We Asked Chefs About Their Biggest Fails in the Kitchen

This story was originally published in Dutch on MUNCHIES NL.

Unfortunately, being clumsy is inextricably linked to being human. We've all stubbed a toe on the coffee table, sat down on a pair of sunglasses, or forgetting that something is boiling on the stove, resulting in both burned food and a ruined pot or pan.

Chefs are just like us, and they too experience their fair share of "I can't believe I just did that" moments. I asked a few chefs to share their clumsy kitchen stories. Their stories are below.

Jonathan Karpathios, Chef at Vork en Mes I came into the restaurant on Sunday and the kitchen smelled like burnt bodies. I can't describe it any other way. We always rush to close on a Saturday night so we can all have a beer together. That previous Saturday night, we started to make meat stock, which has to simmer on low heat throughout the night. But my co-worker forgot to turn the flame down, so all the liquid had evaporated and the bones were all sticking together at the bottom of the pot. I was so glad the place hadn't burned down, but definitely punished the guy who was responsible by making him clean out the pot. He was busy doing that until after midnight—a gnarly job, because regular scrubbing sponges don't work. I still remember him using knives and screwdrivers to get those burned bones out. We weren't able to serve bouillon that day, but we did have a lot of fun.

We also messed up once while doing a catering job for one of the biggest banks in the Netherlands. We had to make raw juices and one of my co-workers dropped three buckets full of raw beet juice—about 8 gallons of it—on the floor in the lobby of this really fancy building. Every guest had to enter through that space and it looked like we had slaughtered a cow in there. The marble floors, the doors, the ceiling—everything was covered in red juice. It looked awful. We had to order a taxi to drive another 5 gallons of beet juice to our event location. Meanwhile, we were also juicing like crazy to make sure we had enough. Everyone who came in joked and asked which animals we had killed. It really was hell. We ended up paying for everything: three cleaners to clean the whole building and, because the beet juice had soaked into the walls, the lobby had to be repainted. In short, we made no money doing that job. All we got out of it is a good story.

Gina Verheij, chef at Toscanini When I first started working in a restaurant, I worked at the dessert station. One evening, we served lemon sorbet with merengue. The merengue needs to be caramelized. I spent the whole night caramelizing with salt instead of sugar, making our sweet desserts savory. I have to add that I had very little experience working in a kitchen, so I didn't notice that caramelizing with salt wasn't really working. One of the members of our wait staff told me that the merengue looked a bit funny. When she found out what had gone wrong, she couldn't stop laughing. I was so embarrassed. Not one guest had complained. Perhaps I invented salted caramel that night. It's not so bad when you think about it. During that evening, I learned that you can't ever assume you're doing it right when you're working in a kitchen. You always have to taste your ingredients.

Joaquin van der Vliet, Chef at Rose's Cantina This happened two years ago during rush hour on a Friday evening in Rijsel, which has an open kitchen. We ran out of bordelaise (a demi-glace based sauce with bone marrow) and I figured I'd quickly make some more. Below the oven, there is a small freezer where we kept the bone marrow in a black plastic container. I grabbed the container, took a handful of marrow and thought I had put the container back in the freezer, but put it in the oven instead. After four minutes, my chef and I looked at each other and wrinkled our noses. What was that smell? When I opened the oven, the trays were covered in black, sticky threads. We put the four trays in the dishwasher, cleaned out the oven, put spare trays in and got back to work as quickly as we could. I was very surprised and grateful that my chef didn't get angry at me. I assume he just thought it was so stupid that it wasn't worth getting upset about.

Before that, I worked in a restaurant in Amstelveen. The final job of the night was cleaning out the fryers. It involved opening a small faucet, which allowed the grease to drain out of the fryers and into the receptacle underneath. Then you closed the faucet and filled the fryers with water and baking soda. After turning them on, they basically clean themselves. One night it was my turn, but I had forgotten to shut the little faucet, and the water and baking soda came in contact with the old grease. Hot oil, water, and baking soda work beautifully together: within minutes the kitchen was filled with a thick layer of greasy foam. I'm not sure how it all works, chemically speaking, but this stuff came up to my ankles and once it starts going, it doesn't stop. At 1 o'clock in the morning, I had to clean the entire kitchen. I spent two hours pulling a squeegee back and forth on the kitchen floor in hopes that the foam would go down the drain quicker that way. I was supposed to go to a party, but didn't make it. The only thing that made the night worthwhile was the beer I treated myself to while I was cleaning up.

I have also seen a co-worker give a group of people 21 panna cottas with mayonnaise instead of crème anglaise. I was working on the other side of the kitchen by the stove, but after that particular group got their desserts I had to jump in and help out in the dessert section. I started on a few plates and asked for the bottle of crème anglaise. Out of habit, I tasted the contents before I put them on the plate, and realized the bottle contained lemon mayonnaise.

Somehow, the bottles were swapped. When I asked what we had just served that big group, the answer was mayonnaise. Once the plates came back to the kitchen, I asked the servers if they could check in with the guests about their dessert. One person said they didn't really understand the dish they just ate, but all of the others happily answered that their dessert had been delicious. Gross!

Lennart De Kruif (28), chef at Brasserie St. Jan in Sluis A co-worker had just made 16 gallons of fresh tomato soup. After it had cooled down a bit, he wanted to put the pot in the walk-in fridge, but lost his grip and dropped it. Tomato soup covered the ceiling, the walls, and the door. Everything that had been white before was now red. It was hilarious to everyone present in the kitchen at that time, but a lot less funny for the people who had to clean it up. Two guys spent about two hours on their knees on the floor with kitchen towels, tidying up the mess. And of course we had to make new soup. We had a good laugh about it. As we like to say here: "shit happens sometimes!"