I will never again . . . (Part 1)

[Suzanne F]

3)  Heat oil for fried chicken in a covered pan.  When, upon lifting the lid, the oil exploded in flame, she poured baking soda in, which only encouraged the fire.  Apparently, she's of the out-of-sight-out-of-mind camp and decided that the solution would be to carry the flaming pot of oil across the kitchen and pour it down the sink.  All I can say is thank God she spilled it all over the floor and cabinets before reaching her final destination!  Needless to say, we did not get our security deposit back.

This is one of the scariest things I've ever read.

Welcome chickenlady! Glad you made it through the fiery furnace(s!).

[torakris]

1)  Try to loosen the stuck lid to my glass jar of sourdough starter by running it under warm water.  Hey, it works for the jar of molasses, so why not?  Needless to say, immediate access to the starter was obtained when the jar exploded in my hands.  The mixture of sharp glass, gloppy starter and blood did nothing for the kitchen decor.  I haven't had the heart to make another starter since.

This is something I might have done!

That you for doing it first and telling us about it!

oh and welcome to egullet!

[AndrewK]

I'll never do what I saw my roomate do a few years ago: Poor guy was frying turkeys for the deli he was working in (I think they had about 200 special orders) and he didn't completely dry out the inside of one of the birds. When he dropped it into the giant fryer, a pocket of melted ice caused an explosion and he was covered in burns all over his face, arms, and neck. Worst part for him was when he had to shave...poor guy.

ak

[Mottmott]

Never send my daughter-in-law to the wine cellar for "cooking" wine! (I always have on hand a variety of inexpensive wines for cooking - yes, drinkable, just not pricy).

Somewhat hurried and harried over doing a last minute poached fish for my non-meat-eating DIL (the rest of us were to revel on roasted animal flesh), I sent her to the cellar for some riesling. Too absorbed in juggling stovetop and oven, I absentmindedly opened the wine as I removed the fish, reduced the court bouillon, added it to the pot, reduced it again, etc., all the while fishing the roast, the fingerling potatoes and chipollini out of the oven.

It was only the next day I looked at the wine bottle to discover she'd come back with a one that cost more than the roast the rest of us dined on. The worst part was I'd only had a teaspoon's taste of it!

[ludja]

Hadn't cooked w/habanero chiles in a while.

They're not that hot, right?

And I like spicy food, right?

And I'm cooking big a pot of refried beans, so the beans will counteract most of the heat, right?

So, I just chopped up the second half of the habanero (I had started w/one half)and tossed it into the pot.

Made a nice big bean burrito.

Ate it.

Half an hour later I was lying on floor in pain, clutching my stomach and wondering how long I could feel like that before going to the hospital...

(I semi-recovered after a few hours)

[JennyUptown]

...wonder why the "oil" won't heat up to the appropriate temperature for deep frying a turkey.

It was water, used for the displacement test and it would only heat up to 200 degrees or so instead of 350 as oil would. It helps to dump the water and replace with oil.

Fortunately, this was my cousin's experience, not mine, because dinner was delayed almost three hours while he, a dim bulb, fussed and tried to remedy the problem.

[elyse]

At least it sounds as though he dried the fryer....

[AndrewK]

I can't believe I had forgotten this one:

I used to work in a cooking school and we had an Indian chef who had me slicing serrano peppers for her curry class. Everyone I worked with told me to wear gloves, but I'm young and full of myself, so I didn't. Feel the burn!

I didn't think it could get any worse than the feeling of having my hands hit by hammers, but I was wrong! I had to go to the bathroom pretty badly and even though my hands were no longer aching, there was still plenty of chile oil saturated into my skin. Use your imagination on that one.

Also, I had to take my contacts out that night for bed. I screamed a lot and swore heavily.

The End.

ak

[Al_Dente]

I will never again wake up, load up the coffee maker, log on to eGullet, check out the latest in the BK/Bayless debate, and then hear the sound of liquid sizzling on a burner.

Yep, didn't put the pot under the drip basket. Coffee everywhere except where I need it-- IN MY BELLY!

Extra bonus: burnt finger from trying to clean up and hitting the hot burner.

Yours,

Einstein

[jawbone]

My dear clueless-in-the-kitchen wife did this when she was in high school:

Following her mom's scribbled-on-an-index-card recipe for chocolate cookies, she saw one of the ingredients was "1 cup c." For some reason she assumed that "c." stood for cinnamon and not cocoa. She baked the cookies. The house was barely inhabitable for a few days. (And yes, her mom shops at Costco).

Edited December 4, 2003 by jawbone (log)

[elyse]

Someone in one of my baking classes did that, but the measurement was in pounds, and it clearly said cocoa. he just couldn't tell the difference.

Same guy also confused salt for sugar. What a dope.

[NeroW]

What a dope.

Or . . . what dope?

[elyse]

Yeah, I was going to say that. He MUST have been stoned.

[Suzanne F]

Oh, hell, a guy in my class at school misread tablespoons for teaspoons when measuring the salt for his focaccia on our baking final. At least HE had the excuse of being legally blind.

[elyse]

Mine was illegally blind.

[FistFullaRoux]

My wife did a good one last night. We have (had-read on) a cheapy pizza stone with the little wire rack you can use to lift it out and whatnot. I never move the thing since I grasp certain concepts better than she does....

Anyway, she fired up the oven, with the pizza stone inside (now that I've convinced her you can heat it up without anything on it). 20 minutes later, removed the stone from the oven, using the wire handled thing, which is barely stable enough for it to sit on a level surface. As she was lifting the stone, it slid.

400 degree ceramic bounced off of her stomach, minor burns on her, but it ruined the clothes she was wearing. Then lands on the oven door in a crash, breaking into 10 or so jagged chunks, each at 400 degrees, on a linoleum floor. Wife is freaking out, and barefoot, so she won't move, and the floor is melting under the broken pizza stone fragments. I finally manage to pick up the pieces and put them into the metal sink, so I can run water on them to cool them off enough to throw them away.

So there we stood. Oven door still open, 10 little melted spots in the linoleum. Hyperventalating wife, and me in a pair of ruined oven mitts, wondering aloud about how to fix the floor.

Moral of the story is, I will never (and neither will my wife) attempt to move a pizza stone when it is hot.

[NeroW]

WHOA!

[denise_jer]

... be greedy and try to get that last bit of cheese off of the rind with a freshly sharpened knife. I was too embarrassed to explain that one to anybody!

[elyse]

What do you think teeth are for?

[PopsicleToze]

So there we stood. Oven door still open, 10 little melted spots in the linoleum. Hyperventalating wife, and me in a pair of ruined oven mitts, wondering aloud about how to fix the floor.

Moral of the story is, I will never (and neither will my wife) attempt to move a pizza stone when it is hot.

ROTFLMAO!!

Buy a big rug from Linens-N-Things and just cover it up until after the holidays. Come January, I foresee a trip to Home Depot

[FistFullaRoux]

Buy a big rug from Linens-N-Things and just cover it up until after the holidays. Come January, I foresee a trip to Home Depot

Yeah, but we rent. I hate having to deal with the pinch faced old broad who runs the rental office. I think her last bowel movement was during the Nixon administration.

She gets pissed off when somebody turns in their rent check early...

[kitwilliams]

I WILL NEVER AGAIN stick a piece of panettone under the broiler to toast then go log on to eGullet.

whoops.

[torakris]

Here is another pizza no-no, it happened to me last night.

I was trying to transfer a large slice of pizza from the cookie sheet to the cutting board with a spatula. With a cookie sheet in one hand and a spatula in the other, I had no choice but to try to catch the falling slice by thrusting my hips forward to try to trap it at the counter. Luckily I was wearing pants the bad thing is that they were white!

[liamsaunt]

I will never again wear a sweatshirt with strings dangling from the front while cooking on a gas range at high heat. One evening, I removed a large pot of pasta from the stove while the burner was still on, and caught the string of my sweatshirt in the flame. Not that I noticed at the time. Oh no. Instead, I thought to myself, "hmm...something smells burnt. How could I possibly have burnt pasta on to the bottom of this pot?" Followed by "hmm..neither the pasta nor the pot are burnt, and yet, something in this house is burning." Folllowed by "hmm..I am feeling somewhat warm in the chest region." After placing the large pasta pot on the counter, and getting a full view of the situation, this was followed by "Agh! my shirt is on fire!" Thankfully, it was a very thick and apparently pretty fire-resistant sweatshirt. I used the big pot to smother the flames, and all was well.

[Richard Kilgore]

I know it's been said before, but...I strongly recommend cutting chile peppers while wearing disposable gloves, and if you're not going to wear the gloves, it's probably not a great time to put in your contact lens.

Also, RLB suggests putting your dry pie dough ingredients in a one gallon freezer bag and freezing it. Well, when you go to close the bag to seal it, it's a good idea to pay close enough attention to what you're doing to squeeze the air out very, very slowly...and to not be wearing a black shirt if you don't.