The other day I made the most awful, offensive thing to grace my stove in many, many years. And frankly, that’s a good thing.
Let me clarify that. Sometimes that’s a good thing.
It all started with the chicken thighs I had bought. I had already cut the vegetables that would be going with the chicken and had them ready to go before I looked in on the meat. It was grey. The kind of grey that suggested death and bad omens. Basically, shit I didn’t want anywhere near my stomach. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some chicken, but when that shit goes bad, I’d almost rather eat a closed oyster. It’s not worth the risk of getting sick. But when the chicken went bad, that’s where things went down hill…
See, I had the red onions and bell peppers cut and set aside in their own bowl. I was ready to mix them in after cooking strips of chicken thighs for a bit in the pan so that the chicken was cooked and the veg was still a little crisp and hadn’t given up all of its water (sorry, been reading Dune again). My plan was perfect(ish). But like they say about plans, right?
So after having to discard the questionable chicken thighs, I realized I needed to move fast to salvage whatever the fuck I was having for dinner before it got too late in the evening. I realized that I had some leftover Carolina BBQ sauce I had made and some shredded chicken from a little BBQ night I had a couple of nights ago. Flawless, right?
Nope.
First of all, I mixed the chicken and the veg in the same bowl and absent-mindedly planned on dumping them in together. Not the best call because the shredded chicken really just needed to be warmed up and crisped a little. The veg was going to take a little more time to come to the right consistency. Secondly, a few nights before, when I made the Carolina BBQ sauce (which is one of my favorites because it’s mostly vinegar and mustard) I used some corn starch to thicken it up. Now it was too thick and the mouthfeel of the whole thing made it taste… off.
I ate part of it all when it was done and immediately wished I had just given up and ordered take out when I had the chance. But then, I would have missed out on a couple of valuable lessons, or rather, re-teachings of things I should’ve already known.
- Sauces thicken as they cool. I added WAY too much corn starch to the BBQ sauce. It was good the night of, but a few days later it was like Jell-O. The texture helped make the whole meal inedible.
- Different items have different cook times. While raw chicken and veg would have cooked at roughly the same time if the chicken was cut up, already cooked chicken needed less time than the veg I was using. As a result, the chicken started to crisp too far and burnt the pan a bit. Another contributing factor to my inedible meal.
- Plans often go to shit right in front of you. Yup. I actually was quite proud of my back up when I went from chicken that didn’t work to making use of leftover shredded chicken from the other night. But what I should have done was step back and re-evaluate before I went ahead with the original plan with one substitution.
So what’s the takeaway from all of this? Sometimes it’s just better to start over. What I should’ve done was take account of what I had on hand, put the onions and peppers in a container if I wasn’t using them that night and just started fresh. But that’s the thing, fresh starts can be hard. The elation of starting something new often leads to the crushing weight of reality that maintaining this new thing in a meaningful way takes effort. Sometimes that new thing just isn’t meant to work. That elation of trying something new was just never meant to succeed from the gate.
Or maybe I’m just trying too hard to make this kitchen thing a metaphor for all the dumb shit going on in my life these days.
So what can a beginner take away from a situation like this? Look, kid, I’ve been cooking for myself since my mother allowed me to touch the stove. I’ve spent more hours on being better in the kitchen than I have on most things, second only to maybe my bartending career. I know what types of flavors go together fairly well. I can make something worth eating out of what I have on hand most nights. I have timing down to as much of a science as I can; a lot of this shit is second nature for me. But guess what? I still fuck it up from time to time. And here’s the kicker: like most things in life, so will you.
So the next time you make a mistake in the kitchen, try not to let it get to you. Afterall, it will happen again.