Oops! - Overcoming Culinary Blunders and Learning From Your Mistakes

Even Khalil, WEtv.com's resident chef, is not immune to kitchen disasters. This week he shows us that all you need to overcome them is a little grace under pressure and a Chinese takeout menu.

By Khalil Hymore

As much as I love to entertain and cook for people, my friends and family have learned to beware when I have made a fatal mistake in the kitchen. Oh boy, do the expletives fly! I am my own worst critic and I hate making egregious culinary blunders. I actually make A LOT of mistakes, but also take a lot of chances and I always end up learning something. In life we are expected to pick ourselves up after a failure, learn from it and move on--the same is true in the kitchen.

When we are small children and we fall on the playground we are encouraged to get up and keep on going. It's one of the most important lessons that we learn in life. Well, when the soufflé falls and the lasagna burns my philosophy has always been to keep cooking (hmm...maybe that could be a new metaphor for learning from one's mistakes, like "back on the horse", "keep on cooking"...ladies?)

This past weekend I even botched one of MY recipes. I set out to make my Mediterranean Mac and Cheese for a friend of mine who was visiting from D.C. After becoming distracted at the grocery store, I came home and realized I hadn't purchased enough cheese to make the dish. No worries, I thought, I'll just make a half batch. Once in the kitchen, I got distracted again and realized I had prepared a full batch of sauce and noodles, but still only had half the cheese flavor. What resulted was a casserole dish of bland noodles with a hint of feta cheese. My friend, being kind of heart, ate it anyway much to my embarrassment (Thanks Shannon!).

Don't despair if a recipe does not turn out as planned, most of the time my kitchen blunders are salvageable or even better than I intended. In fact, I encourage you to experiment. If a recipe sounds good to you save for a couple of ingredients, swap them out for something you prefer. Recipes are like a road map, they'll always get you where you need to go so don't be afraid to take the scenic route. If all else fails keep a Chinese menu handy for the truly disastrous mistakes.

I know a lot of my friends are afraid to cook, or if they do, they are afraid to venture outside of their comfort zone, because they don't want to make a mistake. But, as Julia Child said in her memoir, My Life in France, "The cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile--and learn from her mistakes." Kitchen mistakes are inevitable from time to time and chances are your cooking is much better than you think it is.

Of course some recipes are foolproof. If you tend to be clumsy in the kitchen I would start with those first. Soups and pasta sauces for example are easy to make and easy to fix. If you are more the baker-type, quick breads, such as banana or zucchini bread, are easy and foolproof. One of my favorite fool-proof recipes is gazpacho, because no cooking is required and it's wonderful during the summer months.

And since summer is quickly approaching, let me suggest a great book for your vacation along these lines. The book Don't Try This at Home by Kimberly Witherspoon and Andrew Friedman chronicles the kitchen missteps of 40 different chefs--including Anthony Bourdain, Mario Batali, Eric Ripert, and Tom Colicchio. Knowing the secret mistakes of these chefs should surely give you the confidence to get in the kitchen and make some blunders yourself!