71 replies to this topic

[AaronM]

Today playing with dry ice I licked the spoon that was in the bowl the dry ice used to be in and had to rip it off.

My cheek's bleeding, my tongue hurts, and I can't taste.

:(

Edited by AaronM, 30 March 2011 - 07:26 PM.

[Genkinaonna]

It's like sticking your tongue to a frozen pole times a million!

I have a numb spot on my finger from cutting it down to the bone while chopping carrots at age 10 with my parents super crappy knives, I asked for a decent chef's knife for my 11th birthday!

[PopsicleToze]

I was hacking chicken legs and accidently hacked my thumb.



I'm a lot more careful now!

[Jose Nieves]

I take full blame for some of my injuries.. stabbing the meaty area between thumb and forefinger 45 mins before service (only time I had to go to the ER since the sucker refused to stop "spurting" out), the four 5" burn lines on my forearm from my time spent working with a wood burning oven with a small aperture that are oddly somewhat evenly spaced, several odd looking fingertips that have been introduced to "The B*tch" (my Matfer Mandoline), etc..

But I blame the "mark" on my foot on the individual that opened the steam valve on a 60G steam kettle right as I was walking by and all the steam condensed inside my Birki (I had to go see the resort's nurse so it technically wasn't an ER) and the small notch on my ear on the idiot that forgot to transfer the vodka to a plastic container and poured out of the glass bottle while sauteing some scallops.

[annabelle]

Once upon a time when I was newly married, I was tidying up the kitchen after breakfast while wearing a kimono with wide sleeves. I turned around and the cuff of my sleeve caught the handle of my Melitta coffee pot and dashed it to the floor where it shattered in a million pieces including one large jagged one that pierced the top of my foot between my great and second toe. (Another entry in the "Wear Shoes in the Kitchen" Tales.) Naturally, blood started pumping out of my foot and onto the floor while I tried to tie it up with a tea towel so I didn't track blood all over the rug as I limped upstairs to wash it off and to call my husband. We only had one car and he had already left for work. Thirty minutes later, he had returned home to find me and my newborn son both bawling our eyes out and the bathroom looking like a scene from CSI: Philadelphia (where we lived at the time). I ended up with five stitches and a new coffee maker.

[onrushpam]

Two big ones here... one me, one DH (but I had to deal with his)

We remodeled our kitchen and installed a new LP gas cooktop (replacing an electric one). I kept telling DH something wasn't right! He said it was fine and I was One night I turned on a burner and it went WHOOSH! Caught the edge of my Tshirt sleeve and caught me on fire! Thankfully, DH was standing nearby and put me out. But, I had one heck of a burn in my armpit! Called the appliance peeps back and sure enough... they'd hooked my cooktop up to LP using the natural gas valves.

A few years later, DH was recovering from back surgery and was a leetle beet drugged up (whacked out). I had two big slow cookers bubbling away with chicken parts to make stew for a sick dog. I still don't know what DH thought he was doing, but he managed to dump BOTH pots/lids/contents onto the floor. Everything basically exploded... greasy chicken and liquid and glass from ceiling to floor and everything in between. No serious injuries, but it took me weeks to get it all cleaned up. I just kept finding pieces of chicken, greasy spots, shards of glass, etc.

[the old cook]

Years ago, young child running around, I was baking cherry pie, I reached to open the oven door with my mitt on hand, but reached BARE hand into oven, it pulled out the pie, and stuck to the cherry juice....I was screaming and trying to shake it off...child started laughing thinking I was trying to be funny. Emergency room and hour or so later, I was so full of pain meds I didn't care! But have been oh so careful since then with ovens. I am, however, constantly (since I am short) burning my arm on upper oven rack as I pull something out.

[SylviaLovegren]

DH set himself on fire this morning. Was wearing a fleece and turned his back on the gas burner, the bottom of the fleece kind of flared out when he turned and whoosh! Up in flames. Fortunately he was right next to the sink and sprayed the fire out immediately. Neither of us will wear one of those near an open flame again.

[Lindacakes]

I have to admit I'm woozy after reading these stories.

When I was a child, I was making popcorn balls with my Dad. He was pouring the hot syrup and I was stirring. We managed to coordinate that so that he poured hot syrup over my finger. For years I had no knuckle, and thought of it as my "monster finger". You can tell if you look hard, and it's very sensitive. Oddly, it was a bonding experience as I got to see my Dad from a different angle and ditto for him. He referred to it recently -- I hadn't realized we never had popcorn balls or candied apples made at home after that.

I was a houseguest of a friend who had us over to her in-law's house in the country. She was unfamiliar with their very big stove and when she lit the pilot light, a giant flame whooshed out over her face. Her husband was frozen, and I grabbed her and brought her over to the sink where I pulled her hair out in hunks and held a cool towel on her face. I also held her hand in the hospital while the husband stood there, mute. Our friendship ended for unrelated reasons not long after that incident and I've often wondered what happened to that marriage.

A great aunt's clothing caught fire from her stove. She lived alone, and stood at the sink pouring glasses of water down her back. She died later, from the wounds.

Now that I've written these incidents in one place, I'm seeing why I'm not thinking kitchen accidents are amusing . . .

[David Ross]

This is the scene of the accident-sink full of dishes, no room in sink to place a colander to drain pasta. Cook decided to place colander on top of the dishes in the sink, knowing full-well that when he attempts to drain the pasta, the water and pasta will probably slop out of the colander--no where for the water to drain with all those dishes. He proceeds. Hot pasta and hot water splash out of sink and stream onto cooks feet. Covered with socks-(that act like a sponge)-the hot water burns the top of cooks feet. Dreadful.

[gfweb]

Cut myself on mandolines so many times I bought a Kevlar glove. Amazingly protective, now I can be a little careless when slicing.

A collapsible strainer with lots of unperforated rubber on its top half sloshed boiling water back up the handle and all over my hand when I drained a pot of pasta. Terrible design.
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[PopsicleToze]

This is the scene of the accident-sink full of dishes, no room in sink to place a colander to drain pasta. Cook decided to place colander on top of the dishes in the sink, knowing full-well that when he attempts to drain the pasta, the water and pasta will probably slop out of the colander--no where for the water to drain with all those dishes. He proceeds. Hot pasta and hot water splash out of sink and stream onto cooks feet. Covered with socks-(that act like a sponge)-the hot water burns the top of cooks feet. Dreadful.

Were you "Cook"?

[azurite]

Learned by cutting a few fingers & grating raw the same place twice on my index finger (did it the second time just after the skinned area had almost healed), that it's best to concentrate on what I'm doing and NOT replay in my mind whatever frustrating incidents might've occurred that day while I'm slicing & dicing veg or grating a chunk of Parmesan.

Had to grab the handle of a hot iron skillet a few times before it sunk into the more primitive parts of my brain that the handles of cast iron skillets get much hotter, burning hot as it happens, than that of my other pots, pans, skillets, so keeping something w/insulating properties (silicon pad, whatever) between my hand and the skillet handle is advisable.

[BarbaraY]

Lots of cuts, burns, etc during 45 years of cooking in various food service. The first time I went to the ER I was still very much a novice. Time to stone the grill at the end of my shift. I put too much fat on the grill and began scrubbing furiously. Needless to say that hot grease and stone crumbs went all over the back of my hand and wrist.
I rinsed it off with cold water and finished the job, signed out and started for home when I realized that my hand and arm were still burning and getting worse by the moment. ER was on my way home so that's where I went. Bandaged like the return of the mummy, I had to take several days off.
Never did do that again.

Same place, the chef had a tendency to tipple every night and often came to work still crocked. He was cutting up a roast turkey one day. He laid his knife across the thigh joint and slammed his hand down on it. The knife was blade upward. All I could do was grab his arm and try to stop the bleeding while screaming for the owner.
More blood than I ever saw or care to see again. Took, as I recall, 18 stitches.

[Dignan]

It's stretching the definition by labelling it an injury, but it did draw blood. Yesterday I was slicing a large, crusty sourdough boule for some toasted cheese (the most solitary of meals, to quote Rebus/Rankin). I palmed the top of the loaf and commenced to saw with the bread knife. The loaf shifted under my hand and drove a piece of crust under the skin of my thumb, just as a splinter of wood might. It was large and fairly easy to remove, but as I said it pierced the skin and drew a small amount of blood. I wonder whether I'll develop any bread related superpowers.

Edited by Dignan, 29 May 2012 - 03:56 PM.

[annabelle]

I have a set of very heavy Norwegian cookware that I bought when I first left home about 35 years ago. I was using the smaller of two stockpots to boil potatoes for potato salad the other day. Now this set of pots has no gaskets between the vessel and the handles so the handles get very hot. I was holding the pot over the sink to tip the potatoes into a colander and had one of the pot holders slip a little and turn the pot upside-down faster than expected. The pot's very hot bottom (they are copper-cored) banged up against the inside of my forearm and immediately raised a blister that popped and left me with a two inch section of raw skin.

I can tell by the way it is healing that I am going to end up with a discolored patch of skin. Who needs tattoos? I've got cuts, scrapes and burns, baby!

[flourgirl]

I have been slashed by the blades of the food processor and burnt when rotating pans in the oven but I wanted to tell you about the accident my son had in the kitchen. He was at work in the kitchen of a supermarket. He worked as a butcher in the meat department. He put his hands in the suds-filled sink when all of a sudden the water turned red and blood shot out, toward the ceiling. Hidden beneath the suds were the knives the other butchers were soaking. He was taken to The Hospital For Special Surgery in NYC where he underwent a surgical procedure. His nerves were severed. I sat in the waiting room, watching the TV suspended from the ceiling. President Clinton was on TV denying his involvement with a White House intern. The year was 1998. My son was out of work for months due to his injury and still does not have full use of his hand. He is no longer a butcher.

Edited by flourgirl, 29 May 2012 - 09:41 PM.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Yikes.

My worst one was probably cutting my left ring finger nearly in half while using a bandsaw to cut steaks (about 15 years ago). I still have a faint, interesting scar in my fingerprint, although to all other intents and purposes you can't tell that I did it.

My hands are a disaster, though - I have to wear gloves with formal wear because they're just not fit to be seen. Like many people on this thread, I always have an interesting assortment of knife and kitchen-related cuts and contusions. And unlike the rest of you, I'm so tall that I can easily scorch my forearms when I bend over to take things out of the oven - even now that it's elevated on a nice little tile riser.

[tukicook]

whilst clipping my fingernails before / after work i always manage to clip one a little too short allowing salt and lemon juice to penetrate it for the next week.... no matter how much it hurts i always mange to do it again, and again, and again...

[Kerry Beal]

Only a couple of little nicks in my ankles - but I must say - they, and my kitchen, smell like ass!

[Panaderia Canadiense]

What was that, fish sauce?

[Kerry Beal]

What was that, fish sauce?

Yup!

[Anna N]

What was that, fish sauce?

Yup!

I knew there was a reason to stay home instead of joining you on Manitoulin!

[Panaderia Canadiense]

What was that, fish sauce?

Yup!

My condolences to your ankles and to your kitchen. That's a smell that takes a good long while to go away, even with scrubbing.....

[Kerry Beal]

What was that, fish sauce?

Yup!

I knew there was a reason to stay home instead of joining you on Manitoulin!

Had you been here it never would have been on that shelf though!

[maggiethecat]

I learned about the perils of Barefoot in the Kitchen, oh, lemme think -- jelly shoes, my daughter was in middle school. Late eighties?

I dropped an empty gallon glass jug of Gallo Paisano on my bare foot. The bottle didn't break, but all five toes on my right foot did. I wore flip flops to work, in a business dress code firm, for two months.

Lesson learned. I can buy better wine now, and I'd as soon go into the kitchen barefoot as date Charlie Sheen.

[young_]

Note to self: be careful with mandolins. Lol

I work in a kitchen so we have our fair share of injuries. My hands are often covered in superficial scratches and burn marks. Just a part of the job :/ it would help if we had better equipment though lol

My worst kitchen related accident was actually at home and a result of my young naive ways. I was using a knife to pry open a pack of frozen hot dogs and had one hand holding the hot dogs, and the other hand poking in between the hot dogs long ways up towards my othe hand (so stupid) well of course the knife slipped and went straight into/ across my thumb. Still have a nasty scar.


I also have a nasty scar from a can of corn. The lid was hanging on by a tiny piece of metal so I thought id snatch it up off the can, well it slid right off and into my finger lol

We live and learn ;)


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[ScottyBoy]

The one big kitchen injury I had was falling off a ladder. It was a horrible setup at the place. I ladder bolted to a wall, a 5x5 square cut out of the wall and all the dry goods stored in that space. Imagine lugging down a oil jug for the fryer one handed coming back down...yeah...stupid. I slipped and fell snapping a tendon in my right ankle.

Well the owner would not get in touch with me, trying to deny me workers comp for some reason. First thoughts were that he didn't have insurance but after 2 months and finally contacting a lawyer who sent a letter to him he called me the next day but...."You're going to have to talk to my lawyer".

Took 9 months out of my career. I did not enjoy that.

[Lisa Shock]

I managed to removed all of the skin and a good chunk of cartilage off the top of the proximal knuckle of my right forefinger on a peeler which had been placed in my pastry tool kit by someone else. (hot side people have knife rolls, pastry chefs have rolling toolkits) I just reached in to grab a spatula and popped off a disc of skin about the size of a nickel. I slapped a glove on it, taping the wrist area with blue masking tape, and drove myself to the hospital where I the ER admitted me almost immediately because the glove was full of blood and puffy like a balloon.

Once, someone pulled a speed rack out of the rotating oven, unloaded the pans really quickly and put the rack with the empty/cool ones without telling anyone. I grabbed it hard and pulled it toward myself burning the palms of both hands and part of one forearm. The hands healed fairly quickly, the forearm oozed for a couple of months and was then an impressive scar. The scar has since faded, while more minor burns have left permanent marks.

[Charlotte1988]

I've cut myself quite a few times. This thread reminds me of the Friends episodes where Monica is trying to be sexy in front of Chandler and she drops a knife and it lands in his foot - anyone seen it?