Kitchen Failures


It’s something no-one likes to admit to. When you follow the recipe and… you fail.

I was looking forward to some nice tangerine and lime marmalade and, instead, I have lime/tangerine soup. Or maybe a marinade or glaze… but not something you can spread on toast, or crumpets, or whatever. I even tried opening up the jars, reheating the contents, adding liquid pectin to the soup… and it’s still soupy.

Failure is something even the best cook in the world will face, and I am far from being the best. How you recover from it marks out the difference between being competent and being good – can you honestly tell me that the first crème brulée was meant to look like that?!? No, some clever chef decided to call it “burnt cream” and make a feature out of their culinary fail.

In the mean time, I have 5.5 pints of tangerine lime soup. Maybe I will make a marmalade tart and call it “tarte au marmalade” or some other clever name!


2 responses to “Kitchen Failures”

  1. I would not necessarily call this a failure yet! Some of my marmalades have taken up to a month to fully jell and set. The first time I made orange marmalade, I had the same thing, soupy results. I also did the reheat with adding pectin. Once all was said and done, it was so firm that it was almost unspreadable. I hope that your corrections come out somewhere in between. Just give the jars some settling time and see what happens. Hopefully you will get good results, otherwise, I am sure that would make a great glaze for a pork tenderloin! 😉

  2. Thanks for the words of hope, Amy – I won’t give up on it just yet 🙂

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