Chicken and Fail

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’d like to shape my first blog entry. Since this is a blog about aiming for culinary success, I thought an entry about a culinary failure might be appropriate.

This story is often referred to as “the chicken and dumplings catastrophe” by my family. My father still references it to this day if I mention a cooking project. “Just make sure it doesn’t end up like the chicken and dumplings.” Thanks, Dad. Back in, 1995 or so, my sister, Laura, and I had competed in a fun run in the Heights of Houston. One of us, (I want to say me, but I can’t be sure) placed in our age group – easy enough when there are only 3 other 13 year olds competing. The prize was a cook book filled with recipes from local chefs. Thus the foundation was laid. Laura and I decided to treat the whole family to a night off in the kitchen. We’d be cookin’ tonight.

We selected the chicken and dumplings recipe. I remember that making the dumplings was especially challenging for us. It involved a lot of kneading and rolling. After tirelessly building our dumplings from scratch, we went to add them to the soup base we had boiling on the stove. What happened next is sort of a blur in my mind. I honestly don’t know what could have gone wrong where, but within the next few minutes we had burned: 1) the soup 2) the pot 3) the pot holders. The result was a melted potholder stuck to the bottom of the pot indefinitely and a smoky flavor that permeated the soup, the kitchen, the entire house, and our souls.

The Helmicks are troopers, so we ate a good portion of the soup, all the while trying to convince ourselves that this was the smokiness BBQ champions the world over pine for. They say smells have the strongest recollections, but believe me, if you had tasted this chicken and dumplings, it would be blow-torched into your memory forever.