Friday, July 17, 2015

Another Tippens Kitchen Disaster

Hey, everyone! Missy here to share another cooking disaster with you. :) I guess I have no pride. LOL

First, I bought some beautiful wild caught North Carolina shrimp. I decided I wanted to make a curry dish. I started with a Ree Drummond recipe from Food Network. Coconut Curry Shrimp.


I started by peeling and de-veining the shrimp. I had a pot of water ready to heat for the boil-in-bag rice. But my hands were messy, so I asked hubby to turn on the burner.


WELL… he turned on the wrong burner. He turned on the one that had the bag of rice sitting on it! Which, I didn't notice immediately. But then I started smelling something bad and turned to find the plastic melting on our ceramic burner. I immediately reacted by grabbing the bag, which, of course, had a big hole in it by then so dumped the family sized bag of rice on the red hot burner. (Wish I had thought to get a photo!)

My poor husband felt awful as I quickly scraped the rice off the burner and tried to salvage most of it (except for the grains that were blackened or stuck to plastic). And if you thought burned food was hard to clean off a cook top, well, melted plastic is ten times worse!

Anyway, I rescued enough rice to add to the boiling water on the CORRECT burner. And I set about cooking the shrimp.

Melt 2 Tbs. butter in a skillet. Then add the shrimp (I had about ¾ pound). Cook 2-3 minutes, turning halfway through. Don't overcook it!






Beautiful!

Remove the shrimp to a bowl or plate. Add the onion (I used about half a sweet onion) to the skillet and cook until translucent. Then add a couple of cloves of chopped garlic. Then sprinkle on ½ to 1 TBS curry powder (to taste) and cook a couple of minutes.



Reduce heat to medium and add the coconut milk. I don't know how much I added since I used it from a carton rather than a can. But I probably used about 2 cups.


BUT (warning, there may be another kitchen disaster coming)…

But something smelled funny. So I tasted the sauce. And it was TERRIBLE. ICK.

I went looking for the cause, and my lime juice was way past expiration. Plus, the honey smelled off.

So, oh joy, I threw the sauce away and started over. I'm so, SO glad I hadn't added the shrimp yet.

BTW, if you're lucky, you can skip the step where you start all over again. LOL

Since I was starting over with NO lime juice and NO honey, I decided to wing it. I grabbed some cashews and an avocado I had been thinking of using anyway.

Remove the pit by slapping a knife into it and twisting. Then good luck getting the pit off the knife! :)


Quarter the avocado, and slice cubes right in the skin. Then once it's cubed, scoop it out of the skin. You have a nicely cubed avocado.



So I added the shrimp to my new batch of sauce, then added in the cashews and avocado.


Then I stirred in the almost-burned rice (and prayed there were no plastic chemicals in it!). :)



Believe it or not, it tasted pretty good! But boy, what an ordeal. I'm hoping my next cooking adventure doesn't involve melted plastic, burned rice grains or bad ingredients. :)

NOW, my PSA: Go check all the dates on your rarely used items!

And (adding to what Ruthy said yesterday): The contemporary novella collection, Coffee Shop Romances, has now released as well!!






12 comments:

  1. Oh my word, a year ago we did that same thing with a bag of dried chilis. Can you imagine the smell as that caught fire?? Now we have a rule. Nothing on the stove top but pots. EVER.

    Super cute boxed set! Is there anything better than coffee? I never started drinking it until college, but now I'm a big fan. My day isn't right until I get to sip some fresh brew... usually from my beloved Mr. Latte. *gives him a hug*

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    1. Virginia, I think I'll adopt the same rule!! NEVER EVER anything but a pot. :)

      I cannot imagine peppers burning like that! I bet your eyes burned.

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    2. It was like someone had set off a can of mace in the house! And it lasted for hours. :( Dinner was on hold indefinitely. We ended up eating out.

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  2. Drinking my coffee as I read this, Virginia and Missy.


    Missy, oh MY word. I didn't know whether to laugh or gasp or cringe. I can imagine my husband gathering up all the rice like that. I would have trashed it.

    The other day we made a trip to Costco to stock up on the big things. One of the things he always buys is a huge bag of sugar (The man has a worse sweet tooth than I do!).

    As we were unpacking the car - in the midst of a thunderstorm and torrential downpour - we discovered something had punctured the laundry detergent and the sack of sugar was sitting in a pool of blue liquid.

    Lots of fun cleaning out the back of the car in the midst of the storm! But when we got inside (and I was ready to trash the sugar) he got out a container and saved all the sugar down to the bottom. UGH Talk about chemicals. But I guess that whitening agent that made the laundry soap blue would have colored any sugar it touched.

    Glad you salvaged your shrimp. Fortunately for me, my shrimp was in a separate freezer bag and was not contaminated by the laundry soap. Perhaps I shall try your recipe with it!

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    1. Mary, what a disaster!! I bet the back of your car will bubble forever!

      I'm smiling, thinking of you running into blue sugar. :) I bet it smells good, though.

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    2. HAHA! Sounds like my husband! He'd never throw that out. I would have junked it all. YUCK.

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  3. MIssy, I had to replace one of those stove tops because I ruined it. The installer gave me some great advice. Use a straight edge razor blade to clean off the cooled stove top. Works wonders for all those messes we end up with.

    The shrimp dish looks yummy. Fresh shrimp tastes so much better than pre-cooked, but I'm extremely lazy about that job. LOL. Congrats on your resourcefullness.

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    1. Sandra, after scrubbing it twice with ceramic cleaner paste, I actually got a sharp knife and scraped it. Then I soaked it for a few hours with a wet cloth. Then scraped again. Then once more with the polish scrub, and it was FINALLY clean. :) Next time, I'll grab a razor blade!

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  4. Yay for Coffee Shop Romances. I'll pass the word around.

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  5. Oh, man, I've done that so many times. I ended up hating my ceramic top stove by the time it was dying... I love my new LG gas stove with recessed burners (old school), heavy duty grates and a griddle.

    Everything cooks EVENLY. The last stove was just as pricey, and no where near as sturdy. I love the new one, but I know I'll set stuff on it, Missy! It's part of our charm!

    The shrimp dish looks lovely. And the avocado adds a nice touch, so you saved Christmas!!! Go you!!!

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    1. Your stove sounds great! Like the kind you see on all the cooking shows. :)

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