Stiletto One

You might've scratched the surface, somewhere along the line.

ImGod

When I lived in Kansas City, there was a story on the news about a family having a Fourth of July party at their house.

From what I remember, the party was getting loud and the police stopped by to check it out. Fireworks are not legal in the city so the group of drunk guys hid them in the stove. The next day, someone turned on the oven to cook and blew up the kitchen.

Nobody was hurt, but it knocked part of the outside kitchen wall off the foundation and did thousands of dollars in damage to the kitchen. I don't know if that kind of thing is covered by homeowner's insurance.

Babylon Sister

Once, while making a pot of chili, I must have spent 1/2 hour or better trying to get the seasoning adjusted. No matter how much chili powder I put in, I couldn't make it taste right. Then, my firend came in the kitchen and asked me why I was adding cinnamon to the chili.

It was so bad the cat wouldn't eat it.

Ab_Normal

Mr. Ab once made cajun blackened trout, without cajun seasoning... it was his first attempt at pan-frying fresh fish, and he way overheated the pan. He actually got it to stick to Silverstone. I was proud of him.

We shared a duplex with a friend - he owned it, we rented one half from him. He was a professional cook, and loved doing Thanksgiving, so he'd give a huge party (two turkeys, a ham, all the fixings... mmmm). Now, his mom had loaned him a roasting pan, but he'd stored it on top of the fridge and couldn't find it when the time came, so he got one of those cheesy little tin-foil roasting pans from the grocery store, and proceeds to high-temperature cook a 20+ pound turkey in it... in our oven. (His was already full.) Black smoke was soon rolling out of the kitchen. On the plus side, he bought a new stove for our half of the duplex afterward.

I once made waffles for Mr Ab while we were dating, but I grabbed the baking soda instead of the baking powder. Ick! We got married anyway, but amazingly enough he does most of the baking.

DMB

Some years ago, my standard breakfast was an apple, cut up and microwaved, eaten cold and mixed with yoghourt. Since I needed the apple to be cold, I usually put it in the microwave just before going to bed.

So there I was, extremely tired at about midnight, just about to set the microwave controls, when my then-teenage son came up. The problem with this son is that he likes discussing difficult ideas (about, for instance, science, programming or philosophy) late at night. It's when his brain wakes up.

So I was in a zombie state trying to cope with whatever brilliant idea he wanted to discuss and setting the microwave without engaging my brain. For some unknown reason, I set it for double the usual (optimum) time.

I then sat down with son to go on discussing his idea. We smelt burning and tracked it to the kitchen. The apple had first cooked, then dried out and finally caught fire. The whole microwave was on fire and the magnetron was finished. I had to buy a new microwave. I can't , of course, remember what important topic we were discussing.

soluble_fish

a couple years ago, i would eat some of that microwavable cup of soup stuff for lunch at work. you know, the ramen noodles in the styrofoam cups that you add water to...

well, one day i forgot to put in the water... the microwave was in a different room than my office, and i had gone back to my desk to play some freecell while waiting for the thing to finish cooking.

first, there was one of the most horrid smells. and then some smoke. yep, the noodles and cup had caught fire. my building stunk for the next two days.

for the next two weeks, i had to be escorted every time i went near the microwave...

sf

capsaicin67

Be careful how you use any of the space-age glass cookware that sounds so versatile.

I used some [I don't remember the brand!] on the stovetop [which I think after the fact it was not designed for?] and transferred the dish full of boiling liquid to a cool surface----KA-BOOM! Shards and slivers of glass went hurtling through space and time, briefly rending the space-time fabric [ok, that last part is a lie] creating an instant obstacle course/deathtrap on the floor of the kitchen that I had to traverse in my socks! Once I was extracted from ground zero, I had to clean my way back to the center very carefully.

Amazingly I did not get any shards in eyes or flesh, and though traumatized, I can cook a number of things quite decently at this time.

BioBeing

My most recent cock-up...

For some reason, our pizza stone got stored outside for a while (our kitchen isn't that big). So a couple of weeks ago, I give in to my 4 year olds demands to make pizza from scratch. We made the dough, and while it was rising, I decided to clean the pizza stone. Put it in the oven and put the oven on the clean cycle. My wife walked in about an hour later, just as we were realizing that the self cleaning oven cycle generates a LOT of smoke. We got to eat pizza that night --- at a restaurant!

Carlos

A few years ago I had something cooking in the frying pan and left to answer the phone. I was not paying attention and was startled when the fire alarm went off. Dropped the phone, ran over to the stove and found the oil and food had caught on fire. I grabbed the frying pan and attempted to throw its contents into the (empty) sink, but I was so agitated that I overshot and sent them straight at the wall. Woops, wall seems to be on fire. Terrified, I dropped the frying pan to do something about the fire; luckily it only lasted a few seconds and took care of itself. Meanwhile, my apartment is full of smoke, the fire alarm is still blaring, the person I was on the phone with is wondering what happened and the linoleum floor on my kitchen melted where the frying pan had landed. The frying pan was deformed and the wall was no longer the pure white it had been - there were now blotches of grey. That event put me off stovetop cooking for a long time.

Years earlier... It's around midnight, I head down and get a chocolate bar out of the fridge. It's one of those that you break into little squares and consume a few at a time. It was too hard so I decided to put it in the microwave for a few seconds. I face away from the microwave and after two or three seconds I see a bright flash illuminate the room. Little did I realize that in between the outer packaging and the inner paper was a middle layer of aluminum foil. Yes, another fire.

Even earlier, but this time it wasn't a fire. My mother, sister and I are working on dinner and mom had sis working on pumpkin pies. The recipe was in spanish and we were speaking in english (or the other way around) and, well, you might guess where this is going... In recipes, "C" stands for "cup" in english and "cucharita" (teaspoon) in spanish; "T" stands for "teaspoon" in english and "taza" (cup) in spanish. We ended up with two pumpkin pies that had a teaspoon of sugar and a cup of salt each. My sister, maybe 9 years old at the time, was bawling... Mom had promised we would eat them no matter what but instead both pies went to the trash.

Carlos

Oh, and then there's the time my mother was making pancakes and realized much too late we were out of baking powder. She substituted baking soda and some other ingredient (I forget which) and the resulting batter seemed fine. The pancakes themselves did not taste right, though... and interestingly enough they turned green when doused with blueberry syrup.