Kitchen/Cooking Injuries - Share your worst

[Mister Mint]

When I first got an oven thermometer it took quite a few really nice burns on my fingers before I remembered to not absentmindedly remove the metal probe with my bare fingers.

 

[Srumab]

My cat once knocked my microplane grater off the counter and I reached out to grab it without thinking. blood everywhere.

 

[Buck Mullet]

Don't have any interesting personal kitchen injuries during ten years in foodservice, just the occasional minor cut and burn. The two worst I personally knew of were pretty severe. The first I didn't witness because I worked front of house and wasn't even there but was good friends with the guy. He worked in a fairly spacious kitchen, large enough that when it was slow the crew fucked around and was tossing something up and trying to hit it with a paddle of some kind like a baseball, and someone swung too hard, and some object hit my friend in the back hard enough he had to have his spleen removed. It's crazy to think that this young guy didn't sue anyone, but it was a mom and pop restaurant, his family was in academia, not hurting for money, and probably held the liberal view that libel was capitalistic and didn't to be a bad guy... I don't know, he deserved some compensation for losing an important organ.

The second one I did witness. I was working in a busy pizza place, the kind where the pizza makers and oven are in full view behind glass right when you walk in. Me and another guy were on the line, and behind us a young dude, short and chubby, was manning the rotating oven. He'd take pizzas out of the 750 degree oven with a paddle and turn to the right, walk a few steps and place the pie in a box or serving tray, where it would be sliced by either a cook, manager, or in this case, a delivery driver who was helping out in between deliveries. He was a nice guy, always stepped up when it was busy to help out where he could while in the store instead of hiding in his car or in the back office. He was an ex marine, mid thirties, a real manly man who had a real day job and was just doing this for extra money on the weekends.

So the kid doing ovens is running his mouth about something going on after work, he's super excited about some concert or party later, it's kind of annoying but whatever, he's doing his job. But it's a small kitchen and it's very busy, and as I turn around to coordinate with him so I can put a pizza in the oven, he's turning his head one way while talking and his body the other, and doesn't see the delivery guy stacking boxes on the cut table and bumps into him, causing the molten hot pizza he had on a paddle to slide off and fold over the dude's forearm like a wet towel, it was just draped there for a moment.

What happened next was the second worst sound I've heard uttered by a human being, after hearing a mother wail immediately after learning her young son was killed in an accident. This ex marine manly man screamed like a shrill banshee, knocked the pie off of his arm, and I assume ran out of the building to a nearby urgent care, because all I remember is never seeing him again.

 

[Chatterbot]

I haven't cut myself using a benriner in years, so I bought one of those gloves because I know, I KNOW, it's just a matter of time. I once cut the shit out of my hand OPENING the CLAMSHELL that contained a benriner. They're just fucking cursed.
1) Catering Chef pulled a tray of bacon out of the top of the double-stack oven, tilted it toward her shoulder too much. Hot bacon fat burns. A short hospitalization.

2) Pic related. The knife had been so ground down by repeated belt sharpening that it wasn't a chef knife at all. It wasn't a butchering or filet knife either, it was a piece of metal that was sharp. Imagine that the red circled part is gone; because it was.
Prep cook is going to cut the pork shoulder into 4inch cubes.
The pork shoulder is still frozen in the middle.
Goes to cut pork in half, blade stops but hand continues, hand continues traveling down the length of the blade.
Like, imagine pulling a knife through the cup of your hand, hard. gives me the shivers.

Then the person that tried to un-stick the pasta machine. Exposed tendons, but it's just what I was told so might be bullshit. The people I worked for weren't bullshit people so I believe, but I do know that a 30qt floor mixer has the ability to take your arm off, no homo.

 

[Zirnwyb]

Sliced open the pad of my thumb with a food processor blade. When I jerked my hand back, since it kinda fucking hurt, I sprayed blood all over the wall in the kitchen. I thought it was kinda funny despite the pain, and now I have a cool scar on the pad of my thumb. I also carved a chunk out of the tip of my left index finger while peeling a potato. I didn't notice either until the potato was pink. Thought it was kinda odd that it was until I saw the blood dripping into the bin. Still don't even know how the fuck I didn't feel that.

 

[Damien Thorne]

I remember when I was 3, very vaguely (my mother remembers this much clearer than I do), my mother was making homemade pizza and I wanted to snack on some pepperoni before it was opened, So I grabbed a knife and accidentally sliced open my hand when my mother wasn’t looking. Several stitches and a large bandage for the nest few weeks. Well, that was one lesson I remembered - don’t fuck with the knives when I am 3.

 

[Town Drunk]

you say that like tanking a finger maiming is no big deal

One of first jobs was as a dishwasher, I bifurctated my finger by 1/4 an inch on a madolin slicer hidden in the dish water. Taped it up and went back to work.

20 years later, cut off an 1/8 inch of my pinky. Bled for over an hour, it grew back. Hand and mouth wounds tend to heal quicky.

 

[WhatInTheActualFuck]

One of first jobs was as a dishwasher, I bifurctated my finger by 1/4 an inch on a madolin slicer hidden in the dish water. Taped it up and went back to work.

20 years later, cut off an 1/8 inch of my pinky. Bled for over an hour, it grew back. Hand and mouth wounds tend to heal quicky.

Mandolines are the fucking worst. I tried using a fairly fancy one I got as a gift and promptly mandolined a sizable chunk of the tip of my thumb right the fuck off and my kitchen ended up looking like a murder scene. Super glue and pressure fixed my thumb, but that thing is still sitting in the very back of a cupboard, never to be touched again. Eventually I'll foist it off onto another victim via thrift donation.

 

[Lycalopex]

Not sure how much this counts but I knew a guy who ate a bunch of kiwis (the fruit, obviously, not you guys) and somehow they just kept getting juicier and juicier.

It turned out that the kiwi juice was sloughing off his mouth lining. The juiciness was his own flesh and blood.

 

[Testament]

Too many times have I burnt my hands on steam from cooking, but the more major things I can recall are, the time I sliced deeply into my thumb while cutting up mushrooms, grating off the skin of my knuckle from slipping up whie trying to grate parmesan, and the time a pepper flake somehow got in my eye.

 

[Meat Target]

I once flayed my finger open cutting a chicken breast. Needed stitches and a tetanus booster after that.

 

[Not A Cat Person]

I was making fondant potatoes and in order to make them you sear the potatoes then place them in an oven to finish cooking, all in an oven safe frying pan. This of course leads to the risk of you grabbing the handle of the pan, forgetting it is hot. I was wise to this and put a towel over the handle to remind myself that it was hot. Then in a 4D fuck up I spilled some stock, used the towel on the handle, then forgot to put the towel back on the handle. I went to plate the potatoes and fully gripped the handle and burnt my hand super bad. It healed fairly quickly, but I felt my sink tighten and shrink as it began to cook the outside. I've never forgot how weird that felt

I have done this exact same thing, also while cooking potatoes in a pan in the oven. Set the pan down on the stove, forgot it was going to be searing hot when I took it out, thoughtlessly went to pick it up about thirty seconds after putting it down.

 

[Second Alter Ego]

10 years ago I didn't know how to make mashed potatoes, so I ended up trying to boil the water out of some watery potato sludge... without a lid... a giant bubble of potato launched out of the pot onto my wrist, and I still have the scar to this day, it looks like I tried slitting my wrist