Don't put eggs to boil on the stove and leave the room to become absorbed in another task, namely typing a blog post on the computer. As I'm typing away, I hear a pop sound. I'm home alone, and Diana is outside. What can be popping? Why an egg! The water was all boiled away, and one of the three eggs split open and popped right out of the pot, which was well burned on the bottom. I quickly removed the pot with the two eggs and put them under cold water.
Hurriedly, before Grandpère came home and decided to have me put away, I scoured the pot, removed the burned sections from two of the eggs, and ate them to destroy the evidence. They tasted good with only a slight smoky flavor to them, which was not at all unpleasant. The least charred egg, I put in the fridge to eat later. GP will probably discover the egg with its bit of blackened shell and ask me what happened, but, by then, time will have passed, and nothing terrible is likely to result when I tell him.
My former boss's wife was a confectioner. She made her own caramel by heating a can of sweetened condensed milk (unopened) in a pot of boiling water. Once she set the milk to cooking and fell asleep. The pop of an egg in a pan that has boiled dry has nothing on the explosion of a can of hot caramel. She was picking bits of caramel out of her kitchen for years.
ReplyDeleteBill, it could have been a lot worse. My clean-up was easy.
ReplyDeleteOh, how many charred bits of evidence have I eaten over the years.
ReplyDeleteLOL!
Penny, our insides are probably black from eating charred evidence.
ReplyDeleteCharcoal is supposed to be good for your digestion - removes poisons LOL
ReplyDeleteWell then, Ann, that would be a double benefit from doing something stupid - which somehow doesn't seem quite right.
ReplyDeletecount it as a blessing
ReplyDeleteAn Easter blessing!
ReplyDeleteAnother thing you don't want to set to boil unwatched is plastic baby bottles, as my son and his wife learned to their sorrow, and great expense. Nothing exploded, fortunately, but you wouldn't believe how much smoke damage you can get from four burning baby bottles!
ReplyDeleteUghhhhh... I would think the SMELL of burned eggs would be enough to give the whole plot away, Grandmere!
ReplyDeleteI begin to see more and more what a blessing it was that the egg popped, and that I was boiling eggs and not plastic baby bottles or an unopened can of condensed milk. I begin to see one Easter blessing after another.
ReplyDeleteNow hubby is wondering why I am laughing and can't stop
ReplyDeletemargaret, there was little odor, just a very slight smell - and taste - of smoke.
ReplyDeleteAnn, hubby thinks all your friends are crazy, I'm sure.
The reason I own a rice cooker is that I once burned rice when I was a teenager. (My parents both had to work late and asked me to cook dinner.) The sight of my mom's favorite Pyrex pot with two inches of black rice fused to the bottom nearly did her in. It probably also explains the intense love I feel for my slow cooker - I can space out as much as I like without wasting food or getting yelled at.
ReplyDeleteRice cookers are a gift from God (or Japan).
ReplyDeleteLove my "fuzzy logic" rice cooker. Cook my steel cut oats in it. With the timer - all ready to eat in the morning
ReplyDeleteBe thankful that it was just three eggs, that they came with a built-in alarm system, and that you were around to hear it. In the early 50's my mother, who taught cooking at Manchester's leading hotel school, took me to the movies (double feature) in a nearby town, leaving a stew simmering on the gas range. When we returned, hours later, the stew was carbonized, the pan way beyond repair, and everything in the kitchen was coated with a foul-smelling sulphorous layer. The stench stuck around for months and the refrigerator's white enameled surface had a permanent yellowish cast. At least the house was still standing! Moral - it can happen to the most experienced of us, and it could have been far, far worse.
ReplyDeleteThe opposite case, which occurred in my kitchen the other day: I went out for a few hours, leaving my husband a note with precise instructions for cooking a stuffed chicken breast: preheat oven to 350degrees, cover chicken breast lightly with foil, bake 30 minutes, then remove the foil, brush the chicken with a little oil on the top, and cook another 15 minutes. To be sure he got the picture, I set out the baking dish that was just the right size, cut a piece of foil also just the right size, shaped the foil like a little igloo to cover the chicken breast, and positioned the foil loosely but neatly over the dish. When I got home, expecting that he would already have had dinner, since he had a meeting to attend, I found him grinning sheepishly as the chicken breast cooked in the oven, an hour behind schedule. He had followed my instructions to the letter but assumed that the chicken breast was already in the dish underneath the foil, whereas of course it was still in the refrigerator (one doesn't go out and leave raw poultry sitting on the countertop for three hours on a warm day!). No damage was done to casserole, foil, chicken breast or husband, fortunately, but we had a good laugh over it.
ReplyDeleteOh, Mary Clara, that's too funny. That's what you get for trying to cover up....
ReplyDeleteWe have a rice cooker, but we don't use it much, except for my crawfish jambalaya dish. The recipe is for cooking in a rice cooker, and I'd have no idea how to prepare the dish in a regular pot.
ReplyDeleteLapin, I've done worse food burning than yesterday. Fortunately, now the smoke alarm sounds off before the situation becomes catastrophic - that is if anyone is home. But in the days before smoke alarms, the worst I did was to forget the cooking oil in a pan that I was preparing to fry chicken. The oil caught on fire, and, like an idiot, I tried to throw the pan out the back storm door, which was latched, with the result that the oil spilled and burned my foot rather badly. I know, I know. Smother the fire, but in a state of panic, I don't always think straight.
Ouch, I've done the same thing...
ReplyDeletewv= sispaten (siss-pat'-en)
n. doubt about the validity of the eucharist.
I had a hole in the top my foot for a good while.
ReplyDeleteYour silly made me laugh, Tobias.
Mimi, this is a late comment, but remember I had three-foot flames coming out of the oven last time I tried to cook mutton chops. I ate them and they were quite nice, like your eggs. So, maybe we should all charcoal our food more often :)
ReplyDeleteIf I do - I always set a timer and take it with me!! ;-)
ReplyDeleteCathy, I remember the story of your charred mutton chops.
ReplyDeleteCiss, to take a set timer with me would be sensible, and I fear I am all too often not sensible. :-)