Turn Cooking Mistakes into Unexpected Treats

If you’ve ever experienced failed recipes in the kitchen, take heart. Even the professionals have occasional cooking mishaps. Their recommendation? Transform blunders into new dishes that may just become a favorite meal. Here are some suggestions from chefs on reworking mess-ups into culinary magic.

Overcooked Risotto Arancini

I always try to turn a cooking mistake into something usable when possible. Unfortunately cooking mistakes are quite common when training someone that doesn't have much experience. Even the best cooks have things get away from them from time to time when trying to juggle too many tasks at once. One example of making a new dish out of a mistake for us at Taverna is creating arancini out of overcooked risotto. We go through a lot of risotto and make it in large batches. Overcooked risotto is not enjoyable to eat, as anyone who has had that experience would tell you. If one of our cooks overcooks the batch of risotto, we will turn it into arancini, which are delicious fried rice balls. We stuff a ball of risotto with our bolognese sauce or shredded short ribs, add more parmesan cheese, bread them and fry them. They're really tasty and sell well as an appetizer special, and the batch of overcooked risotto is not wasted. Chef Sam Efron, Taverna San Marco

Dry Brownies Bread Pudding

Mistakes that are able to be "rescued" do occasionally happen in a professional kitchen, and when they do, we are always looking for opportunities to not only "save" the dish, but even turn it into something special or unique. Such a mistake recently happened when we were baking brownies for a private group's dessert station. The large batch of brownies were accidentally overcooked. They looked cakey and dry but were not burned. We knew we could not serve them as a classic brownie for the group but didn't want to throw them away since they were quite delicious as a dessert, just not perfect as a brownie! We diced the brownies up and blended with brioche bread and egg mixture to create a bread pudding. We baked it off and served it as a warm chocolate bread pudding with ice cream as a dessert special. It was completely sold out within one dinner service and was a great hit with all the guests that ordered it! Sometimes as frustrating as a culinary mistake might be, especially if it ends up creating a double workload, with luck you can end up with something that may actually be more special than what was originally planned! Chef Tom Gray, Prati Italia and Town Hall

Undercooked Pancakes Breakfast Sandwich

As a child, breakfast often revolved around maple syrup. Cold mornings in Vermont were perfect for French toast, oatmeal or pancakes drenched with it. I liked to make my pancakes extra thick, which takes a little time to cook inside. My jam was to smear chunky peanut butter in between two steaming hot pancakes and drown them in syrup. It was probably a morning I woke up a bit late and was scrambling to make and consume breakfast before the school bus arrived. When I sunk my fork through the half-cooked pancakes, the gushing center just added one more level of ooey gooey swirled all together. The morning I discovered medium rare pancakes was a bit of a revelation. I like to think they inspired culinary classics like lava cake, maybe even the Spanish Tortilla. Chef Josh Agan, Routes: Culinary Travels

Too Much Heavy Cream Ice Cream

Something I hear often is that making desserts is so much harder because it's such a science and if you make a mistake there is nothing you can do to fix it, so you'll just have to throw it away and start over. Having said that, it may be surprising to hear that when pastry miscalculations occur, I figure out ways to salvage the blunder. Recently, one of my coworkers accidentally added three quarts instead of three cups of cream to the caramel sauce, and because as a chef I never want to throw away good product or be wasteful, I figured out a way to repurpose the error by tempering in some egg yolks and using the caramel cream as an ice cream base. There are many ways to recover from common pastry mistakes. Overbaked macaron shells can be pulverized to become a crunchy garnish, baked cake that sticks to the pan transforms into cake truffles, a cornstarch slurry can be added to a thin sauce for body and lemon juice or salt can be added to balance out flavors. Chef Rebecca Reed, The Black Sheep Restaurant Group