recipe screw ups

Chili Pot Woman here. I just read the funniest article which incorporated many reader write-ins about kitchen mishaps. Thought it might be fun to get some of our own going. My worst at the restaurant came when I redesigned a recipe, stating to add raw steak instead of precooking. Unfortunately my cook thought that this included the process of another recipe that used Boston Butt, and chose to cube and add raw pork to a chili recipe. While the flavor ended up fine, there were 2 inches of grease floating at the top.
I know an old trick of placing lettuce leaves on top of a stew to absorb fat. Works great, unless you have the fat of a 10 lb. roast on top. After 6 heads of lettuce, we chose to call it a wash.

Me again. My sister just reminded me of a good one. Mom years ago relayed a story of being a newly married 20 year old, and having been raised way out in the country and wanting to be seen as worldly by her new sophisticated husband and friends, called her mom for a recipe. She apologized to her guests for the entree, stating that she simply could not find anywere the exotic spice known as "Adasha Pepper".

I made Tomatillo Enchiladas once. The recipe called for you to simmer the tomatillos in spices and broth and then put in the blender and puree it. Unfortunately, it never said that you needed to cool the very hot mixture before blending it. So I poured it in, put on the top, hit the blend button and the top shot straight off. Green lava errupted covering me and most of my kitchen. I was finding tomatillo sauce for months after that in the nooks and crannies. Needless to say, I've never made it again.

I also made this Tuscan Chicken with Gorganzola Cream Sauce and for some reason, the sauce never set. So it was more like grilled chicken in gorgonzola soup. Disgusting, and a more expensive mistake to make given all the ingredients. I declared that night that we needed to go to DQ instead.

I once attempted a mango/peach cream pie. The recipe called to drain 18 oz of plain yogurt in kitchen gauze. I had no gauze. I reasoned a coffee filter set into a flour sifter (the kind that looks like a big strainer) should work just as well. It filled the #4 coffee filter to the brim exactly and it worked fine! I drained the yogurt overnight in the fridge. By morning the yogurt was drained, I plopped it into a bowl with my other ingredients, mixed with a hand mixer and chilled. It was a beautiful pie! A delicate peachy color, so pretty. I took it to work to share with my co-workers. I was mortified as I watched people smile when they took an initial bite then frown as they "chewed' on the pie. I had forgotten to remove the white, #2 coffee filter from the yogurt before mixing.

Not a "recipe" screw-up, but what could have been a fatal cooking disaster.

I have a couple of pieces of Toro cast aluminum cookware. A 4-qt. saucepot and a 16-qt. stockpot. Have had them for about 30 years. My husband does the bulk of the cooking around here and my Toro saucepot is one of his favorite pots. It's a really handy size for making mashed potatoes, small amounts of pasta, etc.

I used this pot to cook up a big batch of red rice. Awesome stuff, but it stained my aluminum pot. Mike kept complaining about it so I filled it with water, added a tablespoon of cream of tartar and put it on to boil at high heat. Unfortunately, I chose to do this about 11 PM. My plan was to bring it to a boil, turn it off and go to bed. The only problem was that I fell asleep and left the pot boiling all night long. My husband happened to wake up about 6 AM and found the empty, burnt pot on the red hot electric burner. I could have easily burned the house down! We were very, very lucky!!

Here's the other amazing part -- I took a plastic scrub brush to the blackened bottom of the aluminum pot. It came out pretty easily, the red rice stain was completely gone and the pot was perfectly useable.

Hopefully, I've learned my lesson and won't do domestic chores in the middle of the night 'cause I can't be trusted to stay awake.