Your worst cooking mishap or accident

[Tralle]

I guess we have all been there.

A moment unfocused, a bit tipsy after an afternoon drink or just a case of the plain old stupid.

What is the dummest/worst way you cut or hurt yourself in the kitchen?

I will start out with a pizza related accident.

It has been a long time since I did anything else than the occasional little cut on a finger with the heel of a knife or similar.

But last summer I was having friends over for pizza, and prepping potatoes on a mandolin I went all in.
Moving a potato forward on the mandolin, it slipped my grip and instead of cutting potato i was cutting thumb flesh, and my own at that

A few curse words later, damage was inspected.
Something was clearly missing on the thumb and something was clearly not supposed to be on top of the sliced potatoes...

Spoiler: Click with caution if you are sensitive

Of course the doorbell rang just shortly after I did this.

I don't do so well looking at my own blood, so I did have a hard time seeing as I got up to answer the door.
I must have been a little pale when I greeted them as they immediately insisted i sat back down.

Well, a little scar in the thumb and in your pride never hurt anyone.
So after a little first aid and some bandaging tips and trick from mom❤ (old nurse) I were good to go again. We did pizzas and had wine and beer

I am happy to inform it has healed up nicely, and when using the mandolin, the missing piece is not in the way anymore.
Though I do use the holder thingy most of the time now...

Spoiler: A month later and not so gory

Not a video, didn't have a pic.

So please share, so we can all smile or laugh at each other's painfull mistakes
Who knows, maybe we could learn something.

 

[cooktocut]

Eek. I can happily say I've never cut myself nearly as bad. I've also never used a mandolin...

 

[Bico Doce]

My neighbor called my wife urgently one afternoon asking if she could watch her daughter as she went to ER. What had happened was she was using a mandolin and talking on the phone at the same time and eventually lost two of the tips of her fingers - the blade actually hit bone and caused a chip. I threw my mandolin away that night.

 

[Tralle]

Eek. I can happily say I've never cut myself nearly as bad. I've also never used a mandolin...

For certain stuff where consistentcy is needed I use it.
My knife skills sadly aren't good enough.
Too much waste if i try.

 

[cooktocut]

For certain stuff where consistentcy is needed I use it.
My knife skills sadly isn't good enough.
Too much waste if i try.

Buy a Chinese cleaver.

Problem solved

 

[btbyrd]

Hangry tipsy use of the mandoline.

 

[MattPike4President]

Buy a Chinese cleaver.

Problem solved

Or a cut glove if you don't mind the loss of grip

 

[brimmergj]

I have always been afraid of mandolins for those exact reasons. My wife had to have one and I had to leave the room the few times she's actually used it. Lucky for me, she doesn't cook or bake very often and I don't usually have to worry about it. I may just have to throw it out and say it got lost in the move

 

[btbyrd]

They're actually just fine if you pay attention and use proper technique. And are willing to give up on the last tiny bit of product.

 

[Tralle]

They're actually just fine if you pay attention and use proper technique. And are willing to give up on the last tiny bit of product.

And mine have a removable blade. Which means one more blade to sharpen

 

[Keith Sinclair]

Mandolins are dangerous. Have seen plenty accidents with them at work. Think of it you are moving your hand towards a sharp blade with force

 

[Borealhiker]

Lol….I’m in the club…mandolin …….not using the guard trying to get that last slice. Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

 

[MontezumaBoy]

30+ years ago I was trying to get oil to temp (instead of slowly) and had the bright idea to cover the pot ... needless to say it smoked/boiled so I had the next bright idea to remove the lid ... then it flashed ... in a panic instead of just turning the heat off & keeping calm I decided to try to move it to a sink near bye (for real) ... while burning ... I caught the edge of the sink and the pot tipped into the sink ... sheeting the flaming oil into the sink and splashing the wall ... not me though ...

Luckily I always have multiple fire extinguishers and put it out immediately ... destroying all my prep ...

After hours of clean up - 1x Kitchen Blind Replacement & 1x Gallon of paint - Everything was as good as new ... my wife came home about an hour after this started and just shook her head ...

Crazy how things can get out of hand so quickly but it changed the way I look at flame and being far more attentive when cooking ... also not getting lazy trying to rush things ...

 

[gentiscid]

I got very lucky here, soft tissue intact, minimal bleeding. Kept chopping when talking to my toddler and there u go, felt it slice the nail all the way. No need of treatment, just kept it clean and desinfected. Nail fully grown after 2 months. Happened end of December.

 

[Tralle]

30+ years ago I was trying to get oil to temp (instead of slowly) and had the bright idea to cover the pot ... needless to say it smoked/boiled so I had the next bright idea to remove the lid ... then it flashed ... in a panic instead of just turning the heat off & keeping calm I decided to try to move it to a sink near bye (for real) ... while burning ... I caught the edge of the sink and the pot tipped into the sink ... sheeting the flaming oil into the sink and splashing the wall ... not me though ...

Luckily I always have multiple fire extinguishers and put it out immediately ... destroying all my prep ...

After hours of clean up - 1x Kitchen Blind Replacement & 1x Gallon of paint - Everything was as good as new ... my wife came home about an hour after this started and just shook her head ...

Crazy how things can get out of hand so quickly but it changed the way I look at flame and being far more attentive when cooking ... also not getting lazy trying to rush things ...

So happy that you didn't get it on you!

Stings!


Being home alone in my late teenage years I thought it would be a good idea to flambee a steak i was cooking.

My parents had a gas stove.
Apparently the pan was rather hot and the alcohol vaporized instantly in to a huge grey cloud that ignited in a big fireball.
Quite spectacular.

Did nothing to the taste of the steak though

 

[Keith Sinclair]

All the years in a pro kitchen never had really bad cut little niks with a blade. Worst cut with a blade was cutting frozen fish at home to feed cat cuz ran out of cat food. Blade slipped & cut my thumb. Deep. Wrapped it up with gauze & tape still could not stop bleeding. Drove to emergency with a stick shift truck. That was interesting. Think it was 7 stitches had that scar for many years.

Bad accidents in Hotels I have seen don't even want to discuss.

 

[KingShapton]

Hmmm, this thread comes about 20 years too late - if an accident in the workshop counts?!

In that case I could offer a thumb pad in the table saw. I will never forget the sound and the feeling...neither the faces of the people around. I can't offer any pictures of the injury, everyone present was busy not throwing up...but this is what the thumb pad looks like 20 years later...

 

[gregfisk]

One day about 10 years ago I was making a marinade for cedar planked salmon that I cooked in the bbq. I had had a couple of drinks getting prepped for a large party at our house. It was summertime and I was in shorts and barefoot. I set a 10” Wusthof chefs knife too close to the edge of the counter after cutting up a lemon to put in the marinade. Somehow I knocked the knife off of the counter and it landed edge down right at the base of my big toe. It was sharp and cut clean through to the bone and severed my tendon. I went in for an operation the next day and had the tendon repaired. They had to slice my foot several inches across the wound to retrieve the tendon because they stretch so far. It took months to heal with no walking and no driving for two of them. I’d show you a picture but you really don’t want to see it. It still gives me shivers thinking about it.

 

[Perverockstar]

I was at the Wok station. I had a wok with smoking hot oil. When I tried to switch it to another burner, I hit the bench with it by accident, so the very hot oil was poured over my left hand...

Not fun at all. It was rush hour so I tried to continue working. Eventually I gave up and my nephew took me to the ER.

When we were on our way, I saw a HUGE bubble all over my hand xD. The most huge blister I have seen in my life so far.

I was out of service for 3 weeks. Insurance took care of me. They paid all the doctors bills, including a super duper expensive plastic surgeon, and my full salary.

I spent the whole three weeks on pain killers and weed just enjoying the life.

 

[Rangen]

My worst cooking mishap happened some years ago, before I had the sort of lethal edge on my knives that I do now.

Even then, I used Chinese cleavers whenever possible, but, unlike now, I had exactly two Chinese cleavers. A thin one and a thick one. They had the kind of edges on them that most normal people have on their knives, which is to say really crappy.

I needed to cut a carrot lengthwise, or at least the thick bottom part after I had cut the carrot across in two, so I reached for a cleaver to do that. But I grabbed the thick cleaver, and used the muscle memory for the thin cleaver. The carrot rolled, and the thick cleaver came down hard on the ring fingertip of my left hand. It split the nail, and much of my fingertip, though not down to the bone. Bleeding was impressive.

In the emergency room, they gave me a choice. Wait 90 minutes for the guy who could inject my finger with a local anesthetic, or tough it out and get stitches right then. I picked the second one. They put the stiches through the fingernail. I did not even know that was a thing, and, well, ow.

The good news is that, while that fingertip was numb for a couple of years, now it is visibly normal, and just responds a little weirdly if I press on it.

 

[MarcelNL]

Auch ...the nail bed is one of the more sensitive places to stitch up..it's not without reason those are prime torture targets.
I managed to slice some red onion once, or that got me wondering...I DID take out a normal onion, wait....and then I noticed I took off a couple of mm of the tip of my thumb. Nothing serious as it grew back over a few months but it did hurt, underlying problem was lack of knife skills....I started reading up on cutting techniques since.

 

[Michi]

Many years ago, when I was a teenager, I was part of a large youth group run by my local church. One winter evening, we had an event where everyone got together mid-afternoon at a local lake (frozen over, of course) to go iceskating. Afterwards, we were going back to the church hall for dinner.

The father of one of boys had volunteered to feed us and made a huge (as in ~10 l) pot of goulash soup. With a bread roll on the side, that's a nice winter meal to fill up a bunch of hungry kids.

We did our iceskating and showed up at the hall, where a few adults had prepared everything. Of course, everyone was in a good mood, there was lots of joking, jostling, etc. Too much testosterone… Two of the other kids had a friendly tussle, which resulted in one of them chasing the other one, running at full speed. A moment later, one of them didn't quite make the turn near the corner of the room and managed to knock the pot of soup off the table where it was sitting ready for serving.

No-one got hurt. But the mess was beyond description. We had an entire lake of goulash soup on the floor, and spatters from the soup up the walls to a height of two meters.

The remainder of the evening was spent with everyone cleaning up, and going home hungry with nothing but a dry bread roll for dinner…

 

[Eziemniak]

I might have once, at the very beginning of my career, strained the bones for the chef dumping the stock (demi). He wasn't too happy...

 

[M1k3]

I might have once, at the very beginning of my career, strained the bones for the chef dumping the stock (demi). He wasn't too happy...

I had a coworker make dashi. He saved the mushrooms and kombu.....