pawn it off as chicken this or steak that..
Hink Ma liver is liver is liver..
We should never eat an organ that is the cleaner...we just shouldn't Yuck
Kath- Maybe that's why I don't like gnocchi... I probably screwed it up!
Darngirl- I love calf's liver sauteed in butter with spices, bacon and sliced onions! Medium rare is ideal!
1. What was the best, most complimented dish you ever made?
When clients and friends call me up to ask me for a recipe, or ask me to come back (I know that is not specific)
2. What was the worst kitchen disaster you ever had?
The time when I worked in an assisted living facility and I though it would be brilliant to make caramel for the ice cream social, and I made something between gummy bears and rock candy, and I could just see all their dentures coming out, so I threw the whole pan out back in the dumpster. You can say I stay away from candy making, do not know what I was thinking, lol
Oh dear--I have a lot of disasters. One that I really remember well is hosting a dinner party. I decided to try all new recipes (BAD idea) and a couple called for habaneros, which I'd never had before. Every dish was SPICY. Like insanely spicy. No one could eat any of it.
Best? Either pizza or bread--I totally rock the carbs.
ChefE- I worked at a rest home in high school and Jr. college! I remember a lot of "no chew" food served....
Tavolini- Habaneros are very flavorful, fruity tasting initially- but then the slow, painful burn that just won't go away sets in!
Peppermint cheescake? What were you thinking!
O dear, I didn't count the compliments for each, so I have no idea which one received the most. But once I put so much salt in the soup that it was like we were drinking sea water!
KB- Peppermint with chocolate is good! Peppermint so strong it opens your sinuses is bad!
Mona- Too much salt, or too little happens to me more than it should!
My Thanksgiving Turkey is unbelievably yummy!! I have not screwed up Thanksgiving yet. I did get a turkey that was "organic" one year.... it was a little gamey. But.... my side of stuffing is also fabulous. Hard to get too upset over B turkey with great stuffing, homemade rolls, deviled eggs, ....
I guess that I have made some yucky meals? I just toss them and go out to eat. I did damage my cheapo sunbeam mixer trying to make some kinda crazy cookie??? The mixer lived. Just kinda lopsided now. I will not trash it yet!!!
Hit40- I like you, and simply don't know why... Get another mixer- it's cheaper than take-out!
P.S. I burned up my first wand mixer trying to get goddam merinque to whip..
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