What is your biggest cooking stuff up?

Bretrick

Bretrick

Well-known Member
Location
Perth Western Australia
I was the host of an upcoming winter dinner meal for 6.
Pumpkin Soup
Beef Stroganoff
Wine Trifle

Made soup and trifle ahead of time but wanted the stroganoff completed an hour before guests arrived.
Big mistake
I had never cooked this dish before and made the mistake of putting too much of the meat into pan at once.
It became a gluggy mess. Total failure
Luckily I had pasta and some bacon.
Knocked up Pasta Carbonara by precooking pasta.
Carbonara is one of the easiest and quickest meals to cook
 

I don't know what a "stuff up" is, but let me take a crack at it. Me and a buddy were throwing a Hawaiian pig roast for the first time at his trailer house in Eastern Washington in the middle of summer. E WA is hot! The new development was in an abandoned cherry orchard. The few trees remaining were ancient, no crown therefore no shade and all would be dead in a couple years.

Welp we fire up everything the evening before, got the 120lb pig prepped, lowered it on top of the cherry wood coals, and closed the pit up. The next day we wake up and the of course we had smothered the fire. Now we need to make a new huge fire, wait for that to turn to coals, and restart cooking the pig this time we a bigger air supply.

Folks start showing up, it was HOT, low 100's F, people began drinking booze, and hours went by. Everyone was pretty nice but the one woman was very hangry and probably drunk. She kept pestering us for hours about the pig. Finally it was time to serve the pig and she "somehow" wound up eating cross sections of the snout complete w nostril holes!!!

We tried the pit one more year and then the following years we cooked it on an open fire using a rotisserie, an axle of some sort, which was turned w an electric motor.
 
againstthegrain said:
I don't know what a "stuff up" is, but let me take a crack at it. Me and a buddy were throwing a Hawaiian pig roast for the first time at his trailer house in Eastern Washington in the middle of summer. E WA is hot! The new development was in an abandoned cherry orchard. The few trees remaining were ancient, no crown therefore no shade and all would be dead in a couple years.

Welp we fire up everything the evening before, got the 120lb pig prepped, lowered it on top of the cherry wood coals, and closed the pit up. The next day we wake up and the of course we had smothered the fire. Now we need to make a new huge fire, wait for that to turn to coals, and restart cooking the pig this time we a bigger air supply.

Folks start showing up, it was HOT, low 100's F, people began drinking booze, and hours went by. Everyone was pretty nice but the one woman was very hangry and probably drunk. She kept pestering us for hours about the pig. Finally it was time to serve the pig and she "somehow" wound up eating cross sections of the snout complete w nostril holes!!!

We tried the pit one more year and then the following years we cooked it on an open fire using a rotisserie, an axle of some sort, which was turned w an electric motor.
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Yep, that is what I would call a "stuff up" :D
 
My biggest is the Thanksgiving Dinner. I wish I enjoyed cooking more, but I don't. However, I can make the basics from scratch: meatloaf, soups, pot roast, roast chicken or turkey and all the typical sides. When you honestly cook from scratch you understand why women were busy all day in the old days, cooking every meal from scratch. It takes a lot of hours.

But now I am with those who make parts ahead of time because last time I cooked all day, including pies which did not come out very well, my feet and back were hurting so much that I was cranky by dinner. Now I have to start 2 or 3 days in advance.
 
How about the invite to a Catfish fry party? In our neck of the woods, we call our fishin' buddy friends when we catch a good one or two and have a fish fry.

I have been to one of those pig roasts, and they didn't get it done enough. I am not sure that is too healthy. Neither is Fried Fish and dumplins with beer either. But....we was young/er. :)

MyX3lDy9SEinkiP36SCUiQ.jpg
 
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Steamed String beans , carrot sticks
Basmati Rice cooked in broth

Roasted Turkey
Mashed potatoes
Brussel sprouts & carrots

BBQ Chicken wings
Air fried potato slices
Coleslaw

Blacked Haddock
Basmati Rice
And Cesar Salad

There are many dishes I enjoy cooking since I enjoy cooking
 
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PeppermintPatty said:
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Steamed String beans , carrot sticks
Basmati Rice cooked in broth

Roasted Turkey
Mashed potatoes
Brussel sprouts & carrots

BBQ Chicken wings
Air fried potato slices

Blacked Haddock
Basmati Rice
And Cesar Salad

There are many dishes I enjoy cooking since I enjoy cooking
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I know what you mean. It doesn't need to be all rowdy to have a very good cookin' up gathering. Just the love of cooking can be enough inspiration to have such an affair. In my life the eldest monk in the monastery learned to cook "Chinese" from working in a M.A.S.H. in S. Korea and having many friends that lived nearby. He visited them often and learned a lot from them. He then studied it and experimented with making various dishes/recipes. He got good enough to make a meal for 10 people throughout the day. He made it all. The cuisine was so beautiful, and the tastes were all so distinct. I appreciate good food, cooked with love as he would say. :)
 
Paco Dennis said:
How about the invite to a Catfish fry party? In our neck of the woods, we call our fishin' buddy friends when we catch a good one or two and have a fish fry.

I have been to one of those pig roasts, and they didn't get it done enough. I am not sure that is too healthy. Neither is Fried Fish and dumplins with beer either. But....we was young/er. :)

MyX3lDy9SEinkiP36SCUiQ.jpg
Click to expand...
Just curious- what's on the grill...?
 
Biggest challenge was making sushi for 250 people for a charity bash. Especially ironic as I don't care for the stuff in general, LOL.

Otherwise, for about 15 yrs I threw classic, sit-down, china-and-crystal, "everything provided", dinner parties. I just had the right group of people around at the time and a job that let me bend my hours quite a bit to make 10-course banquets.

Times change, we moved to a new place, and now I haven't thrown a dinner party in decades. But it was great fun for a while. My friends and family still talk about some of the foods I used to make.

I even made Judith Olney's amazing Chocolate Cabbage. Took 3x the amount of chocolate the recipe said it would! It also took up 3 shelves in the refrigerator before assembly! What a pain, but it was a real show-stopper:

chocolate cabbage.jpg
 
Here's another one. Making dinner for my good friends of Italian descent. Stupid of me to try to make an Italian dish but I make a decent linguini w clams and white wine sauce. No flat leaf parsley on hand so send gf, now wife, for a bunch of parsley. She comes back w cilantro which I had chopped and garnished the linguini before I realized what it was. šŸ˜¬ It would have been perfectly fine w/out it, too.

My friends were very polite and gracious, but damn that was huge mistake.
 
As a dumb little kid, I made my mother a surprise birthday cake. I substituted bacon grease for butter. I lined the cake pan with waxed paper, and accidentally burnt the cake. I thought I fixed it by cutting away the charred, blackened bottom (but the acrid taste would remain). The cake was a fail, the kitchen was a wreck. I got no credit for my hard work.
 
We used to have great dinner parties many years ago. My husband asked me to make Liver and Bacon for the older men, I don't like Liver, but it was a huge hit. The preparation for dinner parties can take up to 2 days. I always made a variety of different foods, Italian, Indian and good old
Bangers and Mash, always a hit with the Aussies.
 
gruntlabor said:
As a dumb little kid, I made my mother a surprise birthday cake. I substituted bacon grease for butter. I lined the cake pan with waxed paper, and accidentally burnt the cake. I thought I fixed it by cutting away the charred, blackened bottom (but the acrid taste would remain). The cake was a fail, the kitchen was a wreck. I got no credit for my hard work.
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No points for initiative and effort seems rather harsh. :(
 
My biggest disaster
Czech Christmas bread
I wanted to make it for my daughter in law, who was Czech.
Got the recipe, but it was in Czech, metric measures and weights rather than volumes.
Translated it from Czech, translated metric into English units, translated weights into volumes
It was supposed to be a braided bread like Challah, but it came out looking like a big dog biscuit.
 
bowmore said:
My biggest disaster
Czech Christmas bread
I wanted to make it for my daughter in law, who was Czech.
Got the recipe, but it was in Czech, metric measures and weights rather than volumes.
Translated it from Czech, translated metric into English units, translated weights into volumes
It was supposed to be a braided bread like Challah, but it came out looking like a big dog biscuit.
Click to expand...
I will assume you never attempted to make that again. :)
 
Bretrick said:
I was the host of an upcoming winter dinner meal for 6.
Pumpkin Soup
Beef Stroganoff
Wine Trifle

Made soup and trifle ahead of time but wanted the stroganoff completed an hour before guests arrived.
Big mistake
I had never cooked this dish before and made the mistake of putting too much of the meat into pan at once.
It became a gluggy mess. Total failure
Luckily I had pasta and some bacon.
Knocked up Pasta Carbonara by precooking pasta.
Carbonara is one of the easiest and quickest meals to cook
Click to expand...
That sounds really good. What did you put in the wine trifle?
 

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