71 replies to this topic

[David Ross]

We all know that commercial kitchens are a hazardous place--Chefs come into contact with intense heat, flames, slippery floors and sharp knives--all during the fury of service. Yet the home kitchen can also be a hazardous workplace albeit on a smaller scale.

Today when I was painting my kitchen, I was up on a small ladder. To reach a corner in the ceiling, I stepped on top of a butcher block with a large countertop attached. When I stepped on the countertop, it popped off. I lost my balance and fell to the floor, along with all the kitchen tools on top of the counter. The glass jars I use to hold kitchen tools broke, but luckily I wasn't cut by glass. Unfortunately, I had left my portable deep-fryer on the counter to cool so it was full of cold oil. The deep-fryer went flying, but it helped break my fall. When I collected my oil covered self off the floor, I realized I was sitting on top off the deep-fryer. The fry basket is a horrible tangled mess to say the least.

Other than a scrape on my left shoulder and a swollen, bruised, left elbow, I seem to have survived intact. Albeit my back will suffer in coming days. It was sort of funny in a tragic way. Cleaning up a gallon of used fry oil wasn't a pretty sight.

While my foible was due to using poor judgement while painting my kitchen, I imagine some of you have suffered similar spills, trips, falls and the like in your kitchen.

[kbjesq]

Not a slip or fall, but one time I decided to attempt to put the very last bit of a red pepper through my mandoline, and unwisely removed the guard. I reasoned that the very high price of the red pepper justified the risk of exposure to the sharp blade. A poor decision, I'm afraid!

I'm still missing part of that finger . . . and the cost of the emergency room visit made it a very expensive mistake.

[rooftop1000]

There are some moments in life when you wish you had the video....
So far all my injuries have been at work - the usuals, tip of the finger into the slicer, splash from the fryer, grilled nuckles on the flat-top etc... One thing that was funny was during a weekly visit to my Chiropracter she asked what the heck I had done to myself and I knd of counted days back on my fingers and remebered that I fallen onto my hip in a puddle of lemon sauce the weekend before



tracey

[heidih]

My worst was a burn. I made a simple "pizza" in a half sheet pan with lots of cheese. Foolishly, as always, I used a pair of oven mitts that had seen better days to take the heavy awkward pan out of the 500 degree oven. Yup- I felt the heat and sort of tossed the pan up and it landed on the tender underside of my right forearm. It was really painful and I probably should have gone to the hospital but I felt so stupid. I "re-assembled" the pizza and served it to those in another room and tried to suck up the pain with the help of ice water. It was months before it healed and the scars are still (10 years) later detectable. Have I learned my lesson, nope - I love to go at that hot oven with just a kitchen towel......

[David Ross]

My worst was a burn. I made a simple "pizza" in a half sheet pan with lots of cheese. Foolishly, as always, I used a pair of oven mitts that had seen better days to take the heavy awkward pan out of the 500 degree oven. Yup- I felt the heat and sort of tossed the pan up and it landed on the tender underside of my right forearm. It was really painful and I probably should have gone to the hospital but I felt so stupid. I "re-assembled" the pizza and served it to those in another room and tried to suck up the pain with the help of ice water. It was months before it healed and the scars are still (10 years) later detectable. Have I learned my lesson, nope - I love to go at that hot oven with just a kitchen towel......

I do the same thing. Have all kinds of oven mitts and gloves rated to protect one from intense heat but they just sit in a drawer and don't get used. I use stupid little kitchen towels to open up the oven and dearly pay for it. I tried to take a Cuisinart casserole dish out of the oven the other day--with my bare hands. I was quick enough to pull back and didn't suffer any burns.

[Mjx]

I get nervous around pointy and hot objects, so I'm fairly careful, but at any given time I'm likely to have at least one minor, cooking-related wound somewhere on my hands/forearms. A lot are related to scale issues: I'm not remarkably small, but significantly smaller than the so-called 'average', so things are bigger and higher up than they ideally should be, which affects my leverage. The open wounds are usually from pushing against something too hard (compensating for decreased leverage), then having my hand lose purchase, and slam into the counter or wall, which usually opens a knuckle. Also, the angle of my arms relative to the tallish edges of the large frying pan we have is just right for me to burn my wrist when I'm flipping something. I try to remember to grab a potholder (I made a point of hanging then on the wall between the oven and stove), but they're encumbering, so I usually chance it. I got an impressive burn over the winter holidays, when I flaked, and grabbed the handle of the cast-iron pan I'd just removed from the oven and set on the stove, forgetting to use a pot-holder. Everything ended up on the floor, which was depressing end to my crepes Suzette.

No crying out, but a lot of swearing in several languages.

Edited by Mjx, 14 February 2011 - 01:56 AM.

[nakji]

Today when I was painting my kitchen, I was up on a small ladder. To reach a corner in the ceiling, I stepped on top of a butcher block with a large countertop attached. When I stepped on the countertop, it popped off. I lost my balance and fell to the floor, along with all the kitchen tools on top of the counter. The glass jars I use to hold kitchen tools broke, but luckily I wasn't cut by glass. Unfortunately, I had left my portable deep-fryer on the counter to cool so it was full of cold oil. The deep-fryer went flying, but it helped break my fall. When I collected my oil covered self off the floor, I realized I was sitting on top off the deep-fryer. The fry basket is a horrible tangled mess to say the least.

Thank heavens it wasn't full of hot oil!

And some injuries just make you shake your head. I just sliced two fingers across washing a wine glass that snapped in my fingers. I don't know how many kitchen towels I've lost to blood compression.

No gloves to finish washing the dishes with, either.

[harrysnapperorgans]

When I was studying performance guitar at university, I badly sliced my middle finger of my left hand dicing potatoes. I was only about a week out from my final exam.
I had expected a solid B, maybe even an A. I spent a huge amount of time re-learning pieces using only 3 fingers, and I got 30% in the exam.
Along with the rest of my course work for the year, I barely scraped through with a C. I've been much more carefully since.

[ChrisZ]

While the worst I have done to myself is simply slicing off the end of my thumb, the injury that haunts my mind was described to me by an apprentice when I was doing work-experience in a french restaurant. Apparently the instructors had been drilling into the young apprentices the importance of tasting the food as you cook it. Unfortunately one of them was too eager and stuck his finger into a saucepan of boiling caramel. The stickiness of the caramel and the difficulty in removing it from his finger made a very bad burn much much worse... Twenty years later and I'm still especially careful around caramels...

[Shelby]

On Valentine's Day night about 5 years ago I was slicing French bread with a knife that I've since named "The Biter". I dropped the knife and (stupidly) tried to catch it. I sliced the end off of my middle left finger. I didn't go to the hospital, but I guess I should have. That's the closest I've ever come to fainting. I still have no feeling in it. My husband doesn't let me touch that knife any more.

[nakji]

On Valentine's Day night about 5 years ago I was slicing French bread with a knife that I've since named "The Biter". I dropped the knife and (stupidly) tried to catch it. I sliced the end off of my middle left finger. I didn't go to the hospital, but I guess I should have. That's the closest I've ever come to fainting. I still have no feeling in it. My husband doesn't let me touch that knife any more.

Some knives, once they taste blood, never lose the taste for it. My microplane has a similar predilection.

[Shelby]

On Valentine's Day night about 5 years ago I was slicing French bread with a knife that I've since named "The Biter". I dropped the knife and (stupidly) tried to catch it. I sliced the end off of my middle left finger. I didn't go to the hospital, but I guess I should have. That's the closest I've ever come to fainting. I still have no feeling in it. My husband doesn't let me touch that knife any more.

Some knives, once they taste blood, never lose the taste for it. My microplane has a similar predilection.

Maybe we should introduce them.

[xxchef]

I've had lots of cuts, strains, and burns, of course, but only one sent me to the emergency room.

It was the tiniest cut you can imagine, but in just the wrong place. I was Frenching the bones on some lamb racks and made a little wrong flick with my boning knife, poking myself on the inside of my left wrist. I hardly noticed the poke and was only made aware of it when I got sprayed in the face by a stream of my own blood. Yup, poked a vein or artery.

I put the knife down and gave it a minute of direct pressure followed by a tight bandage with a gauze ball to keep the pressure on and went back to work. A few minutes later the bandages were soaked through and dripping. Took off the wraps and tried ice and more pressure but the darned thing continued to spurt. Reluctantly, off I went to the hospital (do injuries ever happen at a good time, when your not in the weeds with a huge night ahead of you?.)

The emergency room team was busy so I sat there for quite a while. When I finally got in to a cubicle a nurse asked what was wrong. I told her I'd stabbed myself at work and couldn't stop the bleeding. She gave me a once over and asked "Where?". I nodded to my wrist where my right thumb was covering the cut.

"You're kidding me, right? she asked, obviously irritated that I was wasting her time. I assured her I was not. She hrummphed and told me to move my thumb so she could look at it. I warned her - I really did, but she pushed my right hand away. Predictably, the wound opened immediately and send an arc of blood about 18 inches into the air, making a red stripe across her uniform front as she bent in to look at it.

Startled would be an understatement. She grabbed a gauze pad, put it on the wound and told me to hold it while she got the doctor. He put a quick cross-stitch across it and I was out of there in about 10 more minutes and headed back to work - back into the weeds.

Edited by xxchef, 14 February 2011 - 09:39 AM.

[judiu]

On Valentine's Day night about 5 years ago I was slicing French bread with a knife that I've since named "The Biter". I dropped the knife and (stupidly) tried to catch it. I sliced the end off of my middle left finger. I didn't go to the hospital, but I guess I should have. That's the closest I've ever come to fainting. I still have no feeling in it. My husband doesn't let me touch that knife any more.

Some knives, once they taste blood, never lose the taste for it. My microplane has a similar predilection.

Maybe we should introduce them.

Good Lord, NO! They might breed!

[nolnacs]

My microplane has a similar predilection.

As does mine... it took a surprisingly large chunk of skin off of my middle finger on Saturday night. It's still bothering me too - typing is awkward and uncomfortable.

[Shelby]

On Valentine's Day night about 5 years ago I was slicing French bread with a knife that I've since named "The Biter". I dropped the knife and (stupidly) tried to catch it. I sliced the end off of my middle left finger. I didn't go to the hospital, but I guess I should have. That's the closest I've ever come to fainting. I still have no feeling in it. My husband doesn't let me touch that knife any more.

Some knives, once they taste blood, never lose the taste for it. My microplane has a similar predilection.

Maybe we should introduce them.

Good Lord, NO! They might breed!

*shudder*

[kayb]

I was testing a mandoline for a local manufacturer/importer of sharpeners who is expanding into edged tools (not knives, but everything else). He warned me -- repeatedly -- not to use it without the guard. I was entranced with cutting 1/32 of an inch slices of tomato, and removed the guard; somehow, I managed to slice a dime-sized piece of skin and flesh from the underside of the middle finger of my right hand, between second knuckle and palm. Bled like a sonofagun. And my finger was stiff for two weeks while it healed.

[abooja]

That's it. I am *never* buying a mandoline. My mother offered to buy me one years ago, and I turned her down, wanting to save her money, but the real savings was in flesh and blood -- my own. Misshaped potato chips are far preferable to misshaped fingers.

[nolnacs]

That's it. I am *never* buying a mandoline. My mother offered to buy me one years ago, and I turned her down, wanting to save her money, but the real savings was in flesh and blood -- my own. Misshaped potato chips are far preferable to misshaped fingers.

Or you could buy a kevlar glove - that way you can have safe fingers and use a mandoline.

[Anna N]

That's it. I am *never* buying a mandoline. My mother offered to buy me one years ago, and I turned her down, wanting to save her money, but the real savings was in flesh and blood -- my own. Misshaped potato chips are far preferable to misshaped fingers.

Or you could buy a kevlar glove - that way you can have safe fingers and use a mandoline.

Or, unless you are slicing truffles, just prepare a little more of the vegetable than you need and toss the ends into the stock pot. In other words waste a little vegetable rather than getting too close to the blade.

[rebgold]

I worked on a melon farm in Israel, our kitchen was an old school bus. We boiled stocks pots of water for Turkish coffee every morning before work. One day I was sitting on the table with the burners and the full pots boiling behind me and someone jumped up on the table to sit next to me. The floor was rotten, the table leg fell through, she jumped right, out of the way of the water which all poured down my left leg. Third degree burn covered my left calf and butt cheek.
I will spare you all the story of what is what like to be in the hospital in Israel for a week when the whole thing got infected.

Also once dropped a whole full sized aluminum foil that fell out of the short side of the broken box and landed on my big toe, which broke, and had to sit on a stool on the line at work poaching 150 floating islands for a catering before I could go home. My whole foot turned purple up to my ankle.

[David Ross]

Well, about 7 weeks since the kitchen ceiling paint job fall and I'm still seeing the Chiropractor. But the kitchen looks fabulous.

[JAZ]

I'm not sure if I can even explain this, but I was in the kitchen barefoot (which we always tell our students is a bad thing, but which I do all the time anyway) and moved a couple of plates out of my way, not realizing there was a fork wedged in between them. It fell out and somehow landed so that it pierced the inside of my big toe. I couldn't figure out why my toe hurt so bad, because when I looked at the top of my foot I couldn't see anything. Then I saw the blood from the puncture wound, which was pretty deep for a damned fork. I also now have a giant bruise as well as the puncture. I should probably start wearing shoes in the kitchen.

[AaronM]

I've cut off the tip of my thumb on 2 separate occasions.

Been burned up my entire right arm by 500* oil.

Butterflied the fingerprint part of my index finger.

Set my hair on fire when I was cleaning behind a fryer and the fan clicked on.

And countless others.

The first things I tell new hires at any place I'm in charge is: #1 The most important thing in the kitchen is food safety - it is more important than your health. #2 If you drop a knife, put your hands in the air and take a step back - knives are expensive, but fingers cost more.

[toolprincess]

I cut my pinky finger really deeply while trying to "pry" a piece of frozen meat apart with a knife that (thankfully) wasn't all that sharp (or I would have lost the end of a finger). the kitchen looked like a crime scene by the time I got the short distance to the sink. I got the bleeding to stop and didn't think much of it until I went to the doctor for my yearly physical a week later and she said "that could probably have used some stitches". I still have sensation but I also have a pretty good scar across that pinky.

[natasha1270]

Another barefoot in the kitchen victim here. Once opened the door of overstuffed freezer to have a frozen solid 24 oz block of West Virginia Bacon slip out and fall immediately onto the top of my right foot. Very painful, perfectly rectangular shaped bruise but luckily no broken bones. Also have a particular spot on my right forearm that always hits the top oven rack.

[heidih]

Also have a particular spot on my right forearm that always hits the top oven rack.

This is a constant one with me. People give me the strangest looks out in public when I am wearing short sleeves....

[gastronaut]

One of my first days at a michelin starred restaurant that shall remain unknown, I was making potato coins on a mandolin with no guard on(spare me the lecture) I was trying to be talkative and get to know my staff quickly, I was furiously cutting these potatoes, and ended up taking a large chunk of skin out of my index finger.

nobody knew what happened, I immediately picked up the mandoline, dropped it off at dish, went to the office, proceeded to find as much gauze, tape, and finger condoms as I could and spent the next 20-30 minutes attempting to stop the bleeding and get it wrapped. Which inevitably led to me cauterizing it with a grill spatula and finger condom for the rest of the day.

The only questions I got was.. .why were you in the bathroom for 20 minutes? Which I left a bowel movement as my excuse.

[Special K]

Left the upper cabinet door over the fridge open, opened the fridge, leaned over to pull something out, straighened up and brained myself on the corner of the door. Really did see stars!

[LizD518]

Got my kitchen wound at 13. I was opening a can of soup and left the lid attached by a tiny bit. The lid was sticking straight up and I went to twist it off and instead my left thumb slid right across the edge somehow. If it weren't for my nail, I'd have sliced the whole thing off about a half inch from the tip. I grew up in a rural area and it was a half hour drive to the hospital and I've never seen my Dad that freaked out.

The most recent one was also because of barefoot cooking and sharp edges. I was using my food processor and had put the blade on the counter while I cleaned out the bowl. I knocked it off the counter and did jump back, but it ricocheted and hit the top of my big toe. I could see white underneath all the blood, so I knew the cut was pretty deep so I wrapped it up as best as I could, shoved my feet into my most forgiving shoes and went off to the hospital.