BS: Epic culinary failures

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 07:46 AM

Many, many years ago, when on a new job, in a new city, I invited a few new co-workers over for a dinner party, featuring the Famed Charleston 13-Bean Soup.

Can you tell I went to the Bootstrap College of Culinary Arts?

No one told me you needed to SOAK beans BEFORE cooking.

After a few hours of beers, waiting for the pebbly beans to do ANYTHING, we ordered in pizza : )

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 10:17 PM

Hee hee another memory from long ago - I heard my mom yell and went running into the kitchen and thought she had accidentally somehow slit her throat with the can opener she was brandishing in one hand, there was what I thought was blood not only in huge swaths across her throat but in great jets across and into cupboards and the walls and everything, and I had just time enough to realize nothing was dripping when she burst out laughing and, holding a rounded can of tomato paste in the other, said Never try to open a spherical can that used to be cylindrical! The gas from the spoiling paste had distended the can but she didn't realize that opening it under pressure would cause jets of it to erupt, startling her (thus the yell) and spraying tomato paste upward under her chin, and then everywhere else when she jumped...

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 05:48 AM

brilliant!

recently I noticed a small can of tomato paste about 4 years past it's use-by date had left a thin trail of yucky black sludge round the top & down the cupboard wall. I didn't investigate exactly where the sludge came from & just threw out the can & contents.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 06:18 AM

It's odd how parts of one's career can be perfect echoes one of the other.
The first individual task i was given on joining a major food supplier was to sort out the fate of a consignment of canned orange juice on a ship which had lost its steering in the Med, and was salvaged. All goods on such a ship share the same fate, falling into the hands of the salvager, and so I attempted to contact them, only to be told the matter was in the hands of a Spanish Court, who would let us know. Orange juice being perishable, I told them not to bother, by the time that was sorted out it would be unusable, and sent the thing off to the insurance. End of story, or so I thought.
Years went by, and I prepared to move to a new job. As I put the last thing on my desk in the box, the phone rang, it was the harbourmaster of the port the ship was brought back into, complaining that he had a load of tins marked with the company's name on the end of a pier and they were going bang. Ten gallons of orange juice left in the Spanish sun for a couple of years ferments most magnificently, and there were thousands of the things. I explained they were almost certainly the lost consignment, and nothing to do with us - but what can we do, pleaded the poor sob. You probably can't move them, so the only remaining option is to bulldoze them over the edge into the dock - which occasionally gurgles evilly to this day, I am told.

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 09:18 AM

brilliant.

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 10:17 AM

I remember that very early in my first marriage, Valerie left an egg boiling on the stove & forgot it. Ultimately, the pan having boiled dry & the heat maintained, it exploded. The ceiling of the kitchen of the upstairs flat at 9 Hayes Crescent, off Finchley Road at Temple Fortune, London NW11, was stained with dried egg yolk until we left 18 months later. Still is, 53 years later, for aught I know of the matter.

& we had to buy a new egg saucepan. The one I am still using, I believe!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 10:34 AM

Mind you, it does run in the family - skipped a generaton to me, but I do recall the day my gran was on the phone in utter hysterics. Now, she was a belly-laugher naturally, but this time she was peeing herself. It turned out my uncle had bought her a food processor, she'd loaded it with the ingredients for a chocolate sponge, and switched it on. How the lid came off we'll never know, but the effect was that instead of being smashed against the sides of the hopper by the blades, going up the sides and the lid dropping it back onto the blades, the absence of a lid meant it climbed out in a pillar of dark brown you name it, spreading out until it not only hit the ceiling, but the walls and floor of the kitchen as well. Whence the hysterical nan...

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 11:13 AM

ah equipment failures...

the mental picture of chocolate decorating the kitchen brought back two memories...

my aged grandmother, who was losing her eyesight to glaucoma, attempting to surprise my mom with potato dumplings... she left dried out potato mixture on the handle of every cabinet door, flat surface, etc. at the end of the process. Mom was surprised alright and was cleaning that up for some time afterwards.

then there was my dad's great snail stampede... he and mom loved escargot and he picked up a paper bag full of the little darlings... and then left them on the table overnight. Amazing how far those little guys can travel in that amount of time... snails on the floor, counters you name it... we even found a few dried out specimens on the back of the refrigerator months later...

At least when you bring home clams or mussels they stay put! LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 11:33 AM

Yeah, turns out equipment is very reliant on science.

Playing with my new NutriBullet mixer, I first violated the maximum limit, then forgot that pancake batter WILL expand. The friend I'd invited over for pancakes that morning walked in just as it exploded and sprayed certainly 50 times more volume than what I'd put in there.

She endeared herself to me forever by immediately grabbing chairs and rags to begin the kitchen scrub-down.

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: Bert
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 01:16 PM

It was in the Members kitchen at High Roding Youth Hostel, way back in the fifties.

The girls had cooked dinner and I wanted some rice pudding for dessert. Ya know, rice, milk, sugar, and raisins.

So I gets me a small pot and a can of milk. Opened the one pound bag of rice and dumped that in. It soon got solid so I added more milk, then I had to get a bigger saucepan, then another saucepan... Finished up with enough to feed the whole Hostel, and then some.

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 01:53 PM

LOL... many years ago, I had a copy of "Impoverished Student's Book of Cookery, Drinkery and Housekeepery by Jay F. Rosenberg." published by Reed College.

In it, they had cheap things to do with rice... preceded by an explanation that X cups of 'rice' = X³ cups of *RICE*

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: Janie
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 11:54 PM

Loving the tales - good to know I am not terminally unique.

The first (and perhaps the last) time I decided to make a meat stock to make a scrumptious soup or something from leftovers, I ended up with a gelatinous mass in a large pot.

We all have psychological defenses and mine come into play here - I think, but am not certain, it was a lovely, free range turkey carcass and was at the tail-end of failing enthusiasm for cooking from scratch and being frugal after a marathon and stressful Thanksgiving with too many in-laws I was trying to impress.

I think we ended up having pizza delivered on a Friday night.

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 09:19 AM

Janie... you did OK, just cooked it long enough to get everything out of it.

"Sometimes when I make chicken stock it gets gelatinous. Does that mean it has gone bad?"

No, in fact the opposite is probably true! You have likely made wonderfully flavorful stock. Properly made stock becomes gelatinous from the collagen in the bones. The gelled texture has nothing to do with fat content, as many people erroneously believe. A well-skimmed stock can be just as (or even more) gelled than one which contains fat. Fat will thicken the stock, but it will not cause it to gel.

I take a portion of the gelled stock and dilute it enough to cook whatever vegetables, etc. I plan to add to the soup. Or freeze it in small batches for use later on.

Or give the pets a real treat with their meals.

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 10:38 AM

the hubby has decided he likes to make soup... but he does not get the fact that the broth needs to have the excess fat removed. Having to dive below the floating oil to ladle out a bowl doesn't work... and if i want a bowl, I end up taking a portion and putting in the fridge long enough to harden the fat & remove it myself.

ugh... greasy food is not my thing...

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: Bert
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 03:16 PM

X cups of 'rice' = X³ cups of *RICE*

Trouble is Bill, that the formula doesn't work too well when X=1. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 08:54 PM

Loughborough University in my day was mostly Science - about 10 men to every woman, and she was a librarian in the making.
So the cookery was scientific. An example was the recipe for icecream.

1. Ingredients: 1 pint milk, one packet of icecream powder.
2. Equipment: 1 teapot, 1 power drill, 1 pair of scissors, 1 freezer
3. Empty the milk into the teapot. Cut the top off the packet of icecream mix, and add it.
4. Put the scissors point-forwards into the chuck of the power drill and secure. Put the handle into the teapot and wisk slowly. Except slow on a power drill is a relative concept.
5. Put it in the freezer overnight and suck it out through the spout.

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: Janie
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 07:37 AM

I didn't realize that, sciencegeek! I thought it was ruined and tossed it. Should have realized that with reheating and dilution it would turn back into broth.

Subject: RE: BS: Epic culinary failures
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 08:42 AM

well, next time you'll know, Janie... :D

I find it's more likely to happen when cooking down a chicken or turkey carcass... loads of cartilage waiting to be rendered.

I don't recall it happening with beef, probably because so little cartilage available except in really cheap cuts.

when making stock you can place your selection of vegetables in a large roasting pan and place the bones or seasoned meat on top and then roast in a medium heat oven for an hour or so... add enough water to keep from burning and cover with foil or lid. When the meat is done, deglaze the pan and add the contents of the pan along with the bones and cooked vegetables to a large stock pot... now you are ready to make a rich stock. The roasted meat is ready for the table - but you can take any trimmings and add them to the stock pot. Waste not, want not.