'Tipped over a 5 gallon jug of organic maple syrup': 25+ Chefs share their most expensive kitchen catastrophes

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jul 7, 2023 5:00 PM EDT

Some mistakes are more costly than others, as these chefs know all too well. Professionals from the back of house shared their priciest kitchen mistakes, and some of them are surprisingly costly.

I can actually add my own story here — I'm glad it's finally come in handy after years of being one of my most embarrassing moments ever. I was working a shift at a fast food restaurant and customers were being so mean to me. It was the Sunday morning bingo crowd, and they were nasty and impatient to me, the only person working the front counter.

One of them ordered coffee, and I burnt my hand on the pot. I dropped the full coffee pot and it instantly shattered on the floor. (This was a big deal because we had literally just gotten brand new pots and were warned not to break them; so I feared for my job once the glass hit the floor.) I looked up at the customers and started crying. Then, I swung around the corner and ran to hide in the back room. 

But I heard my manager calling my name after a few minutes. It turns out, when I turned the corner, I hit the "on" button on the milkshake machine, causing chocolate milkshake to pour all over the floor for a minute or two, with no one there to turn the machine off. So now the floor was covered in a massive puddle of hot coffee, shards of glass, and several gallons of milkshake. Great! It was a terrible mix of embarrassing and costly, and it took quite a while to clean up.

That was probably my most expensive mistake, but since I wasn't a chef like these folks below, it's still way cheaper than their mess-ups. U/Coastal_wolf asked the r/KitchenConfidential community about the most expensive mistake they ever made in the kitchen, and people responded with all kinds of goofs, from leaving meat out to throwing away expensive ingredients. 

Next up, check out these people who had crazy secret confessions that they could only spill anonymously. 

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  • 01
    Facial expression - tnseltim I left 2 cases of lobster tails in my trunk. Before a 3 day weekend in which I didn't move my car. arkly Totally wrecked a kitchen aid the first time I tried to make marshmallow on my own. There were plumes of smoke coming out of the intenals CET
    via Trường Trung Cấp Kinh Tế Du Lịch Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh CET on Unsplash
  • 02
    Font - What's the most expensive mistake you've ever made? I'm only a pizza prep cook, and the worst I've done is put whole wheat flour in a batch of dough instead of regular flour.
    via u/Coastal_wolf
  • 03
    Font - blippitybloops Made a $3000 catering order a week ahead because I fed up the calendar.
    via u/blippitybloops
  • 04
    Font - bourbonbrothersbbq. It's the weekend of my daughter's birthday and my work freezer dies. At the time I was running a bbq pop-up and I had over 100 pounds of meat in there I had to use immediately. - I put a call out on the socials and get it all sold. Great. Now all I gotta do is smoke it. No big. I've got a day to spare before we head out of town. I'll smoke it, vac seal it, and store it in a fridge to be delivered when I get back on Sunday.
    via u/bourbonbrothersbbq
  • 05
    Font - I pull a 23-hour shift smoking and sealing the meat, cause no smoke session is ever the same, and I finish with an hour to spare before my family has to leave for the airport. While we're gone I get this sickening feeling that something is wrong with the fridge. I ignore it and tell myself I'm being paranoid. Nope.
    via u/bourbonbrothersbbq
  • 06
    Font - I get back and check the meats and the fridge had kicked the can too while we were gone. Over 100 lbs of meat was probing at 67*. The fridge smelled horrible with all the pork and beef trimmings I was gonna use for sausage. I dumped it all in the trash. I lost over $1,500 in sales. I was crushed. This was over a year ago and it still makes me sick thinking about it.
    via u/bourbonbrothersbbq
  • 07
    Font - kittenshart85 tipped over like a 5 gallon jug of organic maple syrup behind the shelf it had been balanced on the back of. it wedged upside down and by the time i got the shelf out of the way it had all drained out. fortunately this was at a recently opened and already struggling boutique hotel with a revolving door of head chefs, AND it happened in a large camera blindspot. i squeegeed, sopped, and mopped up like $700-800 of syrup and nobody ever said a thing. worked there for another 3
    via u/kittenshart85
  • 08
    Font - Gelatotim I left a kilo of black truffles that I q had poached to cool on a back bench and then got slammed on the line. My pot washer in an effort to help keep the area clean ran them down the disposal think they we burned potatoes. My fault. Got my a kicked for it. By myself. I was the chef and I took the hit.
    via u/Gelatotim
  • 09
    Font - GatoAmarillo Sous Chef Not me, but a coworker, cooked a whole strip loin instead of ribeye for prime rib. Twice. Both times happened several weeks apart.
    via u/GatoAmarillo
  • 10
    Font - joostadood526 Wasn't me, but the sous chef at a former job threw out a S blue fin tuna... Said it was slimy or some s but had just come in that day and was pristine. Executive Chef was fired over it and he literally knocked dude out right as he was coming out of the culinary directors office. It was wild. ton of
    via u/joostadood526
  • 11
    Font - khidmike. I broke a $650 blender. I needed a plunger on it, but ours had been long lost, so I threaded a small (2oz) ladle through the opening and used that to push things down towards the blades. The first five or six times I had done this all went well. The last time I dropped the ladle down just a hair too far, it hit the blade, slammed into the inside wall of the blender, and the whole thing exploded. I had a face full of coconut curry and a chef coat full of plastic shards. Somehow t
    via u/khidmike
  • 12
    Font - AbeSimpsonisJoe Biden Had just started in a new kitchen. Was prepping for the lunch rush (High volume university campus kitchen). Grabbed a can of oven cleaner instead Comilla oil spray, both Sysco branded looked very similar. Sprayed an entire case of salmon steaks with oven cleaner instead of canola oil. Probably around $300 cad. Luckily the oven cleaner was scented so I actually noticed. The chef tried to get me to save them but I refused. Somehow wasn't fired and replaced that said ch
    via u/AbeSimpsonisJoeBiden
  • 13
    Font - I also left like 2k worth of short ribs in their braising liquid over night. Got too tender. We still sold them but if we were a more expensive restaurant we couldn't of gotten away with that.
    via u/AbeSimpsonisJoeBiden
  • 14
    Font - casanovathebold Monetarily, left some fish to defrost in cold running water, then promptly forgot. Got chewed out by my sous and my head chef, then pulled more from the freezer. In other ways, it's a toss up between becoming an alcoholic smoker, or head chef myself. They kinda play into each other though.
    via u/casanovathebold
  • 15
    Font - error785 Most expensive "mistake" I ever made was tripling my ground beef order for a soft open thinking (and confirming with owner) that it would be more than enough to carry us thru a weekend. Sold out Saturday. Started getting my a chewed for not ordering more even though I had literally nowhere else to store it even if I had. I tripled revenue for 16 business hours and we had our singular highest sales day in company history. Started applying for jobs the next day.
    via u/error785
  • 16
    Font - LIVINGSTONand PARSONS. Ordered a pallet of 50# bags of carrots when I meant to order 1. We usually went thru about 1 bag a week, pallet had who the f knows how many.
    via u/LIVINGSTONandPARSONS
  • 17
    Font - PeachesOntheLeft. Food Service I dropped a whole hotel pan with a sheet of tiramisu we sell for 8 dollars a slice, which in itself isn't too bad but it was for a catering order the next day and it was during service.
    via u/PeachesOntheLeft
  • 18
    Font - chives898 Not me but a coworker, used a measured cambro to mix pulled pork seasoning and used the quarts measurement on the side as cups when adding salt. They then immediately proceeded to make 300 pounds of pulled pork with it ruining the entire batch had to throw it all out.
    via u/chives898
  • 19
    Font - Comprehensive_Fox_77. I dropped a 22 qt Cambro of ranch dressing in the walk-in. I leaned against the door and considered bolting out the back and never coming back.
    via u/Comprehensive_Fox_77
  • 20
    Font - tnseltim I left 2 cases of lobster tails in my trunk. Before a 3 day weekend in which I didn't move my car.
    via u/tnseltim
  • 21
    Font - Totally wrecked a kitchen aid the first time I tried to make marshmallow on my own. There were plumes of smoke coming out of the intenals
    via r/KitchenConfidential
  • 22
    Font - Whole-Concentrate916. At my first job I put a 6 thousand dollar motor in the trash compactor. I remember seeing it sitting next to it and being all irritated that they didn't just do it themselves lol
    via u/Whole-Concentrate916
  • 23
    Font - Dry-Refrigerator-363. I've had a number of expensive bundt cakes stick to pans but fortunately they're salvageable for either customer samples or mixing in to ice cream that is later sold in store front. I did overbake 15 loaves of banana bread one time. They weren't burnt but too dark for store front. We took some home & donated the rest to local organizations who provide food for the needy. I hate waste.
    via u/Dry-Refrigerator-363
  • 24
    Font - IAmEggnogstic Somebody from corporate used our kitchen for a retirement party, moved some boxes in the freezer to fit in an ice cream cake, and one of the boxes was left to prop the freezer door open over a long holiday weekend. I came back to a freezer filled with 55 degree food on Tuesday. $1500 of food went in the garbo. Culprit still unknown.
    via u/IAmEggnogstic
  • 25
    Font - Greedy_Moonlight. Ruined 200 creme brûlées for a wedding the next day and had to make them again :(
    via u/Greedy_Moonlight
  • 26
    Font - BlaBlamo While making salad dressing there was an ingredient that needed 3 qts, directly below on the recipe was an ingredient that needed 3 cups... suffice to say the dressing was NOT supposed to have 3 quarts of Dijon.
    via u/BlaBlamo
  • 27
    Gesture - nycinoc Working in front, spilled a glass of red wine on a NY Times food critic's white linen trousers
    via u/nycinoc
  • 28
    Font - Melodic Survey_4712. Not very bad, but my first week at my current job I knocked one of those huge containers of parchment sheets over and like half of them went flying onto the ground. My boss was really chill about it so I didn't feel too bad until I found out they are over $100 for a 1000 sheet package
    via u/Melodic Survey_4712
  • 29
    Font - cruelsister_ Took over a mix for my manager midway through. 4 full sheet pans of brownies in the oven when he comes up to tell me I forgot to add the butter, which I thought he had already. 16 pounds of Valrhona chocolate in the garbage.
    via u/cruelsister_

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