Kitchen safety rule I learned the hard way was ____
There have been many over the years. One that left the most meaningful impression was the time a small sauce pan of grease came to the smoking point. Quickly yanked the pan off the electric burner, the grease burst into flames & I stupidly I dropped the pan on the kitchen counter...ruined the kitchen counter & melted the light fixture above. Some miracle did occur as flames died quickly & no one was burned. An expensive lesson, tho' I've heard safety may well be the most important cooking skill. What safety rule have you had to learn the hard way?
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23 Comments:
I am slackjawed reading your account. You were incredibly lucky!
My lesson was: Never grab a pan handle that has been near an open flame. I grabbed the pan and tried to release it - but it was stuck to my hand. Lesson learned.
chiff0nade at 7:23PM on 12/30/07
You can remove the fire extinguisher from the wall holder without pulling with all your might and taking some drywall with it.
Read the directions on using a fire extinguisher, in the event you ever need to actually use it, so you don't need to go in search of a neighbor.
A propane leak UNDER your grill will very quickly melt all the on/off knobs, as the flames engulf the grill and soar to the second story, so make sure you have a good fireproof mitt to reach the knob on the tank (just under the flames). If you are talking to 911 at the same time, they need more information than Oh My God, Oh My God, Oh My God.
Just saying.
;)
PerkyMac at 9:15PM on 12/30/07
I most recently was making the bourbon and coke glaze for the ham and well past the time I thought the booze was gone the pan caught fire and made a pretty show of it's angry flammable fury. I have a set up that is high heat friendly stainless backsplash so I did not worry, I reached down shut the burner off and grabbed a pot lid and covered the pan. 10 seconds later I was back in business. Take the advise of my friend chiff never grab anything on fire. Burns hurt and disfigure. Small kitchen fire extinguishers are not expensive and I keep 2 of them in my kitchen. Even if your cooking does not need a lid for the pan or pot make a habit of putting one out anyway. You never can tell when you might need it.
JerzeeTomato at 9:25PM on 12/30/07
You're fire stories are scary. Thanks for the heads up on the propane fire.
If your knife is going to fall on the floor don't try to catch it...
windjunkie at 11:12PM on 12/30/07
Yikes! I have my own fire story.
I am notorious for grabbing hot pan handles. IN particular, I have a heavy duty roasting pan that I take out of the oven, and minutes later I'll grab the handles on the end and burn myself. One day we had company over, and I was in and out of the kitchen. I'd roasted vegetables in the oven in my roaster, and wanted to hold them on the stove top at warm since I had to cook something else in the oven. Clever me, I wrapped each handle with a kitchen towel and left the kitchen. I was back and forth a few times checking on things, when later on in the living room I smelled something amiss- something was burning. I dashed into the kitchen to find one of my towels on the floor- engulfed in flames. I quickly put it out, but the damage had been done. Apparently the towel had unwound itself from the handle and caught fire on the burner peeking out from under the roasting pan before flipping off the stove and onto my floor.
I have that scorch mark on my linoleum to remind me daily to be careful, and it's quite the conversation piece. I'm just glad I was able to keep a level head about it and not freak out.
ErikaWaz at 11:20PM on 12/30/07
Well, the main one was to always use the safety guard on a mandoline. I'm pretty sure I've posted this story before, but I ended up without the use of my right index finger for 2 months while I healed from microsurgery to repair a severed tendon.
Also, always make sure the flame is lit when using a gas oven; I had a junky old gas oven in an apartment once, and I was preheating it (or so I thought). After about 5 minutes I realized the oven wasn't doing anything, so I stupidly tried to light it manually. I didn't suffer any real damage (unless you count singed arm hair) but it was a little unnerving coming face to face with a fireball.
And a lesson I have to relearn very often; always keep a potholder on the handle of a pan after taking it out of a hot oven.
Nicholas H at 1:07AM on 12/31/07
I have a fairly vivid and neurotic imagination, which makes me fairly careful about safety advice; it also means that the one thing I learned the hard way was more embarrassing than frightening.
The rule I (intentionally, out of 'scientific curiosity') flouted was the one regarding the mixing of hot fluids in a blender. I poured some pumpkin-chestnut soup into the blender... and hit the switch. Soup geysered out the top, everywhere. I turned it off, panicked mostly by the fact that I hadn't a clue as to how I was going to get soup off the ceiling.
The kicker though, is that what I did next was to REPEAT this insane act; to be certain it wasn't a fluke, of course.
mongoose at 4:03AM on 12/31/07
Always pat-dry chicken wings prior to dropping them into the deep fryer. Boil-overs aren't at all fun, especially when you're only wearing socks.
LunaPierCook at 5:55AM on 12/31/07
Just...WOW, you guys. Wow. Some of you are lucky to be alive! :) :) :)
I've never done anything that terrifying (so far...), but one of my mother's fellow chefs had her finger completely ripped off by a stand mixer's quickly whirring beater. Lesson learned: use a SPATULA to scrape the bowl, not your fingers. I'd think this would be common sense -- especially for a professional -- but I guess we all get a little careless sometimes.
sheeats at 10:54AM on 12/31/07
Wow-I feel very lucky compared to all the fire stories...
The lesson I learned (that really, I already knew, but clearly didn't follow) was to keep my fingers tucked in while slicing and dicing. I had a blister on my index finger (unrelated to cooking) so I had a weird grip on my knife, and was not being very careful about where my other hand was, due to a slippery onion, so I sliced halfway through my middle finger. Of course I was home alone, and as I sat there with my finger in the air trying to apply enough pressure to make the bleeding stop, I was wondering how the heck I was going to drive myself to the ER with a bleeding right hand! Luckily it stopped after a while, but I had a very sore finger for a long time!
psychsarah at 11:30AM on 12/31/07
DO NOT LEAVE UTENSILS ON YOUR STOVETOP!!!
Like an idiot, I used to do this all the time. If I wasn't using a burner, it would serve as a parking place for spoons and ladles and whatnot.
Once I wanted to make tea, so I put the kettle on and turned on the burner under it, then went back to my desk to wait for it to boil. Sure enough, I soon smelled burning plastic. I ran back to the kitchen and realized I had turned on the wrong burner - the one I had turned on had my plastic-handled ladle on it! The ladle was now in flames!
I came very close to burning down my house that time.
minstrel at 11:57AM on 12/31/07
DO NOT overfill any vessel you will be frying in. I once overfilled a deep pot I was frying chicken in and had a greasy, messy, smoky mess to contend with afterward. I was lucky in that my set up was made to withstand the rigors of lots of cooking and even more so that nothing actually caught fire. But knowing just how close I came was enough for me!
coffeefrappe at 12:11PM on 12/31/07
I also did the utensil on the burner thing. I had only turned on the oven, and a plastic handled bread knife was on the burner. The next day I found out the knife was stuck to the burner.
A classic story in my family is when my mom was making grilled cheese. She put a lid on to make the sandwiches cook faster, but the lid was too small for the pan. The metal expanded, and the lid was stuck on. Luckily, after my mom put the pan in the freezer, the lid came off. However, the sandwiches were black.
Also, my mom put a muffin cup with batter in it in the microwave. Bad idea. The house was filled with smoke rather quickly, and the muffin batter wasn't cooked.
Thank goodness I haven't had to deal with kitchen fires!
misseditor at 1:41PM on 12/31/07
I baked something in a Pyrex casserole dish, took it out of the oven and placed it on one of the electric burners not knowing that the burner was on. A few minutes later there was an explosion...shards of glass on the countertop and floor, no problem to the tile floor but burn marks on the countertop. If my husband or I had been near the stove, it could have been a serious situation. Lesson learned.
elaine nan at 5:03PM on 12/31/07
The racks in the oven are hot when the oven is on. I am still learning that one, actually. i have a number of battle wounds, including one from just last week, that involved grabbing something out of the oven, and accidentally touching the rack, forgetting that even though the pan/sheet/etc is hot, so is the rack upon which it was resting.
Another one from a very long time ago (when I was a lowly fast food employee earning money for school) is to never get in the way of the french fries when they are being pulled rapidly out of the fryer by your manager, because she is in a hurry and doesn't think that they will drip. I have permanent scars from that one.
Traveller at 5:05PM on 12/31/07
i once started a fire in the oven when i put a bunch of paper towels on a cookie sheet in order to drain the grease from the latkes i was keeping warm. i had the oven on at 350 and the towels caught fire. i have since learned to keep the oven at 250 instead -- or to just send them out of the kitchen as soon as they're fried.
cybercita at 5:44PM on 12/31/07
Don't give mom anything sharp! My mother cuts herself every time she steps in the kitchen! Luckily I didn't inherit that trait.
watchforbears at 9:10PM on 12/31/07
Don't cook over a gas stove while wearing a wool scarf.
Luckily, I just singed my scarf instead of becoming a char-grilled Karyn-kabob.
KarynMC at 9:17PM on 12/31/07
That Pyrex shattering one scared the crap out of me. I was making a quick hollandaise with some dear friends (people that I would really miss if shards of glass went flying at them) and I used a shallow Pyrex dish to melt the butter... on the stovetop... at the lowest heat. My wise roommate expressed some hesitation, and it did work out fine, but... holy crap. Maybe Pyrex in Iowa is way stronger than... where you are.
Alvin at 4:38AM on 01/01/08
I second the caveat to use the safety holder when slicing on a mandoline or v-slicer. One slip can really mess you up and, if you ignore the protector often enough, eventually you WILL slip.
grampart at 8:59AM on 01/01/08
I'm still learning most of my lessons, too, Traveller... especially the ones about things being hot when they come out of the oven. Or cool-touch handles not *really* being cool when something's been cooking a long time on the stove. Or not reaching into the oven, between the racks, without first pulling out the rack, because NO, I'm NOT that good.
The best hard-learned lesson was about cooking bacon with your belly exposed (crop top). This is a bad idea, no matter how flat and hard your abs. It's now an irrelevant lesson, as I am now somewhat old, and no longer flat bellied. But it's one I bear a scar to prove the learning of!
LoCo at 12:40PM on 01/01/08
Do not cook sausages in a roasting pan in an over the head oven.
We won't talk about the reults of that one, but suffice to say, I was the only one in the kitchen that morning, and I still managed to get brunch out before I went to the ER. (I waited till someone else showed up so I could tell them where everything was)
SayWhat at 4:21PM on 01/02/08
I am sooooooo glad you guys are still alive to tell these stories. I am lucky i have not had any fires, just plenty of cut fingers and hands.
This one happened to a friend of mine in front of me... never grab the handle of a pan or skillet without a pot holder after it's been in the oven for a while... she used the pot holder to get the skillet out of the oven, but forgot after a few minutes and went to pick it up to place it in the dishwasher and burned her hand... a few seconds later someone helped her do the task again without a pot holder and also burned their hand...
it was painful to watch.
MadelynRodriguez at 5:11PM on 01/02/08