That’s why a big baking sheet is often better. It’s much larger than the pan and is less likely to result in scorched fingers.
This brings up something that really bugs me about so many cooking videos—it’s a bad idea to have long hair loose like that while cooking. Staged or not, she could have been burnt badly if her hair had caught fire. (And fire or not, you could get hair in the food.)
I’m presuming some people’s instinct is to put water on it, otherwise so much effort wouldn’t be made warning people not to do it? They don’t do that in the video either, though.
Always have a fire extinguisher, yes. However in this case, placing a lid on the pan probably would have been sufficient.
A cook would almost never wear a parachute in the kitchen, and certainly not a stunt parachute.
Well but see now many people have heard of her who previously never had and never would. I hear some call that a win.
I’m terrible in an emergency. I know the right thing to do is to cover the pan and turn off the stove. But I also know that, faced with an actual fire, I will freak out and freeze up.
Fortunately, my wife is astoundingly cool and collected in an emergency. I’ve seen her properly deal with an accidental grease fire without missing a beat. I don’t even think she perceived it as an emergency. I, however, spent the next few hours trying to burn off the deluge of adrenaline that dumped into my system at the first glimmer of flame.
If she was faking it she took a huge risk. This stunt would be dangerous even on a set with firefighters standing by. Especially the part where she adds water.
I don’t know. It reads genuine to me. Forgetting a pan on the stove when you’re concentrating on talking and interacting and clearly aren’t an experienced cook could easily happen.
I absolutely know you should put a lid on a grease fire, problem is I rarely have a lid on the counter when cooking and all the cookie sheets are stored in the oven below the stove top.
We have fire extinguishers in the house but they are useless unless they are out in the open. If you have to go looking for them you may as well just call 911. We have a small house, a fire is most likely going to start in the kitchen so we have a fire extinguisher in the hall outside the kitchen.
When our daughter was 9 or so we were at work and she was home alone, we live on a private street with a neighbor who was always home so we had no problem leaving her.
She called us and said “dad I think the kitchen is on fire”. Get out of the house and get Mr. Neighbor.
A poptart caught fire in the toaster. It started up the cabinet but didn’t go any further. That’s when we equipped our house with fire extinguishers and taught everyone how to use them. But the lesson for our kid was get out of the house and call from the neighbor’s house or just watch it burn, but get out and no more toaster when we’re not home.
She’s 37 and still won’t toast a poptart.
Even a fire extinguisher is a bad move for a grease fire. It can blow the burning grease elsewhere.
What you need is a fire blanket to smother the flames. And an easy diy blanket is a tea towel soaked in water. Yes, water can be your friend even in a grease fire.
10 year old me knew that. My mother didn’t, as I found out when I got home from school one day to a slightly scorched kitchen. She’d carried the flaming pan outside and left it to cool down, which it didn’t; the massive tower of flame nearly set fire to the eaves.
She doesn’t add water, though - she takes it to the sink, some oil slops out, and then she immediately puts it back on the stove. If she had added water, it would have been a real disaster. And although she’s talking and interacting, she’s also interacting with the pan and the enormous quantities of smoke billowing out, which would normally be a thing people would react to, as a sign they had the heat up far too high.
It’s possible she’s never cooked before (nor does she know kitchen safety nor have a working extractor nor fire alarms…), and yeah it was dangerous (though I wonder if she wasn’t off frame with a fire extinguisher at the end there), but it could have been more dangerous (e.g. if she’d done things like try to add water to the pan). Maybe the constant display of dumb, dangerous stunts by Youtuber/streamers, of which this would be a pretty minor example, has just made me cynical.
Get yourself a fire blanket and install it on your kitchen wall. Even a fire extinguisher seems dangerous for a grease fire to me. Fire blankets are cheap and they’re what professional kitchens use.
IKEA has those.
Fire extinguisher in the kitchen to put out a grease fire?
2 litre CO2 extinguisher with a wide nozzle.
It is possible to put out a grease fire with surfactants in an aqueous solution, i.e. washing-up liquid.
I have seen it done by instructors in fire safety trainings. (Yes, a lot of fire fighters are closet pyromaniacs. Their eyes positively gleam with bliss during the practical parts.) Frying pan, grease fire, a spirited squeeze from your generic household plastic bottle, done.
Strictly ‘do not try this at home’ territory, if you ask me.
Huh, so you simply spritz on dishwashing liquid?
I won’t try it but it may be good information to have in a desperate situation.
And yeah, I wanted to link to the IKEA fire blanket which is the one I had also bought but couldn’t find it, at least on their American site. They might have discontinued them, which would be a shame
Yes. Ideally from a full bottle. Stretching out your arm as far as possible. Wearing gloves, safety goggles, a leather jacket and possibly some sort of helmet.
Like you said, in a desperate situation.
And don’t put it near the stove or an area likely to be inaccessible if something catches fire.