In the wonderful world of pit cooking; Such as in starting the pit, shut down, ,food prep, cooking, dropping food, pit runaway as wheels not locked......

 For me it was firing up a Big Green Egg..Got the fire started as usual and shut the lid to warm-up. Forgot about the bottom vent..It was closed and the temperature just wasn't rising. It took me a few minutes to catch on. Not bad for have been cooking on eggs

 for over 10 years.

  *Self incrimination is not a factor here.

I, like Mary Poppins, am practically perfect in every way, so I don't think I have anything to recount.

Now Bentley on the other hand -- how many hours do you have?  And that will only cover comp mishaps.

Leaving GMG remote in DB and not checking for it when starting..

Leaving the smoke stack closed (GMG DC) after starting the grill & after rising the temp. Grill got up to 340 & wouldn't get any higher, (Had it set to 500 for grilling steaks) That's when I noticed the stack closed, opened it up, went in the house, when & came back out I had a VERY nice fire going!

My grill sits in the corner of the patio, I unlocked the castors and rolled it out a little to do some cleaning, had the lid open on a pretty windy day, got called inside the house for something and a big gust of wind came just as I'm coming back out. I watched in horror as the grill did a summersalt right off the deck into the lawn, amazingly the only damaged was to one of the hinges on the lid and a few scratches. I was able to straighten it with a vice and hammer and scratches are just battle scares

This may get a little windy, but to appreciate my embarrassment I have to explain it.

Probably 6-7 years ago wife and I were motorcycle camping with two other couples, we've been all
over the country with. Like everything else I get in to, I take motorcycle camping to a whole new level.
The pop up I pull carries my Coleman grill, satellite tv, ac, etc..........

On a particularly hung over morning I'm preparing breakfast for everyone. Friends wives are yapping on the picnic
table I'm using to cook, and just generally getting on my nerves, which they strive to do.
I had a blue can of Crisco spray next to the grill I use to treat the griddle side and grates of the Coleman.

Had the meat on the grill side and was preparing to make the eggs on the griddle side, when they decide to start
telling me how to cook eggs. I growl something like, "keep it up and you won't eat", grab what I think is the blue can of
Crisco to spray the griddle, the women don't say anything but are laughing like crazy as I proceed to treat the griddle with
bug spray................

But in my defense and the chicken salad part of the story, I have not seen a single tick on that grill since.

This summer I spent a bunch of Money to have my house sided.  When it was done, I slid my GMG JB up next to the house.  The back of the grill was probably about 10 inches away.  My neighbor was worried that I would melt the siding.  I explained that is not going to happen because I never to high temp cooks.

Fast forward a couple of weeks... We had a bunch of people over and we were making home made pizzas in the kitchen ovens.  I decided that if we cooked some on the grill it would be quicker.  So I turned on the JB and cranked it all the way up and started cooking pizzas.

I bet you know the rest of the story.

Hint... It ends with someone saying I told you so! 

cold smoked some nuts. Put smoke tube under nuts that were on a pizza screen. Thought if under them would get more smoke. Mowing the lawn and came around house to see thick smoke billowing out of stack. Thought man that tube produces a lot of smoke went back around house then thought??? Burnt my NUTS. Nuts burned nice and black....

Mudflap

JBsuperG,
Same exact thing with the siding, right outside our back patio door and off the deck, never fixed it and it's the 1st thing my eyes go to every single time. It isn't terrible but gnaws at me. I also got an "I told you so".
I also had a grease fire in one of them while I was cooking on one in my garage, thankfully it was right inside with the garage door open and did not damage anything except my underwear.
It scared the breakfast out of me.

 Man-O-man, It's hard to stop laughing..All the stories are so good.

 I forgot to add; for whatever reason I had placed my Thermopen in the Traeger after cleaning it and shut the lid. Something I have never done before. The next time the pit was fired up I opened the lid after about 2 minutes to find the thermometer. No

physical harm done. I usually opened the lid before starting..Talk about almost having a heart attack.

Well.   I'll let the pic do the talking.
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One night I forgot to turn off my gasser after grilling steaks. Eventually it hit me that it was still on (well into the night at that point). The grill was placed approximately 12” from the deck railing. When I went out to turn the grill off, the railing was glowing orange like coals in the fire place. I had to grab the hose and go to work.
About an hour with the electric sander and a little paint helped camouflage the damage. But like a poster said earlier, my eyes went straight to it every time I walked outside.

Don't know if this is the most stupid thing I have done, but it is not one of my brightest moments.  Years ago, before I got older and started to know "stuff" as CaptJerry mentions in an earlier post, I had a couple heavy duty full restaurant grade cooking sheets.  Over time, using those sheets they developed a pretty good "seasoning on the surface".  As hard as we tried we could never "scrub" those trays to be clean down to the surface again.  I got the bright idea to turn my gasser grill up to full heat, and put the pans on the grill "seasoned" surface down directed at the flames to burn them clean.  Good thing only one would fit on the grill at a time.  I put the sheet on and left it for 30 or more minutes.  I should have remembered some of my chemistry classes from school.  When I went to take the tray off, yes it was now clean down to the metal, but the extreme direct heat changed the composition of the metal.  It actually became much more flimsy, warped, and pretty much unusable.  Now that I am older and know "stuff", seasoning on those pans, my cooking stones, cast iron skillets, cooking grates etc. is a good thing.  Yep, we all learn, sometimes the hard way.

after my first catering gig (for a friend hosting 60 plus people, three shoulders three chucks on for 10 or 12 hours).   I just wanted a quick meal.     So I grab a few beers some marinaded chicken thighs and turned up the Traeger.   I mean this is WHY JOE TRAEGER INVENTED THE PELLET GRILL.    Yup, my pit was so dirty that I got a grease fire.   This was no small event.   I ended up taking the hose to the pit as I watched in horror as my powder coat started bubbling. 

The Traeger is fine, but boy is she ugly now. 

DK

PS the catering gig went really great.  Very well received, but way too much protein.  We didn't really account for all the sides and drinks that would be consumed before the meat was put out.   Lots of left overs. 

I was cold smoking a few pounds of cheese using a pellet tray and the mailbox mod.  After I was happy everything was working properly I went to tackle my list of chores.  A few hours later I checked in on the cheese.  The pellets had started burning instead of smoldering and the heat the fire produced melted the cheese.  I had flat slabs and drips everywhere.  I didn't bother trying to salvage anything, I just cleaned up the mess and toss it all in the trash.