I am so excited to share this app with you! My super-talented friend, Charmian Christie, has just released an app that is going to be so helpful to sooooo many people! When I first saw it, all I could think was: I make so many of the mistakes she is talking about in her app and now I can fix them!!!!
So, what am I talking about: The Kitchen Disasters & Fixes app! An app that discusses major to minor kitchen disasters and tells you how to fix them. Super smart, well-done and definitely a must buy! A more official blurb, “This app offers quick fixes and creative solutions to common cooking problems. With more than 120 entries, solutions include clever cover-ups for cosmetic gaffs and easy-to-follow Rescue Recipes when a little more is needed. It even identifies Lost Causes, so you know when it’s time to give up and start again.”
What: Kitchen Disasters & Fixes is available NOW on iTunes. It can be used on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. An Android version is coming soon.
$$: $2.99
GIVEAWAY:
I am giving away FIVE apps .. one each for five readers. Leave a comment here about your own fav kitchen disaster and how you did or did not fix it!! Will pick a winner on May 8th at 5:00 pm and will email you if you win!!
In the meantime, here is an app preview:
My wife and I are very adventurous when it comes to buying items from the local ethnic markets. Once we bought two different tubs of curry paste. When we got home, we noticed that one didn’t have directions. Since the other one said use the whole tub with a can of coconut milk, we decided the first tub would work that way. It didn’t. I think we ended up adding three more cans of coconut milk and it was still intolerable even to my heat-loving wife. We gave up on saving the dish and focused on saving our tongues. When we returned to the store, we found a tub of the curry that had the label that was missing from the tub we bought. The recommended amount was a tablespoon. Yikes.
I had a similar issue when I lived in England and made chili. In North America chili powder is a blend with cumin and reasonably mild. In Britain, it’s more like cayenne. You can imagine how the 2 tbsp of chili powder went over!
Over-spiced dishes are hard to save. You have to add the super-hot dish to an unspiced one little by little. I learned this the hard way!
A few years ago, I was cooking a big meal for some friends which included baked chicken. I had made the chicken in a Pyrex baking dish and I was carefully taking it out of the oven when the dish exploded! It seems the Pyrex had some flaw that caused it to break. I was fortunate that I was wearing long sleeves, but I wasn’t wearing long pants. I had several pieces of glass embedded in my thigh and dinner was, obviously, ruined.
I still have a few small scars and a slight fear of glass baking dishes.
Oh, no! I’ve had glassware crack, but never explode. I’m so sorry to hear you were hurt!
In this case, I would definitely file dinner under Lost Cause. I hope you ordered take out and had a big glass of wine.
We love to make stuffed jalapenos – stuff them with cheese, chorizo, wrap with bacon – yumm! Sometimes they are way hotter than others – and the last bite is always the hottest. The way I “fix” ones that are too hot? Hand them to my husband – the hotter the better for him!
Smart lady! If your husband isn’t available, you can also dip the hot pepper is a yogurt sauce to tone down the heat. Love your system, though.
Making caramel seems like it would be easy. I however managed to screw up s simple concoction of sugar and water. So, my first batch came out too much like sand, way too granular, but still caramely. Then I made a second batch that turned out more silken, so I mixed the two together and eventually ended up with caramel sauce.
I have learned the simplest things are often the trickiest since there aren’t other factors at play to hide your mistakes. I like your solution!
I make caramel in a pot with a light toned interior so I can judge the process. Once the sugar starts to melt, don’t stir it! That makes it granular. If the caramel on the sides of the pot starts to burn, dip a pastry brush in water and wipe the sides down.
Good luck with your next batch.
One of my worst kitchen disasters was one of procedure. Growing up we used a gas oven and turning it on and setting the temperature required the turning of a single knob. I was in an apartment and for the first time cooked on an electric stove whose oven required the use of TWO knobs – one to turn the oven on and another to set the temperature. I was making Irish Stew that after much initial prep required cooking in the oven for two hours. I’d put the stew in the oven and not too much later greeted my three guests. I served some sort of appetizer and I’d made a pitcher of a drink I’d learned from a friend. The only ingredients were lemonade, beer and bourbon. So far so good – my appetizer was fine and the drink, a hit.
I thought I’d better check the stew as it cooked so set the timer for an hour – even though I “knew” that after one hour, a stew that needed to be in the oven for two hours would be perfectly fine. The timer went off and the instant I opened the oven door I realized that the oven wasn’t even on! I let out a loud groan and the husband of one of the guests asked, “What’s wrong Sigrid?” I responded that I’d done something stupid and that we’d be having a very late supper. Trying to be encouraging, he said something about how he and Jean often didn’t have dinner until after 7. It was already after 7 and we wouldn’t be eating for two more hours. I made another pitcher of our lemonade drink and headed back to the living room. We finished that pitcher and I went back to the kitchen to check on the stew and make a third pitcher. I hadn’t planned on needing three pitchers of my drink and was now quite short on lemonade so the third pitcher had a much stronger alcoholic kick than the first two but they drank it just the same.
Finally the stew was ready and we sat down to dinner. They pronounced the Irish Stew delicious but were so hungry that that they’d have thought stewed shoe leather was wonderful. The most humiliating part of the evening for me was that one of my guests was the chair of the Department of Home Economics at the university where I was a faculty member and the aforementioned Jean was a doctoral student in the same department. Oh and one more thing – this drink was forever after referred to as “Sigrid’s Revenge” by my dinner guests and all who heard the story.
Woah! Now, THAT’s a dinner disaster I don’t have a fix for. “Is your oven turned on?” is a bit like phoning your computer’s tech services and being asked, “Is your computer plugged in?”
Love the story and how your drink got its name! Thanks for sharing.
You’re right, Charmian, there’s no fix for stupid :-). Well I don’t know that I was stupid, just unaware that gas ovens functioned differently than electric ovens. It’s too bad I had to learn that lesson when I had guests over for dinner. But then, that’s when the kitchen disasters seem likeliest to happen – never when it’s just you and your family and it wouldn’t be a big deal. The good news is that I never made that mistake again.
Actually, I know exactly what you’re saying. I have a gas stove and my mom’s oven is electric with the two-dial system. Easy to do if you aren’t given a lesson.
I’m sure you never made that mistake again. Hunger is a powerful motivator!
My family loves corn fritters and we have them frequwntly during fresh corn season.
I used to fry them in about 1/4″ of oil. Well, even fresh corn can pop when heated up in oil, and I bore the scars from the oil splatters up my arm for many years.
I now cook the fritters with just a skim coat of oil in the skillet and they are just as good and the corn doesn’t pop!
Oh, that sounds painful! I make corn fritters, too, and love them. I have always used very little oil, so didn’t know they could pop. I’ll file that one away in my brain! Thanks for sharing your experience. Some lessons are harder learned than others.