A Christmas Never to be Forgotten

My housemates and I finally decided to have a mini dinner together for Christmas Eve. We invited friends and each brings a dish. I wanted to try to make General Tso's Chicken since this is my parent's most popular dish at their restaurant and basically at all American Chinese restaurants. I called my mom to ask about the recipe but she recommended that I don't do it because if we don't have a deep frying machine, the chicken will not come out crunchy. She gave me the recipe to make sweet and sour pork ribs. Christmas Eve came. After work, I went to buy the pork ribs and all the needed ingredients. When I got back to the apartment, all my housemates were trying to prep their food! I was expected 3 friends + 1 to show up for the dinner. Cindy was expected 2 friends + 2. Satie was expected 1 friend. Josh's friends already had plans before we were certain that we're going to have a dinner party. :< So we really had something going for the night...

I started prepping my stuff by marinating the ribs. I decided to start heating up a pot of oil. It was taking a bit long to wait for it to bubble, so I decided to put the lid on..... Worse idea ever. I didn't know I was not supposed to put the lid on because it cuts out the oxygen. I waited for a while and opened the lid. There was a big puff of smoke and then immediately the oil caught on fire. O_O I freaked out and expected it to go away like how I used to satay food and the food catches on fire because of the butter but it usually just for a second. But no... The fire just kept getting bigger. I immediately turned off the stove and moved the pot to the stove top that I wasn't cooking on. But the flame was continuing to get bigger. I was flipping out and all my housemates were panicking too haha... Satie was sleeping and didn't even smell the smoke zzz... Cindy went to wake her up and she started panicking which didn't help with the situation. Someone started suggesting to pour water over the fire... That would make it worse since it's burning oil. It would have made it even worse I'd assume. I finally thought of Cast Away when Tom Hanks couldn't start the fire lol... We needed to cut out the oxygen to the fire so it would stop burning bigger and bigger. Josh went over to grab a blanket that came with the apartment, wet it and tried to cover up the pot on the floor, but it wasn't covering properly and the fire was coming out around the blanket. I finally grabbed the blanket, folded it neatly, and dropped it on top of the pot. It cut out the fire, but we couldn't open the apartment door because if we set off the hallway fire alarm, we'd get charged for AU$2000... Luckily, our apartment fire alarm was broken, I guess. We turned on the fan, exhaust, opened the windows, and went into the girl's room and waited until the smoke clears out. Man, what an experience... We ended up cancelling the dinner and told everyone that we're not doing it anymore. :( We ended up cleaning up the house and making a small dinner just for us. This time, my pork was pan fried instead of deep fried. I'm never doing deep frying again. > >;

So never put a lid on the pan if you're boiling oil for deep frying!