Spent hours yesterday morning making moussaka. All the components were delicious.
First time ever that I pressed broil instead of bake!
. I’d gone to sit down and wait for the timer to sound but husband came out and asked what was burning……? I rushed in to find a top charred mess - so upsetting.
But I saved it! Took off the top Béchamel layer, made a new topping, and baked. Delicious!!
A lucky rescue.
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Then there was the time in the country when I turned on the oven to preheat @ 500 in anticipation of making pizza. Within 10 minutes smelled baking bread and realized that i had forgotten to take the bowl of dough out of the oven where it had been proofing by heat of the pilot light.
We had something else for dinner,.
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I’m great at putting ice cream on the top of the fridge and forgetting I put it there. This topic might be too easy for me. The list goes on and on. I’ve done the proofing bread in the oven, only to turn it on for something else, as well. More I think of it, I’m a dumbass.
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This is one I’ve done too many times, especially in winter because I need some extra temp for proofing. I don’t have an oven pilot but just switching on the lights inside works - the two 40W incandescents get it up to 26°C/78°F inside when it’s 68F in the kitchen.
A few days ago I steam reheated some leftover pre-filled hard shell tacos in a “greenpan” brand non-stick. When I plated and started to eat they were hot but a bit soggy so I went back to the stove, turned the pan back on and crisped them up.
Then forgot I had turned the pan back on. By the time I noticed it all the oil that had been in the pan (butter from eggs that morning) was completely scorched and polymerized, but worse, the plastic flipper I’d left inverted in the pan had melted about 2 cm deep into its edge and left a nice puddle of polymer of the worst sort in the middle of the pan.
Took me hours to get clean and now the surface is a bit grabby on the top side of eggs once I flip for over easy. Bummer.
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Good save! Moussaka is a lot of work!!
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I had just moved into a new (to me) house and the previous owner had recently installed a new oven. They did leave the manual for it, but I didn’t read it.
So I was baking some bread, pre-heated the oven and accidentally set the timer wrong. I pushed “Cancel” thinking that would cancel the timer and let me input the correct time for the timer. “Cancel” turns off the oven, so when the timer went off my bread was uncooked.
Lesson learned.
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I used to constantly preheat the oven forgetting that I had yogurt fermenting in said oven.
Now I stick a piece of painters tape on which I’ve written, “YOGURT”, on the oven knob.
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I also pressed the Cancel button for the oven when I intended to cancel the timer. The chicken thighs cooked through from the ambient heat, though.
More recently, I just forgot to add yeast to a batch of pizza dough. I couldn’t figure out why it didn’t rise at all after three days in the fridge. The crust was tasty, if a little dense.
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Cancel sin. Guilty. Wasn’t used to new-fangled oven.
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Preheated oven w/ dough proofing? Check
Left plastic turner in pan, when I thought the heat was off, but no? Check
Cancelled oven heat when resetting timer? Check. (we had sandwiches, finished the chicken properly and had it for leftovers)
Cancelled sous vide heat when resetting time? Check (Just ended up finishing the steaks in the pan anyway, so got them done enough there)
Used REALLY salty pasta water, then used said water to emulisfy sauce containing really salty cheese? Big ol’ Check. Resulting dish was borderline inedible. That was a bummer.
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Ive been blonde all my life…
Was gifted a salt and pepper mill for the first nuptials that was a shaker as the top of a pepper grinder…made a pot of chili running low and slow all afternoon. Went to adjust the seasonings and the top of the salt shaker fell off and dumped a full shaker of salt into my lovely chili. Fortunately the sliding glass door and the screen were open because I hurled that damned shaker so hard it bounced off the back yard fence. Ex found it in the bushes several weeks later…i went to Williams Sonoma and bought the wooden pepper mill that i still use every day.
Another time went to warm up a pot of stew (same ex had put the whole pot in the fridge). Fell asleep on the couch and awoke to petrified stew.
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I hope you ate it with olive oil!
A good friend of mine left chili or stew on at what he thought was the barest summer while he and the family went out. Turned out to be a rolling boil, cooked dry and then smoked out their condo. One massive insurance claim later…
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I once mistook MSG for sugar when making dulce de leche cake
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I dont screw things up very often, and I can usually fix most mistakes, but when I really screw things up it’s big!
Thinking the big pot of gulash needed some extra paprika, grabbed the jar, threw in a good amount, checked the label: chili pepper. Oops.
Went through cupboards, fridge etc. Threw in more tomatoes. Not enough, added yoghurt. Still too hot and now no more tomatoes and yoghurt.
Found other stuff to throw in and it did end up tasty, but enough for the whole week.
Long ago, but not forgotten.
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It has, thankfully, been awhile, but I still think of shaking nutmeg into ricotta. Yikes and yuck. It was 1975. It cannot happen again because now I grate my nutmeg. My biggest sin/FU is occasionally overcooking a protein or a vegetable. Watch, tonight I’ll start a fire on the stove. Pride goeth before a fall.
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Lol, It appears most everyone here is guilty of not reading new stove directions, myself included. BTW cornstarch is not a substitute for baking powder in pancake batter if anyone was wondering.
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And cornmeal is not a substitute for cornstarch. (I didnt do it, but we still laugh about it 40 years later)
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It can get complicated between American English and British English.
What Americans call cornstarch is called cornflour in Britain.
What Americans call cornflour is very finely ground cornmeal.
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