There’s your problem

[pknj]

File this under never too old to learn - or make mistakes!

Doing some ribs on Xmass eve for family and friends. Running around for last minute things I forgot to do, so I figured I would hit the easy button and use the pit viper/FireBoard combo on my WSCG. Get the fire started, ribs on, off we go, done it a hundred times.

Our at the liquor store - I mean grocery store in case anyone asks and yes I have to try that new local beer- and I notice the temp is just falling. So I bump the temp up on the app, see the fan spin up, all is well in the world. Get home - cold grill. Decide to just go old school, pull the fan off, open the grates just so, ribs were great if late, but very confused as to why the easy button doesn’t work? Must be something in the tech, can’t be me, I’m an expert!

Today I am smoking a pork butt, so getting everything set up and it hits me: I’m an idiot. I had somehow moved the baffle on the fan to fully closed. She was chugging along like mad, just blowing to nowhere.

What are the errors you all have done, even after all the experience you have?

[DaveD]

Yup, that's your problem right there! At least you figured out the root cause! My bane is any intermittent problem that I can't reproduce reliably enough to troubleshoot, whether that's in cooking or anything else... Just fail consistently damn you, so I can figure it out!

My biggest brain fart thus far is when I did a prime rib last fall via an all day sous vide que, and it was absolutely perfect, I mean dig this:



Vac sealed up and froze the uncut piece for leftovers, as I always do. Some weeks later when we decided to have the other half, I continued my SOP, reheating the vac sealed portion via sous vide as well. Without thinking, I set the reheat temp to a food-safe serving temp of 150F/65C, and didn't realize what I'd done until I pulled the bag out of the meat jacuzzi and saw a grey hunk of meat... my beautiful, perfect medium-rare (131F/55C) cooked way past well done. Still tasted good but it was tragic!

[smokenoob]

“An intermittent problem that I can reproduce reliably” quote of the day! 😂

[Smoker_Boy]

Intermittents are why technicians drink.

[pknj]

I think I might just be the “intermittent problem”…

[RonB]

I have never had a problem, (), but I hear that if ya forget to put yeast in dough it just doesn't rise.

[Steve B]

I mixed up the power and blower cables once. ONCE….
🤦🏼

[Jim White]

A baffling problem, indeed.

There was this one time for me that was the opposite. The fan dialed itself down but the grate temp was still rising fairly rapidly. After a half hour or so, I finally went out to investigate and some fool had left the door to the fire basket open...

[pknj]

I hope someone gave that fool a good talking to!

[surfdog]

Oh, there would’ve been words! LOL

[Mosca]

I don’t have enough time and space to list them all.

The one that I wonder the most about, though, is the time I decided that it would be fine to put a hot grate on top of a pile of plastic bags, to insulate it from the wood table. I’m still not sure why I thought that would be okay. And this was well into my years of experience.

[pknj]

Ha! I mean, I once almost asked my wife to hold the grate so I could put more coals on the fire. As she looked at me and waved her barehands in my face…still married though!

[Smoker_Boy]

I worked on a power amplifier for 45 minutes before realizing the main fuse was blown...

[Bkhuna]

Perfect opportunity to convinced the significant other that you need a new amp.

[J-Melt]

Whenever I build stuff, I almost always skip one step and have to backtrack to get it right. I was helping my daughter at a Home Depot kids workshop building a gingerbread house and I accidentally had her install a part backwards. We had to take it apart to mix my error.

[HawkerXP]

I do this almost every day at work. Just last week I forgot to install a couple of wing attach bolts.

just kidding.....

[Porkies]

YIKES! :P

[pknj]

Just sold my airline stocks….😀

[J-Melt]

Now I remember why I haven’t flown in years…

[hoovarmin]

I cooked my first brisket in a Weber Kettle that I moved into a landscaped area filled with pine bark mulch. Didn't realize that some lit coals fell out of the chimney into the pine bark. Trust me, pine bark mulch is not the smoke you want on a brisket.

[Porkies]

I have a bad habit, when I'm working in the kitchen on a few things at a time, of wanting to grab oven and toaster oven racks with my bare hands. It's only because I set the mitts down out of the way and just don't pick them back up. I've only actually touched or grabbed a rack a few times in my life, as I mostly catch myself and just tell myself how stupid myself acts.

Luckily, the nerves in my fingers/hands are sensitive and I still have quick reflexes. Have never had a bad burn that cold water wouldn't take care of.... Still, I want to punch myself in the face when it happens.

[Mosca]

I once grabbed the exhaust pipe of my BSA, hard, right where it came out of the engine, while the bike was running. Ran inside and there was a pitcher full of iced tea, with ice. Jammed my hand down in there. My entire palm and finger pads were 2nd and 3rd degree, but no scars.

[Porkies]

Mosca OUCH

[Bob K]

One of my favorite things to do is put a skillet in the oven or grill to roast or reverse sear, then some time later go back and forget that the handle is not immune from thermodynamics, and proceed to just barehand the handle. You'd think it's the kind of thing you only do once. Turns out that's not true either...

[surfdog]

Yeah, should be self critiquing…but it’s not.

[RonB]

Been there - done that...

[PGH_RAM]

When I was on my college junior year abroad in Ireland I wanted to impress a blonde, rosy-cheeked Scottish lass named Kate. So, I invited her and some mutual friends to my dorm for a dinner of lamb shanks braised in beer--something I had made half a dozen times back home. This was in the mid-1990s before lamb shanks got trendy and expensive, In fact, the shanks only cost me the equivalent of $1.50 apiece but I had to order them from the butcher a few days ahead of time because it just wasn't something they even carried. I prepared the food, put everything in the roasting pan, into the oven, and set my alarm. The kitchen smelled fabulous. My dorm mates were drooling. After the salad course I made a big show of taking the aluminum foil off the pan with a flourish and releasing a big puff of steam. I plated the shanks and vegetables. I served it up. I sat back down at the table to find that the shanks were ROCK HARD. The butcher hadn't removed the membranes, and I hadn't bothered to check. The membranes had shrunk and squeezed the meat into a gnarly, grey, dried out mess. I was completely crestfallen. The one silver lining was that the braising liquid had turned into a decent broth, so I pivoted and got some bowls and we had a course of lovely lamb consommé with potatoes and carrots.

Thankfully, Kate was understanding. There were lots more dinners, and she even gave me my first...

...haggis.

[surfdog]

Doh! That’ll do it. LOL

Of course I would NEVER do something like that! No really. Trust me. Wanna buy a bridge?

[KimO]

We don't eat fish much at our house and I was attempting to cook fish en papillote. I didn't even know what that was until I read about it, but it looked like fun. So, I put my vegetables and fish fillets on the parchment paper, wrapped them up and placed on the grill. When I opened the grill there they were; the paper was most gone and with a little fire burning. I had (and I still can't believe this) left the plate setter off of my egg and essentially put a direct fire under paper. Felt like a dweeb! I try to double-check for the plate setter when indirect grilling now. Doesn't mean it won't happen again... probably not with en papillote, though!