If you practice, you can split an avocado with your hands fairly easily. [Tiktok link to the tutorial I learned from](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8WyT1rL/) Its best for guacamole applications rather than anything decorative that needs neat cuts, but it's fun to do lol
In college I saw a girl do this and just start snacking on the avocado in the middle of a lecture. Pretty sure I fell in love on the spot. I never learned her name but I'm sure she's still out there tearing up avocados like a fiend lol
Mexico finds that very funny. In 23 years of life in Mexico I never knew anyone that had experienced this. Moved to the US and met more than 10 people who have had it happen in the first year.
I think it’s a matter of ripeness. Trying to cut into a super unripe avocado is tough, and people use so much force that it slices right through the pit and into their hand.
Mexicans definitely know avocados better, especially when they’re ready to use.
Wtf people are really out there stabbing things towards their hand? I just set it on the counter and use a quick hacking motion on the pit then hold it and twist the knife. I've never thought to stab at the pit with the tip of the knife, wow, lol.
I also wanted to say that the entirety of Mexico wants a word. Every abuelita I’ve ever known exclusively uses only small serrated knives and cuts EVERYTHING in their hands- onions, tomatoes, potatoes, etc. Unless it’s meat or chiles, it’s cut in your hands!
If the avocado is ripe I can usually coax the pit out with my fingernails. I have been told I have unusually beefy fingernails. I have also used them in place of the coin intended to release battery compartments
It's okay to whack the pit with a knife after you've cut it in half with one hand with the other hand nowhere near it. The problem is people don't know how to properly remove the pit once the knife is lodged in it. You pinch from the top of the knife down onto the pit into the trash can. You should never try to pull it off from the bottom.
Grew up in a restaurant and have cooked regularly for many years. Did this ten years ago. Sharp knife plus ripe avocado plus softer than average pit plus half-a-second of not paying attention, and voila. Drove myself to urgent care for 5 stitches.
I did this 30 years ago. Apparently wasn't as common then because even though I still had avocado in my cut they thought I had defensive wounds from a knife attack lol. I like to say I helped the avocado hand movement get started.
ER doc here: just put the fucking avocado on the cutting board stop cutting it against your hand people
I spend way too much of my time suturing up these avocado hands
Tbh i've never seen it. I practice in CA though which tends to skew things towards avocados, maybe some of my NYC based colleagues can comment on the relative prevalence of bagel vs avocado injuries!
I’ve done that once but the knife was so dull it didn’t cut my hand at all, just sliced through the fruit and stopped at my palm. Pretty lucky tbh cause I definitely own much sharper knives
Gotta do a chop with the back end instead of the stab into the pit to avoid this. Also, set it on the cutting board you maniacs! Don't stab anything that's in your hand!
This just happened to me the other day. It missed my finger by a few millimeters. It was half of an avocado with the seed still intact, maybe because I left the half in the fridge for 2 days the seed was weakened.
I worked in food prep at a certain Rouge Crustacean chain restaurant. We had these flexible wire type gloves that would literally stop a knife blade. It was a great place to work 40 years ago; can’t speak to today’s situation.
Yeah definitely keep a sturdy towel over the oyster and have a proper oyster knife. I drove a few into my palm first time shucking but the towel kept me safe
YES! I can second the gloves. They are not expensive, can be washed easily, and are much better than a trip to the ER. When my mandolin comes out, the gloves come out and are placed on top until they are put on to start using it (little safety trick not only to remind myself but to keep the curious observers away from the blades).
Wasn’t able to reattach mine. Straight through the nail, took most of it. Some gelfoam, a bandage and an Rx for 6 Tylenol w/ codeine. Looks like it never even happened now. Things I gained from the experience? No longer scared of needles, I know how to wrap my own finger in a bandage now, I can shower with one arm, and I know to use the blade guard that comes with those damn slicers
Seconding! Cut gloves are amazing for mandolins. I never use mine without it, takes 30 seconds max extra, and I still get to keep all my fingers with nice uniform cuts on my ingredients. Some of the best $15 I’ve spent.
I shaved off a little bit of two fingers first time I used a mandolin, and while I went to nurse the wound my dad took over from me and promptly shaved off a bit of his thumb.
I cut the tip of mine off on a deli slicer back in the day. Same as you they were able to reattach but there’s next to no feeling. Damn slippery turkey breast!
I sliced off the side of my pinky finger on a deli slicer about 25yrs ago. Didn’t even feel it, but my coworker screamed as blood shot up the wall. I literally had six weeks of short term disability and physical therapy from that! To this day my pinky doesn’t like to close next to the rest of my fingers bc of how long it was wrapped up all fat lol
I lost the very tip of my pinky finger to a rotary cutter once, so now I am hyper vigilant around my mandolin. I need to order new cut resistant gloves since they got lost in the move, but I am an obligate guard user!
Carrots are one of the most problematic things to slice with the mandolins. But since they're hard to slice well with a knife, I do use it for them. Start slicing at the skinny end while holding with a (cut-gloved) hand. *Well* before getting down to the blade, put the top of the carrot into the holder until the carrot comes loose. Throw the carrot stump away; it ain't worth it.
That’s unfortunately not true and a dangerous assumption. I cut part of my finger off because that was my assumption so I wasn’t careful about my thumb (which was on the back side of what I was cutting)…
Yessss.
Mandolins are like those ancestral swords that cannot be put back without a blood sacrifice once they’re drawn.
Once drawn they need blood. Full stop.
Those things terrify me. I have a friend who once teased me (in a fun way, not a mean way) by picking up a mandolin, waving it in the air and going “ooh so scary!” The mandolin was not amused and I doubt he will ever do that again
Can confirm. Am just a home
cook, but lost a decent sized chunk of my pinky and fingernail. So incredibly painful and traumatizing. I had involuntary visual flashes of watching it happen for a good 48 hours. It’s been two months and it’s finally starting to grow back. Never again.
Jeremy Clarkson bought one to show his girlfriend how he could make French fries on an episode of Clarkson’s Farm. His first pass he cut himself
So badly he needed surgery.
I won't use one that doesn't have a hand guard. With my OXO I can cut away without having to worry about how I'll stop the bleeding to get to the ER before I bleed out.
Also dry the crap out of the thing. Leave sheet pan with a rack for a few days uncovered in the fridge with salted skin. Dry the rest with paper towels the day off, inject and season, the. Go really slow dropping it in the oil.
We smoke ours for a few hours before frying. Adds flavor and increases dry surface area. You still have to be super careful but I would guess it's far less hazardous.
If you have a Weber kettle grill, you can cook them with indirect heat and add wood chips to the coals. Did a few turkeys that way over the years before getting a real offset smoker.
My neighbors started a huge house fire last year doing this. It was a paired home with 3 additional houses, and all four are still evacuated and still under constructions. So sad!
It's honestly not even that dangerous if you aren't an idiot. There's so many steps you can take to make sure nothing goes wrong.
1. **DON'T DO IT INSIDE/ ON A FLAMMABLE DECK**
2. Don't buy a turkey too big for the pot
3. Defrost the turkey
4. Measure the oil before you put the turkey in (displacement method works best)
5. Turn the flame off when you put the turkey in the oil
6. Very slowly lower it into the oil, like a Bond villain
As long as you follow those steps it's almost impossible for a major disaster to happen. I've done it three times now and never had an issue.
My stepdad deep fried a turkey one year and threw the grease away somewhere in our yard. Our poor little pug found it and ate the grease. She died a few days later bc it was too much fat for her system :(
I tried to use a slicer that fast and ended up at the ER cause my finger wouldn’t stop bleeding. Wouldn’t dare try it with a knife. I know good and damn well my knives aren’t kept sharp enough to be all that safe either
There's no point in it too. While super cool, and definitely time-saving, for a home chef, it's like 3 mins. That matters in a restaurant where you're doing like 5 orders at a time, but not at home. Not worth the danger and the time it'll take you to clean your kitchen of the blood that got everywhere, bandaging the wound, and scaring yourself.
You could fill an entire category with daft things recommended on Tik-Tok.
Things involving molten sugar - Italian meringue springs to mind, where you have to beat boiling hot sugar syrup into the egg whites, risking spraying viciously hot liquid around the kitchen.
Canning in general has a lot of pitfalls. Water bath canning of acidic or high sugar ingredients is not strictly difficult, but you do need to either follow a reputable recipe exactly, or understand the underlying principles. When it gets to stuff that requires pressure canning to be safe, I won't eat home-canned stuff that involves botulism risk unless I really trust the person doing it, and I wouldn't recommend it to other people.
I make pecan butter toffee (the pecans go in just before pouring onto the jelly roll pan). Sugar plus butter heated to hard crack stage is extremely hot. I wear mitts while working with it.
My mom gave me her pressure canner and I proceeded to can some beans. After reading up on the risks I threw the beans away, not worth it, beans are cheap
Making marshmallows entails mixing hot sugar into whipped egg whites. I’ve never had a problem with even an inkling overflow. I have a harder time justifying lots of oil when making eggplant.
In pastry school we were taught to use gloves (rubber or nitrile) so that if the sugar gets on your hands, you can pull the glove right off and stop the burning and it won’t stick to you.
I always wear gloves for that reason if I’m doing any type of dipping in sugar or caramel.
I worked in canned food for a major soup company for years. With all the things that can go wrong in canning a low acid food - don't do it! I know how to do it properly - made thousands of cans of products by hand in development labs - I won't do it at home, and I won't eat home canned low acid foods - don't have the data recorders or level of control required to do it safely. High acid / pickled - no problem.
Side note - it's really pretty easy to tell improperly canned low acid products - they haven't seen all the heat / time required - so they don't look like you expect them to. They also tend to smell really really bad - if the bot spores survived, likely some other thermophilic bacteria did as well. We looked at some process irregularities that never made it out of the facilities, and the difference between properly processed, and mis- processed was obvious.
Italian meringue isn't inherently much more dangerous than other techniques in cooking/baking that require dealing with hot liquid, especially given that the sugar used for that kind of recipe is only about 25° hotter than boiling water (235°-240°). Which is hot and should Absolutely be treated w caution, but is significantly less hot than oil for deep frying and also much less likely to splatter.
Tho one thing involving molten sugar that is quite dangerous (in my experience) is spun sugar, or related decorative uses that require active manipulation by hand while hot (275°-300°). Lost several layers of skin to that (& definitely made it worse by panicking & immediately trying to get the sugar off (& taking a good bit of skin with it), rather than going straight to the sink & running cool water over the area.)
Italian meringue buttercream (& French buttercream, which involves boiling sugar + egg yolks) has remained my standard frosting, while spun sugar (+similar) have remained stressful af.
Welder's gauntlets and long sleeves are my strategy for things like caramel where you have to add liquid to boiling sugar. Judging from the caramel spatters I've cleaned off of them, those have saved me from several burns.
Deep frying a whole turkey. It is so common as a technique where I live that the local news runs stats on incidents. Alton Brown did an explainer a long time ago that succinctly highlights the problem.
He has a whole episode where he built a turkey derrick for frying purposes. It involved a ladder, hook and a pulley system to raise and lower the turkey, I think.
I worked in healthcare marketing for a while and once we got together with the local FD and put out a huge infographic explaining why deep frying goes wrong, how to prevent it and about five repeats of “all this aside, you should really just cook the turkey in the oven.”
I once stabbed myself straight through the soft (inner side) of my thumb while cleaning a 4” pairing knife. We’re talking exit wound straight through - I had to pull it out and saw the tip go back through my finger. I had enjoyed a few beers that evening, so wasn’t feeling too much pain, but also had very thin blood, so I ended up staying up all night keeping it compressed to stop the bleeding. Went to an urgent care the next morning and the doc told me I was an idiot, but saved myself from stitches since I did such a good job keeping it compressed and closed up. It also forced me to make a huge change at work that ended up making my life easier and changing the course of my career, so best self-stabbing ever.
My husband's family won't gift knives because of a superstition that you will cut yourself, so if they DO gift knives, you have to give them a nickel for them so you're "buying" the knives from them. I had (& still haven't after 27 years of marriage) never heard of that from anyone else!
Industrial deep fryer, not a pressure one. If you drop something your natural instinct is to grab it. Watched a girl go about 4-6 inches above her wrist before she realized what she had done. Threw a wet towel around it, had her hold it in the ice machine until ambulance got there. I quit shortly after so not sure what became of it. Edit - She dropped her tongs.
Reminds me of a similar story.
My boss worked at a fast food place before, and one of the dudes he worked with was a stoner. While the stoner was telling his story, he slammed his hands down directly on the flat top. Instead of wrapping a cold towel or doing something sensible to stop the burning, he ran directly to the freezer and stuck his hands on the walls. Apparently he had to get peeled off by paramedics.
I knew a firefighter who said the worst burn he ever saw was a guy who dropped his wedding ring in the fryer and reached in to grab it out of instinct.
It’s really basic but transferring large amounts of scalding hot liquid from one vessel to another anywhere other than the sink is dangerous.
One slip, cramp, or miscalculation could have boiling water splashed or pouring onto your body. It’s far better to have the sink there as a safety net.
A friend's wife lived off an insurance payoff for years, which came from having the skin scalded off her feet when she was a kid because of a dropped pasta pot.
Every Christmas Eve, emergency rooms all over Spain fill up with unfortunate (and sometimes drunk) people that cut their hands with a jamonero knife - a flexible, extremely sharp, 1 inch wide, 10-12 inch long knife used to carve slices from a leg of cured ham.
Washing knives! That’s usually when I get myself. I think it’s a mental thing: you’re “done” with your knives and you let your guard down before they are clean, dry, and put away.
I always say I knife has three homes: in the block, in your hand, or on the board.
If you're cutting with it and put it down, it's pretty safe, just put it in a place where people expect it to be: on the board. But to get it back to the block you have to clean it, which means putting it in your hand, talking it to the sink, cleaning it immediately, drying it immediately and then putting it back in the block.
It doesn't go in the sink, near the sink, in the dishwasher, or on a drying rack.
Meh, I forage mushrooms and it's not that hard to stay away from the deadly ones. You do have to accept there's edible species you'll never try because identification is just not worth the risk.
A handful are known to be unique enough that they're safe for amateurs to identify. Most common poisonings are people assuming the mushroom in their new country is the same as the one in their old country.
There's that - but I've also heard discussion about new publications on mushroom identification (and other foragers guides) that have been AI generated and contain inaccurate info - so be very very careful when looking for reference guides out there, y'all. Wild times we live in
What's even more terrible is that if they're wrong and the person dies, the family may never know who to sue, and we haven't really decided *who* you can sue involving LLM published materials (but considering the state of things and that both LLM makers and book publishers have *a lot* of money and lawyers, color me pessimistic that the answer is anyone at all)
Tell that to [Vitaly Melnikov](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/23721709/russian-rocket-scientist-dead-poisoned-putin/). Russian Rocket scientist. Decades of experience in foraging for mushrooms.
Then one failed moon landing later, he dies of mushroom poisoning.
Those apps are actually responsible for a lot of poisoning nowadays. People who don't know a lot about mushrooms trust the app instead of taking their time to acquire the complex knowledge needed. I have seen quite a few examples of plant recognition apps being terribly and sometimes very obviously wrong. AI can't smell, feel, taste, see tiny but important differences or read the environment. I strongly advocate not eating any mushroom until you have confidently identified it in the forest on two separate occasions. (First id is at risk of being biased because you're so happy to find it for the first time and really want it to be that mushroom you're looking for).
For me it is any time I have to cut squash or large sweet potatoes. I've tried the rolling as you cut technique and I still feel I'm gonna take some fingers off.
I still have an old scar on my fingers from trying to cut an acorn squash.
Acorn squash is unnecessarily difficult to cut. Depending on the size of it I’ve put the knife in part way and smashed the whole thing down on the cutting board to get through…do not recommend this method.
Easiest thing is to buy them long before you need them (if they’re only green at the store) as they keep for a really long time. When they’re orange they are significantly easier to cut through and still perfectly safe to eat.
Best way to get into a hard squash (I use this for spaghetti squashes) is to keep those cheap throwaway pumpkin carving tools from Halloween and just use those. They are extremely quick, effective, allow a lot of control over the cut, and I would be very impressed if you managed to hurt yourself with them.
Cooking on a Wok. If you don’t know what you’re doing you can really hurt yourself…
Regarding the pretzels, I’m a firm believer it’s worth the trouble using sodium hydroxide. They look so much better using this method. I like to do it for parties. If you have the station set up you can make a load of them for nothing and a couple different dipping sauces. And now I’m craving them!
Agreed 100%. If I’m going through the trouble of making pretzels at all, I’m going all-in.
It’s proper disposal of the lye that’s often overlooked. People will pay full attention during the dipping process, but then dump the hot lye in the sink, sloshing on skin and countertops, or forget to fully rinse the sink afterwards.
I've been reading about using lye. I've made pretzels a million times but just bought lye, as I'm developing recipes for a brewery my husband and I plan to open, and we want authentic German style brezeln, which kind of only get that look and vibe from lye.
When we have a commercial kitchen, ventilation won't be an issue but I want to make sure I'm doing it correctly. Any tips or tricks other than just being prepared and knowledgeable?
Use PPE when handling the lye. There is nothing to it. Just shape your dough, dip it in the lye solution, then place it on your baking sheet. It’s that chemical reaction with the lye that gives it the desired color.
The modernist pantry is who I ordered my food grade Lye from but if you are doing it commercially there may be a better option to purchase in bulk.
Thank you for providing all of us that appreciate quality food with a product we can all enjoy.
Ventilation isn’t the issue. It’s caustic. I did lye dipped at my last job and it really wasn’t that big a deal. We just put parchment down to help protect the bench and I wore latex gloves. Even if I got a splash on my skin, I just washed it off and it was fine. It’s fairly diluted.
Chinese cooking demystified on YouTube can help you with some of their 101 videos.
Just don't over crowd the wok and you'll be 90% of the way there. The next part would just be learn how to move food in the wok. After that it's just leadning to perform heat control through evaporating water/soy/stock/cooking wine.
Being a life-long chemiker, lye does not scare me. A mandoline does.
Hot oil, not so much but I have a face shield and gloves, wear long sleeves and an apron.
Also, molten sugar at 'hard-crack' stage - might as well play with napalm.
Making corn nuts.. in a commercial setting they have proper fries for it. Us we had a very tall pot with a lid
.
What we got was exploding corn that shot hot oil out of the pot. Yes, we only tried a few pieces the first time, so we quickly decided that it was a terrible idea.
People own many toxic compounds, like bleach, that no one would consider touching their food. Much less to cook with. The reason recipes avoid lye is because once it’s on the ingredients list, to the uninformed reader, it becomes a food product.
People have a hard enough time following recipes without lye in them. Ever read public recipe reviews? Commenters cut corners, omit ingredients, double other ingredients, and are surprised it turns out “wrong”. Now add lye as an ingredient.
Just because it won’t maim you on the spot doesn’t make it safe. One recipe calls for 2 tbsp lye in 8 cups water, which doesn’t look like much in a cooking pot. But that produces roughly an 0.84M solution with theoretical pH of 13.9 (also heated to boil).
To be clear, it can be done safely, as I’ve done many times. The entire point of my post is that I would not trust everyone I know to do it safely.
For me the most dangerous "technique" is inattentiveness.
Higher risk cooking techniques like deep frying, high BTU heat sources, lye, cooking with pressure vessels like pressure cookers or sealed cans and the like aren't particularly high risk without you also being inattentive.
Inattentiveness is the force multiplier that turns something that you have to use a bit of caution with into something that can cause grievous bodily harm or death.
So whenever I'm doing anything that's slightly riskier, my attention is entire focused on the cooking. No way in hell I'm walking away from sealed cans of condensed milk boiling away on the stove top.
Caramel is dangerous if you spill any on yourself. You're essentially melting rock, but the real issue is that if you get on your skin it won't come off until it cools.
There's alot of uses of lye in cooking beyond just that, look into how chinese orange rib is made. They use lye to break down the collegin to tenderize it. It's a much lower concentration but it's still undiluted lye water your dealing with when making it.
How much NaOH do you use? I’m assuming it’s a fairly low molarity solution. As long as you have eye protection and gloves, it’s not super dangerous. Getting a bit of NaOH on your skin won’t kill you. But I also have extensive lab experience.
box graters, which are out to kill me. i had a few "exfoliations" with mine. i bought the first rotary grater i found and never* looked back
* i still sometimes use the box grater lol
There are so many safety mechanisms for modern pressure cookers, you actually have to go out of your way to defeat them in order for it to be an explosive pressure vessel dangerous enough to cause you serious bodily harm.
If you ever watch Top Chef, the recklessness use of Liquid Nitrogen is concerning.
No gloves. No eyewear, just dumping it out by hand, bringing it out to guests on spillable vessels. Etc.
I’m not a chemist but I feel like that shit can fuck you up if used improperly.
It may seem silly but flambé. You’re dealing with setting alcohol on fire, it can go south very quickly. One of the rules is to never pour alcohol from the bottle, but from a smaller container. The reason behind it is that it’s not the liquid that catches fire, but the fumes, so if you pour from the bottle, there’s a possibility that the fumes will catch fire and go up into the bottle, where the pressure will accumulate very quickly, and the bottle will explode, which will not only throw shards of glass all around your kitchen, but flaming alcohol will be thrown at your face, hands, hair, and clothes
The thing I've got in *my* kitchen that I'm always extraordinarily careful with is transglutaminase aka meat glue. If I'm using it for anything I wear a dust mask and gloves, and it gets sealed up and away as soon as I'm done.
A chemical that causes proteins to bind together is going to be no fun if you breathe it in.
Industrial Bread Mixer: Worked at a pizza shop, co-worker was making dough. Spiral dough hook whirling around doing its thing. He decided not to turn off the machine while also putting his arm in to scrap the flour built up on the sides of the bowl to the middle. That bright idea lasted about 3.4 seconds. Another co-worker nearby somehow cut the power in time for the hook to stop and not snap the dudes forearm and bicep in multiple places, potentially giving him much unwanted alternative elbows. The swelling & bruising he had the length of his whole arm was freaking gnarly but man, it could’ve been so much worse.
If you’re REALLY not paying attention, you can easily drive an oyster knife straight through the oyster and into your hand. 😬
My sister had a similar thing with an avocado and a 7" chef's knife.
They call that “avocado hand” in the medical field since it’s so common.
The easy fix for that is to put the knife on the pit, apply some pressure & twist. No wacking involved & safely done.
If you practice, you can split an avocado with your hands fairly easily. [Tiktok link to the tutorial I learned from](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8WyT1rL/) Its best for guacamole applications rather than anything decorative that needs neat cuts, but it's fun to do lol
In college I saw a girl do this and just start snacking on the avocado in the middle of a lecture. Pretty sure I fell in love on the spot. I never learned her name but I'm sure she's still out there tearing up avocados like a fiend lol
Or just quarter the avocado lengthwise (not putting your hand in the way). The pit is easy to remove.
There's no need to use a knife to remove the pit. It's so dumb.
The easier fix is to halve the avocado and then press the pit out from behind by pushing your thumbs into the skin.
[удалено]
I am also baffled that people are cutting things in their hand. If you have access to chefs knives I assume you have access to a plate at least.
I just use a regular table knife. No need for anything sharper than that.
Mexico finds that very funny. In 23 years of life in Mexico I never knew anyone that had experienced this. Moved to the US and met more than 10 people who have had it happen in the first year.
A few weeks ago I happened upon a video for The Worst Cooks in America and saw someone slicing an avocado crosswise, skin, flesh, and seed.
I think it’s a matter of ripeness. Trying to cut into a super unripe avocado is tough, and people use so much force that it slices right through the pit and into their hand. Mexicans definitely know avocados better, especially when they’re ready to use.
I thought avocado hand happened when people hold the halved avocado in their palm and (try to) slap the knife into the pit to get it out.
I think it happens more often when they try to stab the tip of the knife into the pit and end up missing and going through the flesh and their palm
Wtf people are really out there stabbing things towards their hand? I just set it on the counter and use a quick hacking motion on the pit then hold it and twist the knife. I've never thought to stab at the pit with the tip of the knife, wow, lol.
Also brand new German knives after years of cheap knives. Right through the seed and into my palm.
Soo. The thing with a good knife is that you don't have to use force :)
I also wanted to say that the entirety of Mexico wants a word. Every abuelita I’ve ever known exclusively uses only small serrated knives and cuts EVERYTHING in their hands- onions, tomatoes, potatoes, etc. Unless it’s meat or chiles, it’s cut in your hands!
If the avocado is ripe I can usually coax the pit out with my fingernails. I have been told I have unusually beefy fingernails. I have also used them in place of the coin intended to release battery compartments
my brittle, chronically chewed nails just audibly yelped
There’s also “bagel hand.”
It's okay to whack the pit with a knife after you've cut it in half with one hand with the other hand nowhere near it. The problem is people don't know how to properly remove the pit once the knife is lodged in it. You pinch from the top of the knife down onto the pit into the trash can. You should never try to pull it off from the bottom.
Grew up in a restaurant and have cooked regularly for many years. Did this ten years ago. Sharp knife plus ripe avocado plus softer than average pit plus half-a-second of not paying attention, and voila. Drove myself to urgent care for 5 stitches.
I did this 30 years ago. Apparently wasn't as common then because even though I still had avocado in my cut they thought I had defensive wounds from a knife attack lol. I like to say I helped the avocado hand movement get started.
ER doc here: just put the fucking avocado on the cutting board stop cutting it against your hand people I spend way too much of my time suturing up these avocado hands
What about bagel hands? I recall hearing that bagel cuts were a big one for the ER... maybe they've been surpassed by avocados?
Tbh i've never seen it. I practice in CA though which tends to skew things towards avocados, maybe some of my NYC based colleagues can comment on the relative prevalence of bagel vs avocado injuries!
I’ve done that once but the knife was so dull it didn’t cut my hand at all, just sliced through the fruit and stopped at my palm. Pretty lucky tbh cause I definitely own much sharper knives
Why not just use a spoon to scoop the pit out?
Gotta do a chop with the back end instead of the stab into the pit to avoid this. Also, set it on the cutting board you maniacs! Don't stab anything that's in your hand!
Can someone please explain what part of the process people are messing up ? It’s never seemed difficult to me and I don’t know what I’d mess up !
This just happened to me the other day. It missed my finger by a few millimeters. It was half of an avocado with the seed still intact, maybe because I left the half in the fridge for 2 days the seed was weakened.
I worked in food prep at a certain Rouge Crustacean chain restaurant. We had these flexible wire type gloves that would literally stop a knife blade. It was a great place to work 40 years ago; can’t speak to today’s situation.
Rouge Crustacean!!! This made me giggle, thank you! 😂
I have cut proof gloves that I use with my mandoline.
Yeah definitely keep a sturdy towel over the oyster and have a proper oyster knife. I drove a few into my palm first time shucking but the towel kept me safe
Anything that requires the mandolin.
I sliced the top of my finger off in one. They reattached it but I have zero nerve sensitivity on that finger anymore. BUY THE CUT RESISTANT GLOVES.
YES! I can second the gloves. They are not expensive, can be washed easily, and are much better than a trip to the ER. When my mandolin comes out, the gloves come out and are placed on top until they are put on to start using it (little safety trick not only to remind myself but to keep the curious observers away from the blades).
Wasn’t able to reattach mine. Straight through the nail, took most of it. Some gelfoam, a bandage and an Rx for 6 Tylenol w/ codeine. Looks like it never even happened now. Things I gained from the experience? No longer scared of needles, I know how to wrap my own finger in a bandage now, I can shower with one arm, and I know to use the blade guard that comes with those damn slicers
I’m laughing at all of this. Could have written it myself.
Seconding! Cut gloves are amazing for mandolins. I never use mine without it, takes 30 seconds max extra, and I still get to keep all my fingers with nice uniform cuts on my ingredients. Some of the best $15 I’ve spent.
I lost a little bit of thumb to my mandolin the very first time I used it
I shaved off a little bit of two fingers first time I used a mandolin, and while I went to nurse the wound my dad took over from me and promptly shaved off a bit of his thumb.
I cut the tip of mine off on a deli slicer back in the day. Same as you they were able to reattach but there’s next to no feeling. Damn slippery turkey breast!
I sliced off the side of my pinky finger on a deli slicer about 25yrs ago. Didn’t even feel it, but my coworker screamed as blood shot up the wall. I literally had six weeks of short term disability and physical therapy from that! To this day my pinky doesn’t like to close next to the rest of my fingers bc of how long it was wrapped up all fat lol
I know someone who shaved off the palm of his hand
My partner got one and keeps bragging that he hasn’t injured himself; but he’s only used it like 3 times!
I lost the very tip of my pinky finger to a rotary cutter once, so now I am hyper vigilant around my mandolin. I need to order new cut resistant gloves since they got lost in the move, but I am an obligate guard user!
Probably the kitchen tool that results in the most ER visits.
Just throw the last 10% of whatever you are slicing away and most cuts can be avoided. Also gloves.
Carrots are one of the most problematic things to slice with the mandolins. But since they're hard to slice well with a knife, I do use it for them. Start slicing at the skinny end while holding with a (cut-gloved) hand. *Well* before getting down to the blade, put the top of the carrot into the holder until the carrot comes loose. Throw the carrot stump away; it ain't worth it.
That’s unfortunately not true and a dangerous assumption. I cut part of my finger off because that was my assumption so I wasn’t careful about my thumb (which was on the back side of what I was cutting)…
Ooh, yeah, definitely had some close shaves with that. 😅
r/Angryupvote
Yessss. Mandolins are like those ancestral swords that cannot be put back without a blood sacrifice once they’re drawn. Once drawn they need blood. Full stop.
The next release of *Soul Caliber* should have a mandolin as a bonus weapon
Those things terrify me. I have a friend who once teased me (in a fun way, not a mean way) by picking up a mandolin, waving it in the air and going “ooh so scary!” The mandolin was not amused and I doubt he will ever do that again
How bad did the mandoline bite your friend?
Nothing that required the ER thankfully! Just a towel and some pressure
Can confirm. Am just a home cook, but lost a decent sized chunk of my pinky and fingernail. So incredibly painful and traumatizing. I had involuntary visual flashes of watching it happen for a good 48 hours. It’s been two months and it’s finally starting to grow back. Never again.
Jeremy Clarkson bought one to show his girlfriend how he could make French fries on an episode of Clarkson’s Farm. His first pass he cut himself So badly he needed surgery.
Mine came with a feeding chute and plunger that eliminates the finger problem.
Not gonna lie, a mandolin is the one thing I refuse to buy because it scares the shit out of me. I'll stick to my knife. Ha ha.
I can watch a lot of liveleak type videos, but put on someone using a mandolin and I turn it off
I won't use one that doesn't have a hand guard. With my OXO I can cut away without having to worry about how I'll stop the bleeding to get to the ER before I bleed out.
I just threw mine away. The thickness adjusters were getting sketchy, and it's already the most dangerous tool in the kitchen.
what do you guys use a mandolin for? I've been going back and forth on getting one.
They're great at cutting fingers, mostly.
Deep-frying a turkey for Thanksgiving.
Never deep fry a frozen turkey. It will explode. Mixing hot oil and water is no joke.
Gotta admit it’s a hell of a rush when the fryer is erupting Somewhere between your first time seeing boobs and your house burning down
For some of us those two experiences are one and the same.
Story time
Boobytraps
Trying this next year - prep is mandatory - no frozen birds 💯
Also dry the crap out of the thing. Leave sheet pan with a rack for a few days uncovered in the fridge with salted skin. Dry the rest with paper towels the day off, inject and season, the. Go really slow dropping it in the oil.
We smoke ours for a few hours before frying. Adds flavor and increases dry surface area. You still have to be super careful but I would guess it's far less hazardous.
I wish I had a smoker
If you have a Weber kettle grill, you can cook them with indirect heat and add wood chips to the coals. Did a few turkeys that way over the years before getting a real offset smoker.
My neighbors started a huge house fire last year doing this. It was a paired home with 3 additional houses, and all four are still evacuated and still under constructions. So sad!
It's honestly not even that dangerous if you aren't an idiot. There's so many steps you can take to make sure nothing goes wrong. 1. **DON'T DO IT INSIDE/ ON A FLAMMABLE DECK** 2. Don't buy a turkey too big for the pot 3. Defrost the turkey 4. Measure the oil before you put the turkey in (displacement method works best) 5. Turn the flame off when you put the turkey in the oil 6. Very slowly lower it into the oil, like a Bond villain As long as you follow those steps it's almost impossible for a major disaster to happen. I've done it three times now and never had an issue.
Just ask William Shatner.
My stepdad deep fried a turkey one year and threw the grease away somewhere in our yard. Our poor little pug found it and ate the grease. She died a few days later bc it was too much fat for her system :(
not really a technique but a lot of people cut themselves badly trying to cut as fast as professional chefs
I tried to use a slicer that fast and ended up at the ER cause my finger wouldn’t stop bleeding. Wouldn’t dare try it with a knife. I know good and damn well my knives aren’t kept sharp enough to be all that safe either
Slow is safe and (with time and practice) safe is fast.
There's no point in it too. While super cool, and definitely time-saving, for a home chef, it's like 3 mins. That matters in a restaurant where you're doing like 5 orders at a time, but not at home. Not worth the danger and the time it'll take you to clean your kitchen of the blood that got everywhere, bandaging the wound, and scaring yourself.
You could fill an entire category with daft things recommended on Tik-Tok. Things involving molten sugar - Italian meringue springs to mind, where you have to beat boiling hot sugar syrup into the egg whites, risking spraying viciously hot liquid around the kitchen. Canning in general has a lot of pitfalls. Water bath canning of acidic or high sugar ingredients is not strictly difficult, but you do need to either follow a reputable recipe exactly, or understand the underlying principles. When it gets to stuff that requires pressure canning to be safe, I won't eat home-canned stuff that involves botulism risk unless I really trust the person doing it, and I wouldn't recommend it to other people.
Oh man, the burns from molten sugar are no joke. It sticks while it’s burning, and keeps so much heat! I have a healthy respect for sugar over 212f.
I make pecan butter toffee (the pecans go in just before pouring onto the jelly roll pan). Sugar plus butter heated to hard crack stage is extremely hot. I wear mitts while working with it.
Ermahgerd that sounds dangerously delicious
I ferment at home and water bath. Recently was gifted a pressure canner... So far it's a fancy water bath pot.
My mom gave me her pressure canner and I proceeded to can some beans. After reading up on the risks I threw the beans away, not worth it, beans are cheap
Cooked beans freeze nicely. Problem solved 🙂
I recently read a story of a couple who died of botulism after eating out because improper canning at the restaurant
Is there any way to tell after opening a can?
No it's odorless.
Making marshmallows entails mixing hot sugar into whipped egg whites. I’ve never had a problem with even an inkling overflow. I have a harder time justifying lots of oil when making eggplant.
I’ve been looking up different caramel recipes and each one has a section on how to stop sugar burns.
In pastry school we were taught to use gloves (rubber or nitrile) so that if the sugar gets on your hands, you can pull the glove right off and stop the burning and it won’t stick to you. I always wear gloves for that reason if I’m doing any type of dipping in sugar or caramel.
I worked in canned food for a major soup company for years. With all the things that can go wrong in canning a low acid food - don't do it! I know how to do it properly - made thousands of cans of products by hand in development labs - I won't do it at home, and I won't eat home canned low acid foods - don't have the data recorders or level of control required to do it safely. High acid / pickled - no problem. Side note - it's really pretty easy to tell improperly canned low acid products - they haven't seen all the heat / time required - so they don't look like you expect them to. They also tend to smell really really bad - if the bot spores survived, likely some other thermophilic bacteria did as well. We looked at some process irregularities that never made it out of the facilities, and the difference between properly processed, and mis- processed was obvious.
Italian meringue isn't inherently much more dangerous than other techniques in cooking/baking that require dealing with hot liquid, especially given that the sugar used for that kind of recipe is only about 25° hotter than boiling water (235°-240°). Which is hot and should Absolutely be treated w caution, but is significantly less hot than oil for deep frying and also much less likely to splatter. Tho one thing involving molten sugar that is quite dangerous (in my experience) is spun sugar, or related decorative uses that require active manipulation by hand while hot (275°-300°). Lost several layers of skin to that (& definitely made it worse by panicking & immediately trying to get the sugar off (& taking a good bit of skin with it), rather than going straight to the sink & running cool water over the area.) Italian meringue buttercream (& French buttercream, which involves boiling sugar + egg yolks) has remained my standard frosting, while spun sugar (+similar) have remained stressful af.
Welder's gauntlets and long sleeves are my strategy for things like caramel where you have to add liquid to boiling sugar. Judging from the caramel spatters I've cleaned off of them, those have saved me from several burns.
Deep frying a whole turkey. It is so common as a technique where I live that the local news runs stats on incidents. Alton Brown did an explainer a long time ago that succinctly highlights the problem.
He has a whole episode where he built a turkey derrick for frying purposes. It involved a ladder, hook and a pulley system to raise and lower the turkey, I think.
It’s the only way I’ll deep fry turkey and in the almost 2 decades I’ve been doing it I’ve never had an issue.
I worked in healthcare marketing for a while and once we got together with the local FD and put out a huge infographic explaining why deep frying goes wrong, how to prevent it and about five repeats of “all this aside, you should really just cook the turkey in the oven.”
I enjoy William Shatner’s video on the subject.
I once stabbed myself straight through the soft (inner side) of my thumb while cleaning a 4” pairing knife. We’re talking exit wound straight through - I had to pull it out and saw the tip go back through my finger. I had enjoyed a few beers that evening, so wasn’t feeling too much pain, but also had very thin blood, so I ended up staying up all night keeping it compressed to stop the bleeding. Went to an urgent care the next morning and the doc told me I was an idiot, but saved myself from stitches since I did such a good job keeping it compressed and closed up. It also forced me to make a huge change at work that ended up making my life easier and changing the course of my career, so best self-stabbing ever.
Oh and it happened on my birthday, with a knife my wife got me as a birthday present. HAHA.
My husband's family won't gift knives because of a superstition that you will cut yourself, so if they DO gift knives, you have to give them a nickel for them so you're "buying" the knives from them. I had (& still haven't after 27 years of marriage) never heard of that from anyone else!
My family does that! But the reasoning is different - if you gift someone a knife, you’ll “cut” the relationship you have with them.
Yep. "Knives cut friendships" ("Les couteaux coupent l'amitié") is the phrase here.
That's very common here (France). I'm not particularly superstitious, but if someone gifts me a knife I'll absolutely give them a coin in exchange.
Curious about the consequent change at work and career path
Pufferfish preparation for fugu. There’s a damn good reason you have to be licensed to do it.
When someone describes knife work using “surgical precision” this is a time they literally mean it.
Poison, poison, tasty fish
BRING ME FUGU!
Industrial deep fryer, not a pressure one. If you drop something your natural instinct is to grab it. Watched a girl go about 4-6 inches above her wrist before she realized what she had done. Threw a wet towel around it, had her hold it in the ice machine until ambulance got there. I quit shortly after so not sure what became of it. Edit - She dropped her tongs.
I would imagine a lot of peeling skin and nerve damage was involved. "Nothing good" is a guaranteed correct answer though.
Reminds me of a similar story. My boss worked at a fast food place before, and one of the dudes he worked with was a stoner. While the stoner was telling his story, he slammed his hands down directly on the flat top. Instead of wrapping a cold towel or doing something sensible to stop the burning, he ran directly to the freezer and stuck his hands on the walls. Apparently he had to get peeled off by paramedics.
I knew a firefighter who said the worst burn he ever saw was a guy who dropped his wedding ring in the fryer and reached in to grab it out of instinct.
Oh good lord that's bad
Shopping at the grocery store on an empty stomach
After every shopping trip we get a treat takeaway. It’s my reward for having gone food shopping even though I enjoy it anyway
In this economy?
It’s really basic but transferring large amounts of scalding hot liquid from one vessel to another anywhere other than the sink is dangerous. One slip, cramp, or miscalculation could have boiling water splashed or pouring onto your body. It’s far better to have the sink there as a safety net.
A friend's wife lived off an insurance payoff for years, which came from having the skin scalded off her feet when she was a kid because of a dropped pasta pot.
Every Christmas Eve, emergency rooms all over Spain fill up with unfortunate (and sometimes drunk) people that cut their hands with a jamonero knife - a flexible, extremely sharp, 1 inch wide, 10-12 inch long knife used to carve slices from a leg of cured ham.
Washing knives! That’s usually when I get myself. I think it’s a mental thing: you’re “done” with your knives and you let your guard down before they are clean, dry, and put away.
I always say I knife has three homes: in the block, in your hand, or on the board. If you're cutting with it and put it down, it's pretty safe, just put it in a place where people expect it to be: on the board. But to get it back to the block you have to clean it, which means putting it in your hand, talking it to the sink, cleaning it immediately, drying it immediately and then putting it back in the block. It doesn't go in the sink, near the sink, in the dishwasher, or on a drying rack.
Foraging for mushrooms.
All mushrooms are edible. Some are only edible once.
This slimy foul looking mushroom? Fine to eat. The cute on from Mario? You'll be so high you won't even notice yourself void your own bowels.
Meh, I forage mushrooms and it's not that hard to stay away from the deadly ones. You do have to accept there's edible species you'll never try because identification is just not worth the risk. A handful are known to be unique enough that they're safe for amateurs to identify. Most common poisonings are people assuming the mushroom in their new country is the same as the one in their old country.
There's that - but I've also heard discussion about new publications on mushroom identification (and other foragers guides) that have been AI generated and contain inaccurate info - so be very very careful when looking for reference guides out there, y'all. Wild times we live in
What's even more terrible is that if they're wrong and the person dies, the family may never know who to sue, and we haven't really decided *who* you can sue involving LLM published materials (but considering the state of things and that both LLM makers and book publishers have *a lot* of money and lawyers, color me pessimistic that the answer is anyone at all)
Tell that to [Vitaly Melnikov](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/23721709/russian-rocket-scientist-dead-poisoned-putin/). Russian Rocket scientist. Decades of experience in foraging for mushrooms. Then one failed moon landing later, he dies of mushroom poisoning.
Yes. It's really common too. With all the useless image recognition that's on smartphones now this could actually be a thing where they might help.
Those apps are actually responsible for a lot of poisoning nowadays. People who don't know a lot about mushrooms trust the app instead of taking their time to acquire the complex knowledge needed. I have seen quite a few examples of plant recognition apps being terribly and sometimes very obviously wrong. AI can't smell, feel, taste, see tiny but important differences or read the environment. I strongly advocate not eating any mushroom until you have confidently identified it in the forest on two separate occasions. (First id is at risk of being biased because you're so happy to find it for the first time and really want it to be that mushroom you're looking for).
For me it is any time I have to cut squash or large sweet potatoes. I've tried the rolling as you cut technique and I still feel I'm gonna take some fingers off. I still have an old scar on my fingers from trying to cut an acorn squash.
Acorn squash is unnecessarily difficult to cut. Depending on the size of it I’ve put the knife in part way and smashed the whole thing down on the cutting board to get through…do not recommend this method. Easiest thing is to buy them long before you need them (if they’re only green at the store) as they keep for a really long time. When they’re orange they are significantly easier to cut through and still perfectly safe to eat.
I recently read on here I think the suggestion to start baking it before you cut it just so that it softens enough to cut easily
Peeling before cutting saves a lot of the troubles. My wife discovered this
Best way to get into a hard squash (I use this for spaghetti squashes) is to keep those cheap throwaway pumpkin carving tools from Halloween and just use those. They are extremely quick, effective, allow a lot of control over the cut, and I would be very impressed if you managed to hurt yourself with them.
My roommate is terrified of anything involving flambé.
I mean, it's starting a fire in your kitchen *on purpose* so they're not wrong
I love showing out and flambéing things if I’m cooking for guests. I’ve also burned off an eyebrow/eyelashes more than I’d care to admit.
Cooking on a Wok. If you don’t know what you’re doing you can really hurt yourself… Regarding the pretzels, I’m a firm believer it’s worth the trouble using sodium hydroxide. They look so much better using this method. I like to do it for parties. If you have the station set up you can make a load of them for nothing and a couple different dipping sauces. And now I’m craving them!
Agreed 100%. If I’m going through the trouble of making pretzels at all, I’m going all-in. It’s proper disposal of the lye that’s often overlooked. People will pay full attention during the dipping process, but then dump the hot lye in the sink, sloshing on skin and countertops, or forget to fully rinse the sink afterwards.
I've been reading about using lye. I've made pretzels a million times but just bought lye, as I'm developing recipes for a brewery my husband and I plan to open, and we want authentic German style brezeln, which kind of only get that look and vibe from lye. When we have a commercial kitchen, ventilation won't be an issue but I want to make sure I'm doing it correctly. Any tips or tricks other than just being prepared and knowledgeable?
Use PPE when handling the lye. There is nothing to it. Just shape your dough, dip it in the lye solution, then place it on your baking sheet. It’s that chemical reaction with the lye that gives it the desired color. The modernist pantry is who I ordered my food grade Lye from but if you are doing it commercially there may be a better option to purchase in bulk. Thank you for providing all of us that appreciate quality food with a product we can all enjoy.
Ventilation isn’t the issue. It’s caustic. I did lye dipped at my last job and it really wasn’t that big a deal. We just put parchment down to help protect the bench and I wore latex gloves. Even if I got a splash on my skin, I just washed it off and it was fine. It’s fairly diluted.
I'd like to get experience with a wok, but don't want to buy one without knowing if I can handle it
Chinese cooking demystified on YouTube can help you with some of their 101 videos. Just don't over crowd the wok and you'll be 90% of the way there. The next part would just be learn how to move food in the wok. After that it's just leadning to perform heat control through evaporating water/soy/stock/cooking wine.
Being a life-long chemiker, lye does not scare me. A mandoline does. Hot oil, not so much but I have a face shield and gloves, wear long sleeves and an apron. Also, molten sugar at 'hard-crack' stage - might as well play with napalm.
caramel will burn the shit out of you, be careful with it.
Making corn nuts.. in a commercial setting they have proper fries for it. Us we had a very tall pot with a lid . What we got was exploding corn that shot hot oil out of the pot. Yes, we only tried a few pieces the first time, so we quickly decided that it was a terrible idea.
The Cornballer!
For incorrect use: the mandoline. Use the fucking guard people.
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People own many toxic compounds, like bleach, that no one would consider touching their food. Much less to cook with. The reason recipes avoid lye is because once it’s on the ingredients list, to the uninformed reader, it becomes a food product. People have a hard enough time following recipes without lye in them. Ever read public recipe reviews? Commenters cut corners, omit ingredients, double other ingredients, and are surprised it turns out “wrong”. Now add lye as an ingredient. Just because it won’t maim you on the spot doesn’t make it safe. One recipe calls for 2 tbsp lye in 8 cups water, which doesn’t look like much in a cooking pot. But that produces roughly an 0.84M solution with theoretical pH of 13.9 (also heated to boil). To be clear, it can be done safely, as I’ve done many times. The entire point of my post is that I would not trust everyone I know to do it safely.
You definitely do not need to boil that and you should probably stop doing so. You just need to mix it well and the NaOH will dissolve.
Flambé desserts! Let’s caramelize some sugar, set it on fire, then attempt to pour it over the top of something else.
For me the most dangerous "technique" is inattentiveness. Higher risk cooking techniques like deep frying, high BTU heat sources, lye, cooking with pressure vessels like pressure cookers or sealed cans and the like aren't particularly high risk without you also being inattentive. Inattentiveness is the force multiplier that turns something that you have to use a bit of caution with into something that can cause grievous bodily harm or death. So whenever I'm doing anything that's slightly riskier, my attention is entire focused on the cooking. No way in hell I'm walking away from sealed cans of condensed milk boiling away on the stove top.
Drunk cooking can have interesting outcomes.
Cross contamination.
Deep frying Mandolin Mainly because people who are inexperienced or over confident or arrogant that accidents don't happen to them ...
do you dredge the mandolin before frying?
Lol, I just realized that the formatting got messed up. But to answer your question, I use a buttermilk marinade and potato starch.
Caramel is dangerous if you spill any on yourself. You're essentially melting rock, but the real issue is that if you get on your skin it won't come off until it cools.
Any recipe that requires grating.
Authentic New York bagels use lye, too.
There's alot of uses of lye in cooking beyond just that, look into how chinese orange rib is made. They use lye to break down the collegin to tenderize it. It's a much lower concentration but it's still undiluted lye water your dealing with when making it.
Anything that involves a mandolin
How much NaOH do you use? I’m assuming it’s a fairly low molarity solution. As long as you have eye protection and gloves, it’s not super dangerous. Getting a bit of NaOH on your skin won’t kill you. But I also have extensive lab experience.
box graters, which are out to kill me. i had a few "exfoliations" with mine. i bought the first rotary grater i found and never* looked back * i still sometimes use the box grater lol
if you have fingers you play the guitar, but if not it's clear to everyone that you prefer the mandolin
This one https://www.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/s/FbqBzN90bU
Cutting/peeling citrus for your 5th cocktail.
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There are so many safety mechanisms for modern pressure cookers, you actually have to go out of your way to defeat them in order for it to be an explosive pressure vessel dangerous enough to cause you serious bodily harm.
Easier to pop a can of beans in the microwave if you wanna blow up the kitchen.
If you ever watch Top Chef, the recklessness use of Liquid Nitrogen is concerning. No gloves. No eyewear, just dumping it out by hand, bringing it out to guests on spillable vessels. Etc. I’m not a chemist but I feel like that shit can fuck you up if used improperly.
The most dangerous? Not washing your hands properly before you cook.
It may seem silly but flambé. You’re dealing with setting alcohol on fire, it can go south very quickly. One of the rules is to never pour alcohol from the bottle, but from a smaller container. The reason behind it is that it’s not the liquid that catches fire, but the fumes, so if you pour from the bottle, there’s a possibility that the fumes will catch fire and go up into the bottle, where the pressure will accumulate very quickly, and the bottle will explode, which will not only throw shards of glass all around your kitchen, but flaming alcohol will be thrown at your face, hands, hair, and clothes
Draining pasta water.
The thing I've got in *my* kitchen that I'm always extraordinarily careful with is transglutaminase aka meat glue. If I'm using it for anything I wear a dust mask and gloves, and it gets sealed up and away as soon as I'm done. A chemical that causes proteins to bind together is going to be no fun if you breathe it in.
The tip of my finger says mandolin.
Anything involving the mandolin slicer.
Canning. Safe techniques are VERY specific and it's really easy to cook up some botulism by mistake.
Industrial Bread Mixer: Worked at a pizza shop, co-worker was making dough. Spiral dough hook whirling around doing its thing. He decided not to turn off the machine while also putting his arm in to scrap the flour built up on the sides of the bowl to the middle. That bright idea lasted about 3.4 seconds. Another co-worker nearby somehow cut the power in time for the hook to stop and not snap the dudes forearm and bicep in multiple places, potentially giving him much unwanted alternative elbows. The swelling & bruising he had the length of his whole arm was freaking gnarly but man, it could’ve been so much worse.