Three Tips on What To Do When Everything That CAN Go Wrong in Your Kitchen Does

There have been plenty of times when the meal I had been planning and obsessing over for days went from brilliant idea to a disaster in no time at all. All of my dreams of deliciousness shattered in a blink of an eye. After the panic dissipated, I had to deal with the mess that lay before me. How was I going to recover this meal and fast?!? There is a saying in the dance world that goes ”if you're going to make a mistake, make it a big one and keep on dancing”. Another often used phrase is “ it doesn’t matter how you mess up; it matters how you recover”. Or my favorite of which my mother says all the time “there are no mistakes in art!”. This seems all well and fine in the performing arts, but how does this translate into the kitchen when you’ve just scorched your veggies? How do we make a mistake look like it was supposed to be there when flavor is on the line? Simple! The trick is to be open minded and let the creativity flow.

Having the skill to think on your feet while in the kitchen can be a life saver. Instead of looking at all that went wrong, look at all that went right! Here are my top three tips to recovering from a near disaster in the kitchen.

Tip 1: Stop What You Are Doing and Take a Moment to Refocus

Seriously. Turn off the heat, remove the pans from the stove.Take the burning thing out of the oven and take a deep breath. Stopping the momentum of disaster is key to not triggering MORE disaster. You’ll be able to stop the adrenaline pump and take a visual of what actually went down. Once while cooking bacon, the hot grease escaped my pan and hit the heat of my stove and it caught on fire. I immediately turned off the heat and grabbed the lid from the potatoes cooking one burner over to smother the flames. Emergency averted. My heart was racing so fast I had to take a few minutes to recenter myself before finishing cooking breakfast. It was scary, but I knew how to handle the situation appropriately. Had I panicked I could have had a kitchen fire or worse. Had I not recentered myself, I could have very easily made another mistake while finishing up the meal.

Tip 2: Assess the Damage

Imagine you are in the zone making that amazing pasta dish when all of the sudden the boiling water starts to overflow and starchy pasta water goes everywhere. Or better yet, your pomodoro sauce starts to bubble over the pot and all over the stove top. Going back to step one, kill the heat, take a moment to refocus and then take a look at how much damage was actually done. Did you simply bubble over or did you lose half of your sauce to the depths of your stove top? Taking time to evaluate the situation will help you determine what steps need to be taken next. If the sauce simply bubbled over, then clean up what you can, return the pot to a lower heat and continue on with your masterpiece. Emergency averted. What if half of that delicious sauce was lost?!? This is the time when you must make a judgement call as to whether to continue on with half of the ingredients, or change gears completely. If the answer is to change gears completely, then it is time to move on to tip number three.

Tip 3: Put On Your Creative Hat and Reinvent Your Meal.

Some mistakes are easier to recover from than others. For example in the case of missing half of the red sauce for the pasta, you could quickly cook up chicken breasts and top with saute’d zucchini, the remaining sauce and maybe a little bit of grated cheese. Easy fix as long as you have defrosted chicken. You get the idea. But what happens when the disaster is BIG, I mean big like the whole meal has to be ditched? Salvage what you can and get creative. When I was first getting to know my cast iron, there were PLENTY of times that I charred a protein beyond saving entirely. This always seemed to be the case when I was making salmon. At the time I had a gas range (which I miss so much!) and hadn’t quite got a hold on how to manage the flame with the cast iron. The outside would be burnt to a crisp and the inside raw; too raw to eat! So what did I do? I left the salmon cool off enough to separate the charred edges from the raw middle and took that salmon and cooked it up with scrambled eggs. Instead of having pan seared salmon with roasted potatoes, I had salmon scrambled eggs and roasted potatoes. My dinner became breakfast and all was right with the world. A little creativity can go a looooong way in the kitchen, you just have to be open minded enough to experiment!