cooking misfortunes

[Flintlockecole]

Enjoyed a bottle of 151 a little too much one night and forgot that I had two full chickens on my BBQ, found a bunch of white ash when I opened the BBQ the next day (As well as an empty propane tank).

[itshotintheworm]

Both of these happened within the last couple of months - I really should have known better.

 

Pickled Vegetable Soup

 

I decided to make soup with leftover vegetables. It was a very simple soup so not much could go wrong. During the cooking process I was struck by inspiration: a tiny drop of cider vinegar would give just a little bit of bite to it. Yes, that’s an excellent idea! Well, “tiny drop” is difficult for someone this clumsy and I ended up pouring “a generous amount” in.

 

My eyes started to sting and the pungent vinegar smell wafted into the living room where my friends began to complain about the stench and their watering eyes. I didn’t want to give up on the soup and waste all those vegetables so I carried on cooking. I tried so hard to rescue it. Added more stock, added a little bit of honey to try to take away some of the sharpness but in the end there was no saving that vile concoction.

 

Coal Pakora

 

I was making chicken pakora. Our deep fat fryer is out of commission so I was using an ordinary pan filled with oil. I’d put the pan on the largest hob and cranked up the gas, thinking I’d get the oil nice and hot then turn down the heat a bit. I started kind of farting around and took longer to prepare the chicken and the batter than anticipated. I’d neglected to turn down the heat at any point.

 

So I’d got my first round of pakoras ready to go and dumped them into the oil. There was an extreme reaction between the oil and the pakora; smoke began belching from the pan. I watched, interested. “Hmm, that’s never happened before. I wonder why this is happening.” After a couple of minutes I noted it was now incredibly smoky and that something had gone wrong. I fished out one of the pakoras, saw it was black as a lump of coal and took the pan off the heat.

 

We had to open all the windows to air the place out but it still took some time for the smoke to clear. I have never seen food so blackened. It looked like something given up by the earth from millennia ago.