FAIL! (photos & stories of recipe mishaps and oopses)

[Huskee]

Post your FAIL photos here. That is, if you're humble enough to admit your mistakes!

[Jon Solberg]

GAME ON! I'm going to fail ASAP! hehehehe. (notice my last weekends chicken never made a post)

[Jerod Broussard]

Yeh, skip the awesome beer can chicken recipe I loaned you.

[Gunderich_1]

Huskee I put something under first PBC cook that should probably go here. Can it be moved or do we just leave well enough alone...?

[Huskee]

Gunderich_1 I can move it if you'd like. Looks like more of a success than a fail though! Let me know if you for sure want me/us to and we can..

[Huskee]

Oh it's easy to not take pics of the mishaps. Hopefully this thread will encourage all of us to be brutally honest! I had a bad rib cook about a month ago. Conveniently I took no pics.

[Elgine]

I might have one come July doing several sets of ribs but most I'm gonna use mmd but one or two I'm gonna modify it with a bit of citrus grind. We will see how it goes and if it goes bad I'll will be on tape lol

[Dewesq55]

I don't have any photos, but a couple of years ago I was making deep fried turkey for Thanksgiving to take to my GF's mother's house for dinner. I got the oil to temp, put the bird in, set the timer and went in the house. What I didn't realize was that the burner was turned up way too high. When I went out 40 minutes later, the turkey was about the color of root beer. Some of the meat deeper in was passably edible, but all in all, it was a pretty epic fail. DEW

[Dewesq55]

Then there was the first time tried to cook a rotisserie chicken on the gasser. I didn't realize you can't have the burner on under the chicken (I had them on low, at least) and when I went out to check in it after about 10 minutes, the entire bird was on fire.

[Huskee]

Oh man I have a good gasser+meat=flame story. Happens to everyone I think.

[Dewesq55]

There are lots more with indoor cooking, but those 2 are the outdoor cooking ones that come to mind.

[Huskee]

My rib cook a month ago was for some good friends who were moving away, and who are fans of my ribs. They requested one last rib night. I decided I'd try to sear them over the flames on the stickburner's firebox. In hindsight I have no good explanation for why I thought that was a good idea. Not to mention it was dark outside. Needless to say the coals were blistering hot and I couldn't see what was going on, and I shouldn't have done that to start with.
They were thick baby backs taking forever and it got to be about 2 hrs past dinner time so I/we were antsy.

Thankfully my friends are fans of well done and slightly charred meat, but they were grossly overdone and the bark was burnt and I was not happy with myself. They said they loved them. I did not.

[Jon Solberg]

I had a way similar experience three weeks ago with my "focus group" and did the 16 hour butts the next week as a peace offering. (they were happy with both as well)

[Stevehtn]

Reminds me of a time a friend of mine showed up at my house with a pack of cut up beef ribs about 5pm, wanting me to cook em for him for dinner. Needless to say, not exactly AmazingRibs......

[Greg0]

when the wife starts in on me I've done some crazy stuff to get her to stop... Burning ribs in the dark is on the more sane things on that list.

I do not know where you are moving but you are going to miss your friends. They are very polite.

[DWCowles]

I too haven't took pics of my screw up cooks but I will start. Not hoping that I will screw up but crap happens when Budlite and Jack Daniels gets together 😳

[JCBBQ]

Lol

[Marauderer]

I really avoid documenting my failures as it is so psychological damaging to my ego.

Most recent failure for me, my wife really likes it, is some strawberry Rhubarb preserves. Really bitter to me.

My most epic failure was just after I got married I was fixing gravy to go with a roast I had cooked and it was absolute paste. I musty have used 4X the amount of flour needed and I will never forget that.

[Dewesq55]

Barry, you are in good company. Add a self-declared "gravy master" Mary I say there are few things more well-suited to fail than a roux gravy. Join the club. And for future reference to anyone else out there who struggles with gravy - 2 rules to follow: 1) equal parts floor and oi/fat and 2) no liquid (other than oil/fat) until all the flour had been incorporated well into the fat.

[chudzikb]

From Friday into Sat pork butt cook. All was going well, dry brined, rubbed, put on smoker. Temp came up to 150, wrapped...and then a hole appeared in my non double wrapped foil and all the fantastic juices became steam. End product was good, not great. I really like great...

[Dewesq55]

Sorry, but "good" rather than "great" doesn't qualify as a FAIL IMHO, though I totally get your frustration with "merely good". My recent short rib cook was the same. It was SO CLOSE to great, yet it wasn't. It was "merely good".

DEW

[BruceB]

Just last night, a double-hooked 8 pound pork butt fell off both hooks about 7 hours into the cook. It was laying on the coals for 5 to 10 minutes before I noticed the drastic drop in temp in the barrel.

[David Parrish]

Osuch. Were you able to recover it at all?

[BruceB]

I did get it off the coals fairly quickly, and saved almost all of it, except for the bark on one side.

[leftwngr]

Chicken = the enemy. Seems like every other cook I try something new and screw it up. My most epic fail happened in Hawaii last year using the resort's gasser. Started as a beer can progressed to pieces ended up in the nuke to finish. Rubber. Dry. Burned. Under cooked. All in one. Waste of a nice organic bird. My ego passed it off as unfamiliar equipment. The reality was alcohol and island carefree mindset... which contributed to more alcohol.

[Papa Bob]

last night grilled a beautiful pork loin wile I mowed the back yard cooking and yard work double bonus on the brownie points from the misses. Dry brined 24 hrs. 6 hrs. uncovered in the ice box 4 hrs. oiled and seasoned pepper, granulated garlic, granulated onion looked perfect smelled awesome grilled indirect to 115 reversed seared 3 min per 1/4 turn took off at 135 put in ice chest wile getting rest of meal ready 147 sliced looked great we sat down with a Mendocino coast pinot, life was good, dry as a popcorn fart will stick to wet brine for lean pork roasts and chicken breasts

[_John_]

This something I know well. I don't always know the best way to do something, but I know a lot of ways that won't work!
This is one of the few I have pics of. This was one of those bagged Tyson chickens, I think the first I did on the PBC. Not sure if I screwed something up (my thermometer was...questionable) or it was the chicken, but it basically sort of dissolved.

Well, maybe later, says all of my pics are corrupted.
Ok here we go. Might be tough to tell, but just below the breast you can see it is bending in half. It tasted ok I guess, but the squishiness of the whole thing just seemed nasty.

[Dewesq55]

That( pix corrupted) happens frequently to me. I own the pic in an image editing program and just make a slight change, like cropping a little off one side and save it. It works every time.

[Guy]

I smoked some salmon yesterday and did everything right. It was the worst fish I have ever eaten. I took it off at the right temp but it tasted undone and terrible (texture). I put it in the oven at 325 and cooked it on both side for about 15 minutes each side. It was a little better but not worth $40.00 in meat. My wife and I found a salmon dip today and saved some of the meat. I honestly think the meat was not fresh by any stretch of the imagination. Next time I will soak it in milk first like Meathead suggests.