The Most Epic Kitchen Experiment of 2010

As most of you know, I work in a fast food-like setting that involves fryers and a grill and grease and all that jazz. Let's call this place the kitchen, sorta similar to a McDonald's or something. Well our special yesterday in the kitchen was orange chicken like they have in Panda Express, so we had a large pan of sticky white rice as part of the dish. My favorite thing to do when we have rice is to get a little ball of it and squish it between my fingers for a while until it all mushes together and becomes like silly putty and then you play with it when you're waiting for people to serve because it's fun. People are always looking at me funny when I do this.

It was pretty slow in the kitchen at this time, so my boss Jared* took the ball I had and placed it on the grill. Tiny rice pancake, how cute! Next, he puts it in the fryer. It cooks. We cut it in fourths and eat it (*Jared, Paul, Daniel, and I) while everybody is like ewwww.

I get another ball going, this time a little bigger, and add in some shredded cheese, and Jared cuts up a piece of bacon for me, so I incorporated that into the ball as well, and flattened it into another small patty and put it in the fryer. They were all like what are you doing, Shannon, are you crazy?? I take full responsibility for this and the following operations of the night since I am the weird one who wants to try eating strange and un-natural things. I do not know why this urge came over me. But the guys continued being squeamish little babies and saying it was so gross and yucky when they took a bite, but really, it's all just food that we eat anyway, put together in a different way.

After that second one was eaten up (still begrudgingly), I told the guys to grab some more rice and start playing with it so we could make a big one, and they ended up getting a lot more than I had expected, and making this HUGE squished rice patty. This time the mix-ins came from the wide selection of the salad bar instead of our small prep station. I had to help people out while they went over and folded in a plethora of goodies into our rice patty (remember, it's not really rice anymore at this point, it's just a big ball of white gooey stuff), such as carrots and beans and I don't know what else because I wasn't there when they did it. By now it was the size of a large hamburger, and we let this one get comfy in the fryer basket for about 10 minutes, then placed it on a bun with some melted cheese and bacon. When Paul started eating his fourth of the sandwich I almost couldn't stop laughing long enough to try mine! He himself was laughing while trying to choke down what he thought was a really disgusting creation, and everyone had the funniest looks on their faces. Somehow my quarter of the sandwich did not taste bad at all! It looked like I got most of the carrots, and Paul complained that the beans in his part of the patty were what killed it, but even with beans I don't think it would've made me gag. He even ended up spitting his out. Haha.

Daniel had a few bites of his, and a bystander employee came and tried the other fourth - everybody ended up throwing the rest away because they thought it was nasty. Personally I thought it was kinda tasty with the bacon and the melted swiss, and that extra crunch from the crisped up shell of the patty. It tasted like a chicken sandwich!! I am proud to say that while everyone else was a sissy, I gladly finished my portion and spent the next 20 minutes trying to get gooey crap out of my teeth.

The whole experiment was one of the best I've seen in the kitchen so far. And that, my friends, is one of the reasons I LIKE working there.

Without access to my good camera, I had to resort to using my phone. Not such good quality but at least it's evidence. Look, it even had chipotle sauce. 

*Names of the actual people have been replaced in this story with fake ones.