Remember that cooking channel show where the chef would yell, “bam” every time he made something right?
I have come to the startling unscientific conclusion that a lot of people who want to cook, can’t. I like to pretend that they all shout “bam” with every new cooking disaster.
We in the fire service attend a lot of cooking disasters — in the form of fires.
A quick search on the “Interweb” reveals that the numbers bear out my bold statement. According to the NFPA (research done from 2007 to 2011) cooking mishaps account for two of every five home fires, almost half. That’s a lot of property damage, injuries and unfortunately even deaths.
Everybody who is involved with an emergency response fire organization has been to one of these fires. I have been to many, many of these from little whips of smoke to flames blasting out of windows.
Back in a sec
I’m always amazed at the large amount of people who leave the premises during the cooking operation. I can somewhat understand the people who get distracted with children, a phone call or perhaps even a hockey game. However, a lot of people just up and leave with the pot cooking away.
The usual scenario involves a reported fire often in an apartment complex. We arrive and are met by neighbors who report a smell of smoke and see smoke inside of whatever. Sometimes we are alerted by an automatic fire alarm.
Burnt food has an aroma that you can always indentify. You can usually smell it outside the structure. We force entry and find a pot on fire on the stove with a varying degree of smoke inside the living area.
Usually the cabinets over the cooking area are burnt to some degree. In an apartment there is almost always a fluorescent light in the kitchen. The plastic covering is melted and hangs down like some abstract art sculpture.
We remove the burnt food, check the cabinets for extension, (sometimes removing them) use the fan to remove the smoke and leave. In an apartment complex, we alert the management company. Most times they are already there in their golf cart.
How the pros do it
The burnt food smell is now with you for the rest of the day. You might as well shower and get it over with. A change of shirts will also help.
The professionals even have issues with this. More than one fire station has been damaged by smoke or fire because the crew blazed off on a call and left something cooking.
I was in a new station the other day and the gas supply to the stove is automatically disconnected when an alarm comes in. Ah, technology.
It seems like fried chicken and beans are the two biggest food offenders I encounter. And NFPA says frying food is the greatest risk for home fires.
Although, I did bust into a house once for a food on the stove fire that turned out to be melted baby bottle nipples. The owner put some baby nipples into a pot of water to sterilize them, forgot them and went to run an errand. The water boiled out and disaster.
Just a little grease
The nocturnal chefs amaze me. These are the folks who cook after midnight. Well, I was hungry and wanted to eat is their usual story.
I have been asleep for four hours when they are starting to cook. I sleep until the alarm goes off several times. If I was to wake up hungry in the middle of the night, maybe a sandwich or some cereal. But, to each his own.
One of my favorite all-time kitchen mishaps was a young lady who wanted to cook a slab of meat. I don’t remember if it was a roast or brisket or what. It was, as one TV chef likes to say, a “ginormous” blob of meat.
As a person who likes to cook, I can only imagine her anticipation of dinner — a tender, “melt in your mouth” taste party sure to satisfy her and her family. She seasoned the meat and placed it in the oven to cook.
It’s here where things went awry. She placed the meat directly on the oven rack. No pan, no wrapping just right on the rack. Soon the grease from the cooking meat began dripping down on the hot oven surface and flames below.
Realizing her error, our chef rectified the problem by lining the bottom of the oven with cloth bathroom towels. Soon after this we were called. Smoke billowed from the eaves.
Pilgrimage
NFPA cites Thanksgiving as the most popular cooking-fire day. Little wonder with all the amateur turkey cookers and fryers invading the kitchen.
You always have the guy who fries the bird in the garage or drops the frozen turkey in the hot boiling oil. Bam!
The folks who brought us the Thanksgiving turkey even had problems with fire. Yes, the Pilgrims.
The typical Pilgrim house had a thatched roof construction and any spark would start a fire. This problem was corrected with an ordinance in Plymouth requiring planked roofs.
Happy Holidays and be careful in the kitchen. Let me hear from you.
