We all know the common accidents that can happen in your kitchen, burns, cuts, falls, and fires. What about the uncommon ones though? Let’s go through some of the more surprising accidents that have happened within kitchens both personal and professional. We’re going to go on a path from the least dangerous to most. Fair warning, if you’re eating or have an active imagination but a weak stomach, you might not want to read this right now.
Live Crabs!
According to Insider, Iron Chef Mashaharu Morimoto once lost a live crab in his kitchen for four months. Apparently the frustrated crustacean managed to escape from a drawer in the sushi area and scuttle away. It was found later, alive and well when they were moving and cleaning several refrigerators in the kitchen.
Tipped over Oven
Children and pets are inventive in the best of cases. Look away for two seconds and they can get into anything. Having your oven tip over due to a child or pet climbing into the door is unfortunately far more common than any of us want to admit.
Shattered Pyrex
Believe it or not, pyrex dishes can break. A personal story here! Your beloved blogger’s brother attempted to clean a pyrex dish and ended up shattering it instead. He filled it with water and placed it on an electric stove with two burners on. The idea was to boil the water to make it easier to scrub clean. After several minutes of heat applied in this manner, the pyrex dish shattered, exploding shards everywhere and boiling water coating the stove, counters and floor. Sadly, the original idea was misunderstood. He was meant to add already boiling water to the dish, while it was sitting on the counter. In his defense, he was only 10.
Exploded Coffee Pot.
Yup, during the research for our last post on how to clean coffee pots correctly, we found out that they can in fact explode. It looks so simple in the image to the left, but given the all metal design it can be surprisingly dangerous. While it’s not common for say drip or manual coffee makers, it is possible for ones that need to be used on a stove, such as a Moka pot or an old fashioned percolator. The blast produced by these has been known to give people concussions and break glass.
Exploding Pressure Cooker
Speaking of exploding, let’s talk pressure cookers. Unfortunately, there are people who don’t pay enough attention to directions when it comes to using these amazing tools. Or, it could just be that people get busy, or distracted by pets or small children. Both are viable answers. Either way, if you don’t pay enough attention to them, your pressure cooker can explode. The damage here can range from burning you and the people around you, to flat out explosion with the lid becoming implanted into your ceiling. Don’t believe us? Check out this Google search for ‘exploded pressure cooker.”
Dancing + Utensils = Bleeding
Yup. We’ve all danced around in our kitchens while cooking, baking or decorating. Just make sure that if you do, you put down the things in your hands, or you might end up sending something flying at your friends or family. (Your blogger still hasn’t gotten over an incident with a flying frozen water bottle.)
Magnets
We never would have thought of this one, but magnets apparently can be an issue. If your toddler is able to get their hands on two of them and swallow them, or your dog or cat for that matter, they can connect inside their bowels causing them to trap and compress portions of the bowel wall. This can potentially lead to perforation, ischemia, sepsis and bowel obstructions.
Everything prior to now was scary but would be survived, if they even resulted in injury. These last three are questionable. Fortunately, they’re not something you’re likely to run into in your home kitchen.
Again, we have to warn you that if you’re squeamish, you might want to come back at a later time.
Poor Construction
Three workers at a Church’s Chicken restaurant were sent to the hospital in 2016 for severe burns that required extensive surgeries and and skin grafts. Why? While at work a pit that was 5 feet deep opened in the floor underneath them and sent them tumbling down. A vat of boiling grease also fell in with them.
Power Outages and Dry Ice
In 2012 a chef in Nashville was trapped in the walk-in refrigerator of his restaurant. He didn’t have his cell phone and he didn’t know that the emergency release on the door was broken. Earlier that same day the refrigerator had been filled with dry ice due to a power outage. This meant that within the confined space, the fumes built up so quickly that he suffocated within minutes.
Long sleeves
Yep, if you’ve worked in any type of a kitchen, you know that having trailing sleeves is a serious problem. Whether you’re getting sauce on your clothes, or tipping something over with them, they should always be rolled back. One woman learned this the hard way when her hand was pulled into a meat grinder. Fortunately her life was saved by one of her coworkers who rushed her to the hospital.
Those are 10 strange and surprising accidents that can occur in a kitchen. It’s not meant to make you scared (after all, some of them can be amusing in retrospect) but instead to keep you aware of your surroundings when working in the kitchen.We hope that you found this post interesting and enlightening as well.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them below or over at our Facebook page. Alternatively, what are some of the weirdest mishaps you’ve had in your kitchen?
Remember, if something in your kitchen isn’t working right, the best thing is to have a technician come out and find what’s wrong. Whether it’s something as small as a light not working, or as large as a strange smell when you turn it on, set up an appointment and we’ll be happy to help. We want to help keep all of our clients in Allen and the surrounding areas safe.