'My teacher asked me to order 60 cans of peas… I typed 6000': 25+ Chefs share the biggest, funniest mistakes they ever made while cooking for customers

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  • 01
    Product - What is the biggest/funniest mistake you made in the kitchen? 'Friend of mine spent an hour or so grating carrots for a carrot cake. Prepped it all, baked it. Opens the fridge door, 4 pounds of grated carrot staring at him. Thus the no-carrot carrot cake was born.'
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    Font - What is the biggest/funniest mistake you made in the kitchen? I was an apprentice at a 5 Star hotel. I was supposed to make potato-salad for the buffet. Therefore i needed some stock, they told me only that the stock was in the fridge. There was an unwritten pot with stock so i taked that and made my salad. Turns out that was some pheasant consommé that they where boiling down since 3 days, and they had to give out instant stock instead that day. They never forgave me.
  • 03
    Font - teophagy The most insane kitchen experience I've ever witnessed was, at my first job in a small kitchen, a grill cook asked a line cook who just came back from their cigarette break for their lighter. Line cook tosses lighter down the line, expo guy stands up, lighter bounces off them and straight into the fryer, no baskets.
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    Font - Everyone sees this, looks at each other and starts to run away for fear of an explosion. I, and everyone on the garde manger/pastry, see the grill cook immediately dunk their hand into a nearby ice bath for 3 seconds, and straight into the fryer and fishes out the lighter. Everyone that saw was flabbergasted, the owner who happened to witness this sat down for a moment then got up and gave everyone a shot of whiskey. And we never stopped talking about it.
  • 05
    Font - Gullible_Macaron_949. Friend of mine spent an hour or so grating carrots for a carrot cake. Prepped it all, baked it. Opens the fridge door, 41 of grated carrot staring at him. Thus the no- carrot carrot cake was born
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    Font - spdonlon33 Oh I got a bunch but the first that jumps to mind...Bout 5 years back I was running the kitchen of this Italian mom and pop restaurant and one Friday night i accidentally had sugar instead of salt on the line. Every pasta dish I sauteed, protein I cooked, also the fry/salad guy also used my "salt." Not one complaint the whole night until as I'm realizing "hey this salt feels funny" dish guy comes up and said idk what you did to these fries but they are bangin! Still eats his fr
  • 07
    Font - pegasuspaladin Wasn't me but I worked somewhere that had a daily family meal made by a different line cook each day. There was one guy that always tried to impress chef by making these obscure dishes. Problem was he would get some ahead of himself that he would mess up dumb stuff like one time he put he put 10x too much olive in a puntanesca...inedible. worse than that was when he mistook powder saffron for turmeric. Used 1.5x the WEEKLY staff meal budget in one ingredient. We did not eat
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    Font - Lethal_Bassist Worked for a casino in OK - just made morning shift finally (needed the schedule, waited to gain a spot) Setup the line - turned all the grills on... Then the broiler. I don't remember the model but it was one with a grill wide/long drip tray it the bottom - I turned on the gas too early. Too da early. Clicked the lighter. Nothing. Clicked again nothing. Opened the drip pan - bent down a little to get the angle (6'2) - clicked and said good bye to an eyebrow and the front p
  • 09
    Font - The fire ball was large enough for the camera, at the OTHER end of the line, halfway around the corner to catch a view. It was just me down there - I got a call from the guy at security (former line cook turned security - I didn't know him yet) - I answered professionally, all he said was: "do I need to send medical?" "No, sir" "Ok, good job, dumba "ו I had to wait for a prep guy to slam into a server without looking and wreck a 5 tops meal to live that one down. Freaking consumed my head
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    Font - dronegeeks1 Didn't spike the horse chestnuts before putting them in the oven many years ago at Xmas time Pulled the tray out of the oven and it set off a chain reaction of them popping just stood there like a lemon while they all exploded it was up the walls on the ceiling, covered my face! Never made the mistake again haha
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    Font - winedruid One time i had to close and i was told to turn off the huge kettle we used for making consomé, or jus. I cleaned everything and went home enjoying the night because i was off the next day. Only to wake up hungover and a picture of the kettle with a thick crust of burned caramel. Guess who forgot to turn of the jus which took like 3 days. I earned a life time anxiety of forgetting to turn off stoved or anything. Maybe it was worth in the end, but eventualy not lel
  • 12
    Font - BumblebeeSubject6423. One of my co-workers sent out a beef burger without the beef patty. The customer didn't want the patty or another burger or anything else after that. She paid in full and complimented the veggie burger (just to mess with us maybe). It was hilarious
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    Font - External-Fig9754 Went to the fridge to fill my pot with gravey for the line. Was about 6L of gravey in a large sauce pot. Half way from the fridge to the line I thought "my arms hurt" so I relaxed them, swinging the pot to my side. I had a brief moment of relaxation because my arms were at rest until I realized that I just threw an entire pot of gravey to the floor......... Yea I was burnt out
  • 14
    Font - CO Pro_Taco_Peddler In my first year one morning I made carnitas with beef brisket instead of pork shoulder. Nobody realised until before the dinner shift the next day. It was on the prep board, daily morning butcher delivery before my shift only delivered 'pre-chunked' Beef. I didn't even think, I just threw the meat into the lard to confetti. It did take double the time to cook, should've been a red flag. Luckily, Owners rung up all the bookings of the night before and nobody was Hindu.
  • 15
    Font - [deleted] Had white pepper and mustard sitting next to each other when I was mise en placing some cheddar soup and evidently I switched them up while measuring and didn't notice until I tasted it a little later and almost died. Nearly 5 gallons of stock and such wasted. Chef was a little upset. Never let me forget it either... Occasionally asked me what a label read while staring motherfu erly for a long time afterwards
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    Font - Sinder77 15+ Years I baked the clear plastic wrapper on the cream cheese into the cheesecake. I still don't know how.
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    Font - Sharcbait I filled the chicken stock up with fresh squeezed lemonade one time. Funniest mistake I ever saw was someone being in a rush and thinking they were grabbing batter out of the walk in. B ing that the consistency was all wrong, adding a flour to thicken it up and making onion rings with it. The reason the consistency was all wrong was because it was icing.
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    Font - PaladinLab I uh... Set our dumpster on fire. I was the new guy in the kitchen and they had me clean out the wood chips in the smoker, but I usually did it when it was cold. I feel like you can figure out the rest.
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    Font - yeahbouy91 It's somewhere between the time I put my face over the giant pot of blueberry compote and stirred it cause the layer on top to rupture and explode everywhere.. including my face right before Friday service and I couldn't even read the tickets because my eye lid was swollen shut with a sugar burn. Or it was the time I sent out some housemade donuts as an apprentice
  • 20
    Font - and made my own "cinnamon sugar" because I'd misplaced my original bowl.. well it was salt. I remember walking back to the pastry section and looking at the "sugar" and it clicked so I ran out into the dining room, grabbed the plate off the waiter (as they were at the table) and ran back with it into the kitchen. I'll never forget my head chef and exec chefs faces.. complete and utter disgust.
  • 21
    Font - SpicyL3mons I mistook a pound sign for a hashtag... I was super new to baking and so confused. Literally asked my chef "how do I scale out hashtag flour". The embarrassment; that kitchen tore me a new one for such a question.
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    Font - N2KGoat When I first started at a new restaurant, I saw the sous chef cutting up watermelon and I awkwardly tried to small talk by saying, "oh nice I love pineapple"
  • 23
    Font - backcountryJ Put a young guest's ice cream cake in the cooler because I only heard "cake". I learned I made this mistake when it was time to serve them the cake for dessert
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    Font - foxxpoint I once dropped about a quart of chili flakes into a pot of soup. Essentially pepper sprayed everyone. They had to clear the dining hall and close the restaurant for a few hours. I was 15 lol.
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    Font - mrlazyboy I was 8 years old at cooking camp (it was fun as h). We were learning how to bake cookies and our instructor always told us to "be generous." So we were generous with the sugar.
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    Font - After we finished baking the cookies and let them cool, we took a bite to try and it was disgusting, coughing it up, etc. Turns out we accidentally used salt instead of sugar. To get rid of the abominations, we offered them to the camp counselors who were d and made fun of us because we went to cooking camp (they were from sports camp). Who is going to refuse a cookie from children? Jokes on them.
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    Font - TSN_88 Not exactly in the kitchen, but still in college... I used to assist one of my teachers after hours, and one of my responsibilities was to input data for the food orders in the college system. My teacher asked me to order 60 cans of peas, I was so tired that day that I typed 6000. He really trusted my work so when it came to the point where he would review the order and sign it approved, he just signed it. Two days later my whole class was screaming laughing at the amount of cans i
  • 28
    Font - AbbreviationsActual9. a buddy was clarifying 2 cases of butter in the steam kettle when his blue sharpie fell out of his shirt pocket. he didn't notice till he came back later to Smurf butter. he also once tried to move a cart full of reheats down the stairs instead of waiting on the elevator. outcome was predictable.

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