My wife has a stuffing recipe that calls for toasted chopped pecans. For about the fourth year in a row now, we’ve left the pecans in the oven too long and burned them, and then had to make a special trip to the store for more pecans.
Also, while I was adding salt and pepper to the cooked carrots today, I opened the wrong side of the pepper container and instead of sprinkling pepper on the carrots, it came pouring out. I got most of it out but the carrots were still pretty peppery.
Speaking of pepper, last year or the year before, when my wife was making the turkey gravy, she thought she had grabbed the pepper but actually wound up putting cinnamon in the gravy.
Anybody else have any Thanksgiving kitchen disasters they’d like to share?
The first year I was married, I got the wild idea that I was going to do up a whole turkey for me and hubby. I didn’t have a regular roasting pan, so I bought an aluminum foil roaster to put my lovely 7 lb turkey in. I had the bird all done up, stuffing and all, and started to pick up the roaster to carry it to the oven.
The pan went “pang!” and the bottom fell out, sending turkey, stuffing and bits of butter all over the kitchen floor. It nearly landed on the cat, who ran for her life as the slimy, slippery turkey went sailing across the floor after her. Thankfully the kitchen floor was clean and there was a store open for hubby to run out to get me a regular roasting pan!
I borrowed my mother-in-law’s electric roaster oven to cook my ham, since my ovens were otherwise occupied. And I thought I turned it on, really. But the dial was 180 degrees from where I wanted it, which was off. Took me a couple of hours to notice that.
So the ham finished way after dinner, but we had more than enough turkey anyway. It was all good, and now we have lots of ham for leftover sandwiches.
Well, this year (about five hours ago, in fact) I did a real :smack::smack:. The turkey was done, the potatoes were about done and it was gravy makin’ time. I like to make gravy. I’m good at making gravy. I’m inordinately proud of my gravy.
So I’ve separated the fat from the drippings and poured the drippings off into a bowl to add back in later. I pour in about a half-cup of fat and add a half-cup of flour and start making a roux. It turns a nice brown and I dump in a couple of cups of stock to get things rolling. Ah, shit, forgot to add the giblets while I was rouxing. Oh well, dump them in anyway, cuz you can’t go backwards. No real harm done.
Then I reach over for what I think is the poured-off drippings and instead dump in about another half-cup of fat without realizing it. So after a few minutes of getting the consistency right, I taste the gravy and think: why does this have a fatty mouth feel? About that time, the Ms says: “What’s this brown stuff in this bowl: should I throw it out?” :smack::smack::smack:
This year only? Because there’s the year my mom broiled the turkey. (It just doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving unless someone mentions the year my mom broiled the turkey, and since I was with friends yesterday, it was up to me, and I forgot.)
The first year I was finally asked to do something more ambitious than bring beverages for the huge family Thanksgiving, I was so thrilled and excited. What could be more traditional than homemade pumpkin pies? Big family, so I decided to make four of them. Found a good recipe, ran it by Grandma for her approval, spent a week before practicing making pie crusts even.
So, the morning of, I get up nice and early and start making my pies. Did you know pie pans come in either an 8-inch or a 9-inch size? And that recipes do, as well?
I had four lovely anemic-looking pies, with 8 inches of filling in each of my 9 inch pans. Skinny and pathetic looking. I was panicked, but it was too late to fix it, obviously. So I packed them up and off to Grandma’s I went, they tasted just fine once you filled in the empty crust area at the top with whipped cream anyway.
Not the worse disaster ever, especially for a first try, but I never lived that down until Grandma died, ten years later.
This is why my wife makes galettes instead of pies: they’re almost impossible to screw up; in fact, the more “rustic” they look, the better. And almond paste would make a dog turd taste good.
I was making my mom’s “company sweet potatoes” recipe. It’s basically mashed sweet potatoes topped with an awesome brown sugar, coconut, pecan topping. The filling and the topping each required 1/3 cup melted butter, so I had prepped both of them. I making the filling (sweet potato, milk, vanilla and butter), added the butter…and added butter again. They tasted okay, thank goodness (and I had plenty of butter to melt some more for the topping).
I was brining the turkey on the enclosed back porch because it’s fridge temperature out there. Well, it is when you leave it closed rather than going in and out, and when you don’t use warm water to dissolve the salt for the brine. :smack: 10:30 pm on Wednesday night, I hop in the car (wearing flannel pajama bottoms rather than proper pants) and drive to the gas station in town, hoping they’re open so I can buy bags of ice. Fortunately, they were open.
The ice is still out there in a tub, still quite intact.
Just yesterday my brother in law was about to fry the turkey in the fryer until he noticed a really bad burning smell. The oil had gone bad and was beginning to burn.
Fortunately, there was no fire. Unfortunately, there was no way to cook the turkey in time. Apparently, he ran to the store and got some pre-cooked turkey that just need to be warmed up. Tasted OK to me.
I had a pan of cranberries for sauce I had put in the oven to roast and then left on the stove. When it came to pour the cranberries I forgot the handle was hot when I grabbed it and dropped the pan on the ground. The entire apartment looked like a murder scene. There were dollops of cranberry on the wall 6 feet up a good 6 feet from the stove.
Wednesday night around midnight, my wife went to make pie crusts, only to find the bags of flour and sugar filled with bugs. So she and her cousin scrubbed out the cupboard while I ran to Hy-Vee to get some fresh flour and sugar and some gallon-sized freezer bags to put them in. I don’t think any bugs ended up in the food, thankfully.
There’s always one, who peers at the turkey with microscopic vision and detects a hint of pink in the white meat, or a hint of red near the bone, and throws a big hissyfit because ‘that turkey isn’t cooked through!’
My beautiful pan of dressing was done and sitting on the stove cooling in my glass baking dish before heading to the in-laws for dinner. My cat jumped on the stove and somehow turned on the burner under the pan (he’s NEVER jumped on the stove before). I was upstairs when the explosion happened. Did you know that Pyrex explodes into THOUSANDS of small pieces just like a windshield when it breaks?