I have always been the adventurous type when it comes to food.  Whether I am deciding to cook something new or eat it, my motto has always been to try everything at least once. Well almost everything.  There are some things I will not eat even if the President himself endorsed it.  But this motto has allowed me to overcome my fear of sashimi and to realize that no matter how you prepare okra I will always hate it.

Last Thursday when I was grocery shopping at my favorite store, Aldi, I decided to try flounder.  I have never prepared flounder myself.  Usually my mom, whose an awesome home chef, prepares flounder for the family with a mixture of tilapia.  But I have been really itching to try cooking this myself to see if I could match her skill. So I picked up two bags to make sure there would be enough for everyone and headed home.  Last night I decided to cook the flounder for dinner using a recipe I found on online.  Unfortunately I didn’t have all of the ingredients needed for the recipe so I tweaked it a little using what I already had in the pantry.

This how I wish mine had turned out.

From the start I should have known this would be a disaster.  The natural smell of the fish was not agreeing with my nose at all.  Mind you, the fish was definitely fresh.  This is the first thing I checked when purchasing the fish and I even checked again when I got home.  I’m just extra cautious that way.  But this smell however, was nothing like when I open a bag of tilapia or swai.  It smelled really different, almost as if the fish jumped right out of the see into the bag without any of the proper steps in between.

I fought my way past the smell and began seasoning the fish using one of my sample packets of Dizzy Pig BBQ.   I cooked the fish according the directions in the recipe and served it with all of the fixings.  It looked as though it would be a great meal until I took that first bite and dear Lord!!  I thought I would blow chunks all the way into the next room.  The seasoning was awesome but the fish itself, not so much.

I’m not sure if there was some extra step I was supposed to take in order to bring out the awesomeness of this fish but either way, I completely failed.  I was so upset, one because the dinner was a disaster and two because I had wasted a perfectly good packet of seasoning on a crap dinner.  Oh well.  At least I tried and now I know that flounder is definitely not my thing.

Have you guys ever had high hopes for a dish that just turned out to be a complete disaster?  Do you have any tips on how to make flounder the most awesome dish ever?  I would love to hear what you have to say so don’t be shy.  Go ahead  and share below!

Until next time!!