OHGOD​OHGOD​OHGOD​FUCKNO​NONONO​NONO

August 22, 2013 12:16 AM

"My wife and I were chatting while she was slicing potatoes on a mandoline..." A list of kitchen accidents, both personal and professional. (Maybe NSFW, definitely gory, though entertaining as hell.)

Make sure to read the comments. Really the meat of the article.

posted by converge (158 comments total)

Really the meat of the article


This is one of those instances where it would have been perfectly appropriate to use "literally."



Anyway, I am going to go ahead and continue screaming now.
posted by louche mustachio at 12:34 AM on August 22, 2013 [10 favorites]

One of the comments starts with this:

This is the story all about how
my thumb got sliced, skin burned and browned

It helped me recover from seeing the picture.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:38 AM on August 22, 2013 [6 favorites]

I'm reading this precisely to create some other horror image in my mind than that of the six big, juicy house centipedes I found in our apartment today.

I hope that for those of you with more of an kitchen knife phobia than a bug phobia, this will be helpful to you as well.
posted by stoneandstar at 12:49 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

converge: “Make sure to read the comments. Really the meat of the article.”

For the love of God, don't read the comments. What is seen cannot be unseen. (Although some of the reaction gifs are hilarious.)
posted by ob1quixote at 12:51 AM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Welp, there goes any desire I ever had to get a mandoline...
posted by the duck by the oboe at 12:53 AM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Don't click that article if you get queasy looking at real photos of real wounds. Nasty wounds. Bad cuts. Bad burns. Blechh.
posted by pracowity at 1:15 AM on August 22, 2013

I'm reading this precisely to create some other horror image in my mind than that of the six big, juicy house centipedes I found in our apartment today.


Please, for the love of all that is holy, never use the words "juicy" and "centipede" in the same sentence.
posted by louche mustachio at 1:29 AM on August 22, 2013 [5 favorites]

*looks at scar on finger* So folks... always cut away from yourself (and don't handle sharp things when you're in pissed-off angry mode)... 'ham sandwich' is never gonna win no Jaws scar comparison style competition
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:39 AM on August 22, 2013

A friend of mine went to accident and emergency (ER) with a particularly nasty cut to one of the tendons on her hand. She got it when the knife she was using to take the stone out of an avocado slipped.

While she was being attended to, the doctor mentioned in passing that her injury was a remarkably common middle class injury.
posted by MuffinMan at 1:40 AM on August 22, 2013 [22 favorites]

Classic Rick Stein 'All chefs cut themselves with a mandolin but you only do it the once'
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:41 AM on August 22, 2013 [4 favorites]

I later noticed that there was about a 10-foot arc of the oily chili paste up one wall and across the ceiling, with a break in the middle where my face had interrupted the spray.

This is my favourite so far.
posted by Omnomnom at 1:43 AM on August 22, 2013 [4 favorites]

UH-HUH NO WAY NOT CLICKING YOU CAN'T MAKE ME YOU CAN'T MAKE ME
posted by JHarris at 1:57 AM on August 22, 2013 [14 favorites]

Mandolines are perhaps one of the most efficient methods of cutting anything from a carrot to a cucumber. Humans are a little harder to cut than a cucumber, but less hard than a carrot. We're a nice mix.... less tasty on a salad though...
posted by Nanukthedog at 1:58 AM on August 22, 2013 [6 favorites]

Any way to add a warning that it's photos, and not just a list? Stories, I can take, but not so much with photos.
posted by mochapickle at 1:59 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Classic Rick Stein 'All chefs cut themselves with a mandolin but you only do it the once'


I'm so happy to see this FPP and its comments. I've felt stupid for years explaining the circular scar on the tip of my index finger left over from when I sliced it off with a mandoline. Now I'm actually kind of proud of it.
posted by Kevtaro at 2:14 AM on August 22, 2013

I have all my fingertips only because I have a food mill. Food is pushed into the blades with either a plastic or wood pusher. I have stopped reading the horrible accidents because I fear I will remember them as a kind of 'how-to'. There is a mandolin in the kitchen somewhere. I think I will find it and throw it away. I have already discarded the electric deep fat fryer...
posted by Cranberry at 2:19 AM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

the knife she was using to take the stone out of an avocado slipped...the doctor mentioned in passing that her injury was a remarkably common middle class injury.

Wealthy people own a special tool for removing the stone from an avocado. It's called a butler.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:21 AM on August 22, 2013 [32 favorites]

I love my mandoline but hate using the holder to slice things preferring to use my hand because it always works better.

Unlike all of the people who slice their hand into nice little slices I have a nice pair of cut proof gloves so I can hold food in my hand and not worry about slicing it off. They're really cheap and I don't know why more people don't have them.
posted by koolkat at 2:22 AM on August 22, 2013 [17 favorites]

Classic Rick Stein yt 'All chefs cut themselves with a mandolin but you only do it the once'

Ha ha, this is exactly what I thought of, as well!

My own mandoline injury is not actually my worse. That belongs to the scar I collected when I was cutting apples for a tarte tartin, and the blade caught on an appleseed, skittered along the skin of the next apple I tried to slice, and plunged deliriously into my own all-too-willing flesh. Those few wtf seconds between gently tugging the blade away, seeing the full depth of the cut (hello! That sure is white... oh, I think it might be bone), the apricot tint of your virgin flesh, and then the blood starts weeping from your skin, welling out like you've hit an oil reserve.

Perhaps it's all the bread baking I do, but I much prefer burns to cuts. Self-sealing, easy enough to treat. I've had some bad ones - still got the scars from them, too. But much nicer.
posted by smoke at 2:25 AM on August 22, 2013 [5 favorites]

Also, re: my friend's middle class avocado stone removing injury.

Because we are never more content in Britain than when we are applying class to all categories of life, there is also, apparently, a common working class injury: it's a stab wound to the hand from using a knife to separate frozen burgers.
posted by MuffinMan at 2:31 AM on August 22, 2013 [17 favorites]

Did you know that if you slice off a bit of your thumb through the nail, the nail piece will stay connected to the thumb slice like some sort of little hat?
posted by orme at 2:37 AM on August 22, 2013 [3 favorites]

A medic told me at college years ago that there's a particular rotational fracture of the outer malleolus (ankle lump) caused by unsteady foot placement in high heeled shoes that is effectively only found in the UK, Ireland and Australia.
posted by cromagnon at 2:42 AM on August 22, 2013

I must mention that Albert Burneko is one of my favourite food writers on the web. Rather than pushing the now ridiculous envelopes that now surround discussion of food, he just spouts delicious things you can do easily (and you probably have many times, but let that go). Being funny doesn't hurt.

He's your kitchen buddy. Hug him. No. Not that. That's the knife. Don't hug the knife.
posted by converge at 2:43 AM on August 22, 2013

Did you know that if you slice off a bit of your thumb through the nail, the nail piece will stay connected to the thumb slice like some sort of little hat?
posted by orme at 5:37 AM on August 22

Yes, and now I am glad everyone else knows this too. I am no longer alone with this mental image.
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:49 AM on August 22, 2013 [5 favorites]

This seems appropriate right now.
posted by h00py at 2:50 AM on August 22, 2013

Cutting potatoes on a mandoline was actually the only thing that ever ended up with me taking a ride in an ambulance. Small wound, but I got a scar and learned the word for when something is cut off rather than cut into (which I have now forgotten). And I still shudder whenever they show mandolines on TV.
posted by 23 at 2:51 AM on August 22, 2013

While grating zucchini for zucchini bread, my wife grated her knuckle into it as well. Once the blood stopped and we got her some stitches, she never made zucchini bread again.
posted by blue_beetle at 3:14 AM on August 22, 2013

You don't need a knife to get the stone out of the avocado! A spoon's good enough!
posted by Omnomnom at 3:22 AM on August 22, 2013 [8 favorites]

I'll just leave this here: never volunteer to grill sausages at a nudist camp.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:28 AM on August 22, 2013 [5 favorites]

But a knife works so much better! Just hack into it, twist, and the stone pops right out!

I absolutely refuse to use mandolins though. I will thin slice things the slow old fasfioned way, which (almost) never leads to missing fingertips.
posted by Jawn at 3:29 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Did you know that if you slice off a bit of your thumb through the nail, the nail piece will stay connected to the thumb slice like some sort of little hat?

Yes and thank you for reminding me oh by the way i hate you now.
posted by louche mustachio at 3:29 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I usually just cut the avocado into quarters around the stone so the pieces separate away.

That's cool though because i still have many opportunities to slice, stab, and burn myself.
posted by louche mustachio at 3:31 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Guys, I love my mandolin and I operate it with flawless safety. Two words: Kevlar glove.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:42 AM on August 22, 2013 [8 favorites]

I cringe every time I see chefs or anyone on TV operating a mandoline with nothing to protect their fingers. And count me in with: use the damn handle they come with or a Kevlar glove. I respect that scary-ass piece of equipment enough to not want to end up in the hospital because of it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to pretend I never read any of those stories.
posted by Kitteh at 3:49 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Basically the author of the original piece had a shit-ton of animated gifs of people vomiting, fainting, etc that he just was itching to find a good excuse to use
posted by ook at 3:51 AM on August 22, 2013

there is also, apparently, a common working class injury: it's a stab wound to the hand from using a knife to separate frozen burgers.

I steeled myself to be grossed out by the comments in this thread but was caught off guard by the potent reminder that I am a working class schlub. That is exactly how I earned my last trip to urgent care.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 4:04 AM on August 22, 2013 [6 favorites]

I can sympathize with the guy that got sliced bad by a glass breaking in his grasp. I was moving big thick glasses from the drying off mat to their cupboard and somehow managed to clink one against the cupboard door in what must have been a magical place, because the bastard just EXPLODED while I was holding it with all palm and fingers. It seems a natural reflex, at least for the first instants, of your hand when holding something that suddenly yields is to close fast for better grasp. I suppose I'm thankful the glass was truly blown to bits instead of big shards, or I might have been looking for a few fingers under the sink instead of having zillions of itty bitty glass particles buried all over the palm and fingers. Which still hurts like hell, have no doubts about it.
posted by Iosephus at 4:04 AM on August 22, 2013

Reading these stories made me feel squeamish in the same way that looking at my left ring finger does. A few months ago, I was trying to be helpful and offered to help my partner make dinner. I decided peeling potatoes (with a vegetable peeler) was harmless enough. On the first potato, I sliced right into my finger with the peeler. There was a lot of blood, but my partner wrapped up my finger right away so we didn't see how bad it was. I held it over my head for a little while, and sat down when I started to feel a little lightheaded.

After an hour we unwrapped my finger. It was still bleeding a little bit, but I thought it was fine and I just wanted to put a bandage on it. My partner told me to get in the car. We went to the nearest urgent care centre. I showed my finger to the nurse. He turned pale and asked me if I had health insurance. I said yes. He said, "Go upstairs to see the surgeon. Don't sit in the waiting room. Just go in and find him."

Ugh. Thinking back on the whole ordeal now (5 stitches, a look of horror from the surgeon, the tetanus shot, the following 4 weeks of follow-up care), I feel sick. I'll stick to making cereal and eggs.
posted by gursky at 4:18 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I prefer long strands of spaghetti. My wife likes smaller pieces. This has been a point of contention. I'm making dinner one night, and to make her happy, decide to do it her way. This may not have been because she was in the kitchen talking to me, and I had an opportunity to show off... So, there I was trying to break a whole box of spaghetti in half, at once. To show my virility and strength. However, I am not strong and as I twisted, leaned and strained, my t-shirt touched the flame licking up under the large pot of water boiling. This caused me to immediately drop the spaghetti and put the flame out, no injury sustained, but I did have several vivid nightmares in those few seconds that still stick with me.

Also, some of the dropped spaghetti caught fire, setting off the smoke detectors. Which caused the dog to panic and race through the house. Loud and obnoxious, but not dangerous.

When the spaghetti that wasn't destroyed was finished, after I transferred it to the colander in the sink, as I was putting up the pot, I knocked off some glittery christmas knick-knack in the window. Straight into the spaghetti.
posted by DigDoug at 4:22 AM on August 22, 2013 [16 favorites]

The day before Christmas I was using a mandoline to cut potatoes for a sweet potato gratin. Slice of potato, potato, potato...slice of my thumb.

I ran to the bathroom to bandage it up, contemplating
(a) wow, that is a a lot of blood
(b) I wonder if I need to go to Urgent Care for that
(c) I wonder if I have time to get to Urgent Care before my mom gets into town so I can not Ruin Christmas.

At this moment the phone rang and my mom had indeed just gotten into town.

I could only think that if I had to ask my mom to drive me to Urgent Care, I would Ruin Christmas.

So once the bleeding stopped enough for me to get a bandage on it I decided that I would probably be fine. And I was fine. But I spent that holiday scared that I was going to get an enormous hand infection all because I was too scared about ruining Christmas.

The gratin, alas, kind of fell apart as I was walking over to my sister's place, and did not turn out so great.
posted by Jeanne at 4:35 AM on August 22, 2013 [3 favorites]

I once made a $110 apple pie thanks to my knife skillz. The worst part was driving the work truck with one hand since it had double shifters and took multiple parking spaces and required a wide turn radius.

The mandolin only caused a v-shaped scar on the bulb of my palm.

Nobody likes watching me in the kitchen.

As for shop equipment: Don't get me started on the reason they're called hand grinders.
posted by mightshould at 4:39 AM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Oh okay fine, last Christmas day I was making a fig and goat cheese tart as a surprise brunch while my wife was in the shower but the figs were a little too dried and hard and one of the stems was twisted around into the body of the fig and I foolishly tried to twist-pry it out with the tip of the ceramic knife I was using which of course slipped and trimmed off a good chunk of my index finger and nail instead. Ceramic knives are kind of amazingly sharp.

The ER docs had I am pretty sure a Christmas day food-related-injury betting pool going on but based on their apparent mild disappointment when I explained what I had been cooking I guess nobody had thought to include 'fig and goat cheese tart' in the grid.

My wife agreed that it was indeed a surprise Christmas day brunch but next time could we have it at home please. The stitched-back-on flap of finger healed reasonably well and the fingernail has grown back but my sense of touch is still all weird and arbitrary there, like the nerves reattached randomly and my brain hasn't yet figured out how to interpret the new signals.

(This was the same year as the Thanksgiving day which was also spent in the ER because my son fell off a barstool chair and gave himself a pinhole sized scalp wound that just would. not. stop. bleeding; the doc finally just threw up his hands and wrapped the kid's whole head in gauze, told him he was a ninja now, congratulations, and sent us on our way.)
posted by ook at 4:43 AM on August 22, 2013 [13 favorites]

You know, it's funny, because I have kitchen mishaps on a fairly regular basis--every time I move, I start at least one or two smallish-but-scary kitchen fires for some reason--but none have ever resulted in serious injury.

And yet, last week, I damn near lopped off a finger with a hedge trimmer (I couldn't watch while the doctor snipped bits of fat from the inside of my finger; my wife said it was pretty cool). So seeing these photos and reading the stories ... somehow makes me feel better about my kitchen safety skills. Or luck. Probably it's luck.
posted by uncleozzy at 4:49 AM on August 22, 2013

I've never really had any big kitchen accidents, but I did have one in Lab once.

I was cleaning a NMR tube and there was some gunk around the top. I placed the top into a papertowen and then spun. These tubes are made of rather thin glass and it immediately snapped into long thin shards and embedded themselves into my thumb and palm. I calmly wandered over to the sink and the shards of the tube were acting like needles and providing spigots for the blood to drain away. I pulled the two inch long pieces out and folded over the flap of skin that was cored from my thumb before anyone else noticed and then people started freaking out. I just popped the woulds into my mouth and searched for more glass carefully using my tongue and found none. Wrapped the woulds up in paper towels and held my arm straight up for half an hour or so until they stopped bleeding. Put some cyanoacrylate glue on it and went back to washing tubes.
posted by koolkat at 4:59 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Things can also go terribly wrong in the absence of blades and sharp objects. I'm thinking of grease puddles and soapy water on the floor, and the three or so times I've slipped and fallen in kitchens.

One of the most painful-looking accidents I've seen happened when a line cook slipped and instinctively reached out to keep his balance, catching himself on a hot range top.

Oh, and also, no-slip shoes do next nothing to guard against slips and falls.
posted by Occam's Aftershave at 5:01 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

As someone who cringes at the sight of paper cutters, I think I may need alcohol before reading this link.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:11 AM on August 22, 2013

I'm almost tempted to contribute, but don't want pictures of my right foot immortalized on the internets. Short text version: 1) Always be careful when draining large pots of boiling water 2) It was a bad day to be wearing cotton socks...
posted by samsara at 5:15 AM on August 22, 2013

Too bad Mefi is so middle class or we'd have more fast-food kitchen accident stories in here. Deep fryers are nasty, nasty things.
posted by JoeZydeco at 5:23 AM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Always use slip knots when tying up your sexual partner. If, in your trembling eagerness, you forget and use a granny knot instead, do not grab his pocket knife off the bedside table and try to cut the now firmly-tightened knot. Especially do not hold the silky rope with one hand while you slice with the other. The whole thing will end with you discussing your spicy little proclivities under the cold fluorescent lights of the ER while the hand surgeon tries to stifle his snickers.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 5:29 AM on August 22, 2013 [8 favorites]

Words of wisdom from a fellow cook at a restaurant I worked at, "If you drop your knife, don't try to catch it."
posted by breadbox at 5:36 AM on August 22, 2013 [3 favorites]

While she was being attended to, the doctor mentioned in passing that her injury was a remarkably common middle class injury.

So essentially the UK equivalent of the 1980s US bagel slicing injury.

(Am I just hallucinating or was that totally "news" in the 80s when yuppies started getting really into bagels?)
posted by bitter-girl.com at 5:45 AM on August 22, 2013 [3 favorites]

I took my new mandoline out for a spin for the first time last week and was, in retrospect, staggeringly nonchalant about safety -- I couldn't figure out how to make the hand-protector thing work, so I went in bare-handed. Somehow I avoided turning my fingers into zucchini noodles, and everything was going smoothly until it came time to disassemble the thing and wash it. I ended up dropping the blade on my foot and it was only through a truly astounding and balletic leap and twirl that I avoided losing a toe.
posted by coppermoss at 5:45 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Forget the post. The freakin' comments in this thread should come with a warning.

Kind of glad to see that other people's parents also rolled a dexterity of zero though.
posted by zarq at 5:47 AM on August 22, 2013 [4 favorites]

coppermoss, I made it through using my mandoline with all limbs attached the first (and only time) I used it. While washing it I gave myself a nasty cut that scared me out of using it for years. My wife recently sold it for a fair portion of the price we paid for it, and I still use the Microplane grater that came bundled with it, so all was not completely lost. I was tempted to make the person who bought it sign a waiver, though. In other mollweide household kitchen horror news, there's still blood on the ceiling from when I sliced a bit of my finger tip off with a knife a few years ago.
posted by mollweide at 5:59 AM on August 22, 2013

Welp, there goes any desire I ever had to get a mandoline...

Yeah...see...Every time I watch someone use a mandoline, I think "That would be so useful. I really need one." But, then, I snap out of it. I know myself all too well, and absolutely know, without fail, there would be pints of blood all over the finely sliced onions in short order.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:12 AM on August 22, 2013

And, no, I am not going anywhere near the link in the FPP. Not. gonna. do it.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:12 AM on August 22, 2013

And I won't ever tell the story of what happened when I licked peanut butter off a very sharp knife.

Don't worry - nothing you can say is worse than the image currently bouncing round my mind like a spring lamb full of caffeine...
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 6:14 AM on August 22, 2013 [3 favorites]

My only war-wound (and thus tempting fate) is a relatively unimpressive scar on my index finger from the time I nearly severed a tendon feeding the dog.

It was one of those "perfect storm" moment... The dog had two tins of cat food (I have no idea) a night; the tin opener was one designed for the disabled which left the sharp edge on the tin instead of the lid; our untidy house had no clean forks; we were running late for something.

So, the bright idea was had to shake the food out of the can. It was working, so my mother started shaking the second can.

As my hand came up, hers came down...

The ride to the hospital was quite fun. By the time I got there the bleeding and the crying had stopped and I was more fascinated by the white thing wiggling in the wound every time I moved my finger.

The receptionist at A&E was rather less fascinated and rather more... green.
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 6:25 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I have a faint scar on one of my fingers from attempting to cut a block of cheddar with a butter knife (and without any cutting board or other stable surface). It was a completely unremarkable injury, but I like talking about the time I hurt myself cutting the cheese.
posted by Metroid Baby at 6:25 AM on August 22, 2013 [4 favorites]

I've had two good kitchen injuries. In the first, while walking from the living room bit to the kitchen bit of kitchen/living room in my flat, I kicked a mug that I'd carelessly left on the floor. The mug bounced off the sink unit, broke in half and landed under the sole of my bare foot as my stride continued. That day I learned how sharp ceramic can be. It sliced the sole of my foot about 2 inches across and 1/2 and inch deep.The worst thing was chasing my cat away from lapping at the pool of blood. There was a lot of blood.

For my second good kitchen injury I was up early before work, cooking pancakes that I'd promised my son for his birthday breakfast. I was keeping the pancakes warm in the oven on a plate and when I was done I reached into the oven and took out the plate with my bare hands. Unfortunately the oven was on high and not on the really,really low setting that I thought I'd left it on and the plate had heated up to about 200C. That day I learned that ceramic, while capable of being sharp, transfers heat relatively slowly. Slowly enough that you can hold it in your hands for a second before you realise how fucking hot it is. I had huge nasty blisters on all my fingers on both hands and I thought I'd never play guitar again.

Oh, I also managed to give my son a kitchen injury one time. He was about 2 or 3. I was carrying him round the kitchen letting him see all the stuff that's up high. The stuff that's normally out of reach of wee kids. I was telling him about the herbs and spices. "This is oregano, do you like the smell?" that sort of thing. I thought I was being a pretty cool dad. And then for some reason I let him have a sniff of the chilli powder. Of course he sneezed and blew most of the jar back into his own face. In his eyes, up his nose, in his mouth - all over him. I had to run through to the bathroom and hold him under the cold tap until I'd rinsed it all off while he was crying wondering if I was trying to poison or drown him.
posted by jiroczech at 6:28 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I've sliced off numerous small pieces of fingertip chopping one thing or another in the kitchen over the years and they always seem to grow back with no unsightly after effects.

It's weird, though, that just as I'm in the down stroke of the fatal chop, I totally see it coming, but am powerless to stop.
posted by hwestiii at 6:29 AM on August 22, 2013

Bah. Kitchen injuries. A fingertip here, a hot-oil-splash-scar there, no big whoop. After over a decade of food-service experience in my youth, I have no idea why my hands aren't just a couple of gnarled, digit-less lumps. My half- dozen-or-so "across the street" forearm burn scars from pizza ovens only finished fading in the last five years.

I have seen things in kitchens that I can never unsee. A chunk of human flesh flying off from a meat slicer (taking that guard off can be a real time-saver though - until...) and landing in a 50-lb wad of pizza dough, streaking the dough pink as it mixes in the bowl. An entire hand, up to just past the wrist, pink and red and still audibly sizzling fresh from the deep-fryer with a wedding ring melted partway into the finger. A pinky-finger mangled beyond recognition from getting slammed in the walk-in refrigerator door-latch. Lessons learned: mom&pop independent restaurants aren't always up on their workman's-comp details.

A waiter I knew came hurrying over to the first-aid kit with an inch-long shard of wine-bottleneck glass embedded in the palm of his hand from between the thumb and index finger. The bottleneck had shattered for no reason anyone could tell while he was opening the wine. Couldn't get me to use a waiter's corkscrew again for years after seeing that.

Mandolines? Yawn.
posted by Cookiebastard at 6:39 AM on August 22, 2013

Boning knife? It sure was!
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:41 AM on August 22, 2013

True story, my wife cut her finger badly on a mandoline while reaching for the guard that protects you from doing that.
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:42 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I once drove up to my octagenarian mother's home to find an ambulance in the driveway and her front hallway looking as though it had been squirted with about a gallon of blood. Blood was everywhere--ceiling, walls, doors, windows. Mom was sitting calmly in the kitchen and an EMT was looking at her hand.

"I saw a new way to pit an avocado on TV," she said proudly, pointing to a very sharp knife lying on the table. "And I cut myself." She added after a moment, "It doesn't hurt."

The EMT indicated that he couldn't really find much to do, as the bleeding had stopped and the wound was clean. As she was stable, he suggested taking her to a local prompt care to have the thing checked out more closely.

In the exam room I asked Mom to show me the cut. In the center of her hand was a clean, simple laceration about 2 cm wide. As we waited for the doctor she continued to examine her hand.

"You know, it's funny... I cut this side of my hand, but look, there's a cut on this side."

She showed me the back of her hand, which bore an identical cut. Clearly, the blade had passed completely through her hand.

When the doctor returned, I had dropped to the floor. Mom, however, was fine and was sent home without incident or concern, and her wound healed without a scar in a week.
posted by kinnakeet at 6:47 AM on August 22, 2013 [7 favorites]

Am I just hallucinating or was that totally "news" in the 80s when yuppies started getting really into bagels?

I remember it as a Thing, too.
posted by randomkeystrike at 6:48 AM on August 22, 2013

Albert Burneko

Eponysterical!
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:49 AM on August 22, 2013

I play woodwind instruments and guitar so I am just going to close this browser and go back to work now ktnxby
posted by randomkeystrike at 6:50 AM on August 22, 2013

I have seen things in kitchens that I can never unsee.

Like... tears in rain... something something glittering Tannhauser gate...time to die... which I feel like doing after seeing the photograph of somebody's entire left hand burned to the third degree with the single caption "bacon grease".
posted by jokeefe at 6:54 AM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

I will just say this, based on personal experience. Never cook in bare feet. Especially if hot oil is involved. And you have left the pan on the heat too long and the oil has therefore become incredibly hot and very, very much the opposite of viscous. And you think it would be a really smart idea to jerk that pan off the heat so the oil doesn't catch fire.

Yeah. I advise against this.
posted by Decani at 6:54 AM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Classic Rick Stein 'All chefs cut themselves with a mandolin but you only do it the once'

I guess we're not chefs, but my wife and I each managed to injure ourselves multiple times the first time we used ours. I cut myself twice threw it down in disgust and proclaimed that I would never use it again (and probably swore at her mother for giving us the thing), only to have her decide to give it a spin to finish off the fries we were making and cut herself twice as well.

To be fair, I also regularly start frying things without wearing pants and I have been involved in a fairly painful "scratching myself after slicing jalapenos" incident so maybe I'm just an unsafe cook.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:05 AM on August 22, 2013

On the first potato, I sliced right into my finger with the peeler.

Every time I use a damn vegetable peeler, I end up peeling a digit.

I keep my knives extremely sharp and never cut myself with them. Vegetable peelers, though? Get me every time.
posted by bfranklin at 7:08 AM on August 22, 2013

Too bad Mefi is so middle class or we'd have more fast-food kitchen accident stories in here. Deep fryers are nasty, nasty things.

*raises hand* I worked for the local McDonald's for about six months when I was 16. One night, I went to pull a basket of fries out of the deep-fat fryer, but I didn't have a good grip on it - and about two seconds after I pulled it out, the basket shifted in my grasp and pivoted straight into my left forearm, where that nice hot metal instantly burned a stripe into my skin. I told one of my co-workers, who first chuckled at my klutziness and said "let me see," but then when I showed her, her face fell, she went pale and said "oh god."

They took me to the back and we ascertained it was a second-degree burn - it was kinda gray, and blistery. They put a fuckton of Bactine on it, and a big sterile pad secured with an ace bandage. But they couldn't do too much else, because...as it turned out, I injured myself only a half hour before some promotional thing was happening where a guy dressed as Mac Tonight was going to show up. When they figured out I was probably not going to need a hospital visit I was instructed to spend the rest of my shift cleaning rather than cooking, so I was out in the lobby with my still-smarting arm cleaning up burger wrappers and crap while Mac Tonight hung around and played his song over and over.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:14 AM on August 22, 2013 [5 favorites]

Like... tears in rain...
Well, more like shredded skin and blood in mashed potatoes, but, yeah. I was thinking in Rutger Hauer-voice when I wrote that.

*releases dove*
posted by Cookiebastard at 7:20 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Not kitchen related, but sharp thingies and fingers related: I used to work summers landscaping. One particularly hot and humid day we decided to avoid all the difficult hardscaping that need to be done and just do some easy pruning. Hours in the baking sun, the rhythmic work put me in a daze. Prune, prune, prune, prune, prune, prune, SNIP.... OOH – dangly finger bit! It was a long wait at the ER, but at least the World Cup was on in the waiting room. And now I know why they're called hand pruners.
posted by Kabanos at 7:22 AM on August 22, 2013

Deep fryers are nasty, nasty things.

As are those scary-as-shit meat slicing things in the deli with which I once cut off a very small part of my fingertip leaving me with a funny fingerprint on that finger. I think there are probably a lot of people with deep fryer stories, I know I used to work with one.
posted by jessamyn at 7:22 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Like the old saying goes: "Never cook bacon naked."
posted by blue_beetle at 7:31 AM on August 22, 2013

Clearly, the blade had passed completely through her hand.

Mother Renault once sewed herself to the sewing machine. Stopped, turned the knob to back the needle out, and now had thread running top to bottom through her index finger.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:32 AM on August 22, 2013 [7 favorites]

...why they're called hand pruners.

Guy in high school was using an electric hedge clipper, and took the top of his middle finger off, to the base of the nail.

He then refused to have it reattached, and he took up smoking, specifically to be able to show it off.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:36 AM on August 22, 2013

I have always observed that I must have a higher pain threshold than most people. The comments in the post confirm it. I've sliced the tips off of my fingers more times than I can count, a couple of times quite badly, but I don't have any scars. Weird.

I worked in a restaurant kitchen from ages 12 to 18 (yes, 12, it was a family-owned country restaurant). TO THIS DAY, when I drop something, I stick my foot out to break its fall. Just did it a day or two ago. In the restaurant kitchen, this tactic might occasionally hurt a little. At home, however, where I spend most of my time barefoot, it's not such a good reaction.
posted by tippiedog at 7:37 AM on August 22, 2013

Melting butter in the microwave. I was distracted by the other parts of the recipe, so didn't notice that I had accidentally set the thing for 3:00 instead of 0:30. When it came time to add the butter the mug was so hot I dropped it (or it shattered, I'm not sure which), spilling boiling butter all over the place. I'll spare you the gory burn details but five years later, my thumb is still a different color than the rest of my hand.
posted by troika at 7:40 AM on August 22, 2013

Safety tip for de-pitting avocados: the pit will practically fall out if you slice the half with the pit into it one more time so the pit is now planted in a quarter. There is almost no safe way to pop a pit out of a half that is not a bit over-ripe.
posted by bukvich at 7:41 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

JHarris: "UH-HUH NO WAY NOT CLICKING YOU CAN'T MAKE ME YOU CAN'T MAKE ME"

No hacks Super Mandoline DX speed run (obsoletes old record by 2.12 seconds)


~ tents fingers ~
posted by boo_radley at 7:50 AM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Don't cut sweet potatoes on a mandoline. Yup, I learned that sharp things are sharp and have the scar to prove it.
posted by wiskunde at 8:03 AM on August 22, 2013

Oh, now I've done it. I've cut the dickens out of my finger"
posted by hanov3r at 8:03 AM on August 22, 2013 [7 favorites]

The worst part about the cuts in my thumb from my shiny new Bron mandoline isn't that I cut myself — how many times have I fantasized about cutting myself and cringed at the thought as a way to remind myself to be careful — but that I keep jamming things into the wound as it heals.
posted by redindiaink at 8:08 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

There is almost no safe way to pop a pit out of a half that is not a bit over-ripe.

Here is the safe way:

Cut the avocado in halves; pull one half free from the pit and set aside.

Put the half with the pit on the counter or a stable cutting board. DO NOT HOLD IT WITH YOUR HAND.

All of these following movements should be small and deliberate, not forceful or sudden.

With a chef's knife, whack the pit to lodge the blade into the pit. Grab the avocado half by its curved back, keeping your fingers clear of the blade, and twist very slightly. DO NOT TWIST HARD, which results in unpredictable force. Just barely apply pressure until it loosens.

Now you have two pitted halves and a pit stuck to your knife. DO NOT GRAB THE PIT. It is slippery.

Instead, with the palm of your hand facing the dull side of the knife, pinch your thumb and index finger together against the blade where it meets the pit. This applies just enough pressure to push the pit loose from the blade. I do this over the sink or the trash can because the pit kinda squirts off the blade and I don't want to be grabbing for it as it bounces back off the countertop.

Yes, I once saw a co-worker at the sandwich shop stab directly through her palm trying to pit an avocado in a hurry. She was the same staff member who liked to clean the slicing machine by holding a soapy sponge to the blade, then turning on the machine. When I became manager, I changed the protocol: when cleaning the machine, first pull the plug and place it on the counter where you can see it at all times. YIKES.
posted by Elsa at 8:18 AM on August 22, 2013 [4 favorites]

My wife and I were chatting while she was slicing potatoes on a mandoline...

At first I read that as trampoline....
posted by WalkingAround at 8:19 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

A few winters ago, I managed to cut right through my index finger by ignoring the most basic of kitchen safety rules. I was slicing off a chunk of cheddar quickly to nibble, and I skipped using a cutting board. When the knife slipped, it skidded off the block of cheese and straight through the index finger of the hand holding it.

It was snowy and icy and late, and I don't have insurance. My partner and I talked for a looooong time before I agreed to go to the ER. I mean, the bleeding has stopped! Almost! Kinda! Okay, that's a lot of blood. The real deciding factor: though generally not squeamish, I couldn't stand to look at it long enough to clean it out. The dull knife had cut a raggedy strip of skin and meat all the way through.

In our local ER, a stab wound straight through a finger on your right hand gets you seen pretty quickly turns out, perhaps because it looks so much like a defensive wound. Both the nurse and the doctor asked the same question with the same bland intonation: "How did you manage to do that?" while carefully not making eye contact with my brawny, scruffy husband standing right next to me. Apparently my answers satisfied them, though each found excuses to send him away (get her some water from the fountain, it's right outside; go to the front desk for some papers, would you?) and get me to tell the story again.

Even though I didn't need stitches, going to the ER was good: they cleaned it out extremely well and gave me a tetanus booster because HEY if you drive a knife straight through your finger, it's a puncture wound!

The doctor bandaged me, instructed me what kind of bandage to buy for redressing the wound, and gave me two single-use packets of antibiotic ointment. When the doc turned her back, the nurse swooped in and gave me packets of sterile gauze, a handful of ointment packets, and a half-roll of that great hospital tape.

I was extremely lucky: didn't nick the bone, didn't have any nerve damage. The wound itself was pretty grim for a few weeks: a fat ribbon of skin that darkened and curled and finally dried up and fell off in a dark strip, leaving a long shiny scar of clean new flesh on the side of my index finger. I still have the scar; I expect I'll have it forever.

And now I use a cutting board, even if I'm just whacking a chunk of cheddar from a bigger chunk.
posted by Elsa at 8:37 AM on August 22, 2013

We received a mandoline as a wedding gift and that fucker has been chained up in the tiny cabinet above the fridge ever since like it's the demon from The Keep. We'd throw it out but 1) it was expensive and 2) we know that even touching the box it is in will lead to our thumbs flying off in horrible, beautiful red arcs.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:37 AM on August 22, 2013 [7 favorites]

That thing about how all chefs cut themselves on a mandoline only once? a dirty lie.

But it was only 3 times in one prep, and while the Band-Aids got slippery, there was no need for a trip to the ER.

Also? I am not a chef.
posted by allthinky at 8:42 AM on August 22, 2013

Well, call me Mr. Butterfingers
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:42 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I can't decide whether learning the word mandoline makes up for realizing that there isn't a large community of people living such fantastically bohemian lives that slicing vegetables on a mandolin requires no explanation.

The world is very slightly larger and less weird now.
posted by eotvos at 8:43 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I've had a mandoline for ~20 years and have never (yet) cut myself on it. I, um, am not great about using the guard, though I will use it if I'm slicing something hard and squatty like potatoes. (I mostly use it for julienning zucchini and summer squash for fritters, or for julienning carrots, but I usually mandoline 2/3 of a carrot and chomp in the rest.)

I'm not advocating this behavior, which is extremely sloppy and will get me badly cut one day; I'm wondering why I haven't been yet. Even as a young, inattentive, and frequently drunk cook, I've yet to have a mandoline mishap.

But I've cut off the verrrrrrry tip of my right index finger more than once with a chef's knife. Turns out, that nail bed doesn't always grow back.
posted by Elsa at 8:44 AM on August 22, 2013

Here's a photo illustrating the avocado pit-pinching technique I described above. It's far safer than trying to grab the slippery pit from the front of the knife.
posted by Elsa at 8:46 AM on August 22, 2013

> The worst thing was chasing my cat away from lapping at the pool of blood.

Does your cat hang around in the kitchen now, watching you, just in case?

Mine does.
posted by hank at 8:49 AM on August 22, 2013 [4 favorites]

Yuppie-proof Bagel Biter.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:49 AM on August 22, 2013

Yup, I learned that sharp things are sharp and have the scar to prove it.

At the cheese shop where I worked, we had a saying.

"Knives are made to cut meat. You are made out of meat."
posted by gauche at 8:52 AM on August 22, 2013 [4 favorites]

Mandolines aren't scary at all; I just can't figure out how you get the food through the strings.
posted by backseatpilot at 9:01 AM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'm amazed so many people try to get the pits out of avocados so they have the perfectly round circle in the middle.

Because I squish them while still in the skin, slice off the top, then squeeze out the pre-mushed avocado for instant guacamole delight. And then the pit just pops out afterwards.

(Then again, if I was making anything fancier than guacamole, I'd probably try fancy tricks too.)

My best knife injury was when I was in my high school anatomy class. We had been dissecting beef hearts, and because we had a shortage of large knives (because, unsurprisingly, scalpels are a bit ridiculous to cut a beef heart in half), I produced my Swiss Army knife and had taken apart that heart like a pro.

During the cleanup, I was washing my Swiss Army knife, then drying it, and then because of the formaldehyde fumes or just being a stupid teenager, I put a thin cheap Board of Education Special paper towel in my left hand, and proceeded to dry the Swiss Army knife. Sharp end down. Across my palm.

There isn't a scar surprisingly, but everyone laughed when I went "Oh. Ow. That hurts. What the hell."

(Now most of my kitchen accidents seem to be slicing a bit too close to my fingernail and taking off a long scrape of nail polish.

Glitter's edible, right?)
posted by Katemonkey at 9:12 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Similar to the "frozen burger" injury: I was using a butter knife to separate frozen bratwurst. The knife slipped and, due to the amount of force I was using, sliced into my pinky finger. Got a few stitches at Urgent Care and thought everything was fine. After it healed, I realized that I had actually sliced a tendon in my finger, and now that finger no longer bends at the first knuckle directly below my fingernail. And I'm a pianist.

When I was a preteen, drunk with the power of preparing my own food, I managed to broil my index finger when it hit the broiler as I was removing my toasted cheese sandwich. It turned black.

I've also injured myself with vegetable peelers, but nothing too dramatic there.
posted by altopower at 9:18 AM on August 22, 2013

I ended up at Urgent Care last year after I cut my foot on my oven. (Don't ask)

I think about 4 nurses/doctors must have asked me "Is that why you're really here?"
posted by schmod at 9:23 AM on August 22, 2013

The tip of my right-hand index finger went missing via mandoline quite a few years ago. All the fleshy part up to the bone.

I have no sensation there at all, and when I tap a touchscreen, nothing happens. It's like an old, dried-out pencil eraser.
posted by nedpwolf at 9:25 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I am scarred for life.
posted by whimsicalnymph at 9:30 AM on August 22, 2013

Too bad Mefi is so middle class or we'd have more fast-food kitchen accident stories in here. Deep fryers are nasty, nasty things.

Not a deep fryer, luckily I managed to avoid any serious burns despite work with them nearly every day for over 6 years. But I used to work at a Chicken-Fried-Jesus establishment based in Atlanta recently famous for thier less than progressive views on marraige equality. One of the things that they're known for, other than rank bigotry, is fresh squeezed lemonade, by which they really do mean fresh cut and squeezed every damn day. First off, making that much lemonade requires a metric shitton of lemons, and the kind of high powered resturant juicer you need to juice a whole case of lemons in about an hour requires you to press each individual lemon half firmly on to a fast rotating platic juicer/bore. Don't slip, itll bruise your fingers all to hell. But before you can juice, you have to cut. If you follow the safety videos, you should use the cutting glove, precisely so you don't get your ring finger caught on the backside of the knife blade while holding the lemon with your thumb and pointer/middle to cut in half. If you don't follow the video, you can end up slicing your ring finger to the bone and spurting blood into the tub of lemon juice. And, lemon juice is acidic, so it feels even more awesome to cut yourself to the bone while your bare hand is literally dripping in lemon acid all the way to the ER.

We had to order more lemons, and no lemonade was served that day.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:32 AM on August 22, 2013

After it healed, I realized that I had actually sliced a tendon in my finger

The hell kind of doctor stitches you up without checking if you can bend your finger? Tendons can usually be sewn back together if you know they're severed.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:36 AM on August 22, 2013

Also, I always just use a spoon to get the avocado pit out. No knife required.
posted by whimsicalnymph at 9:37 AM on August 22, 2013

Less impressive than some others, but: When I worked at Chick-fil-A, I had just pulled up a basket of fries. I couldn't get a good grip on the basket to flip it over, so I grabbed it by the little hook that it rests on when it's not in use. The hook that had just been soaking in hot peanut oil. It left a neat little half-inch wide blister across that finger, and I got a lot more nervous about fryers.
posted by JDHarper at 9:42 AM on August 22, 2013

Because I squish them while still in the skin, slice off the top, then squeeze out the pre-mushed avocado for instant guacamole delight.

I have learned something brilliant today.
posted by bfranklin at 9:55 AM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

My brother and I gave my mother a mandoline for Christmas a few years back. The very first time she used it, she lopped off the tip of one of her fingers.

I recently bought a mandoline for myself, and am treating it with the respect it deserves. Which is to say I am visibly tense while I'm cutting. Particularly potatoes and carrots.

Haven't really cut myself in years now, but having now written that for all to read, I'm sure one of my knives will show me who's boss fairly soon.
posted by flippant at 10:09 AM on August 22, 2013

A while ago I bought myself some nicer pots and pans, the kind where the handle doesn't get got when you're cooking on the stovetop. So I lost the habit of using an oven mitt when moving the pans around. Of course, the handle still gets really hot if you, for instance, start something on the burner then put it into a 475deg oven. I burned the hell out of my palm when I grabbed the pan.

Let me be honest: I did that twice.
posted by maryrussell at 10:17 AM on August 22, 2013

I had a mandoline injury a two months ago. Sliced into the tip of my thumb, but somehow I reacted quickly stopped before it all came off. There was blood, and it was a pretty minor injury, and all the bits were still, if loosely, connected by a thick flap of skin. The absolute worse part was having to take nail clippers to finish what the mandoline started.

Chainmail gloves should come with every mandoline, and nothing should slice unless the gloves are being used. We have the technology for this.
posted by Cog at 10:22 AM on August 22, 2013

Here's the trick to cutting a bagel - don't move the knife, move the bagel. Cut until you reach the hole, then rotate keeping the knife blade at least half a bagel from your hand. It's foolproof.
posted by any major dude at 10:24 AM on August 22, 2013

@any major dude,

It's foolproof.

I don't know. Nature's been evolving better and better fools all the time.
posted by Cog at 10:26 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Unlike all of the people who slice their hand into nice little slices I have a nice pair of cut proof gloves so I can hold food in my hand and not worry about slicing it off. They're really cheap and I don't know why more people don't have them.

Thank you. Thank you.
posted by vitabellosi at 10:38 AM on August 22, 2013

What's the big deal with the picture? I was expecting some kind of seared, barely-out-of-the-bandage gory picture here, but it's fully healed. Is it the story that's squicky? I don't get the massive "AUGH" reaction.

Then again, maybe I've been around too much real gore to have this even phase me. I was around when: A friend of mine cut his left index finger to ribbons up to the second knuckle. Another friend dropped an exacto knife and it landed, point-down and wavering slightly, right in the top of his sandaled foot. A friend's brother slipped with a soldering iron and melted one of his fingers to his thumb and his thumb to a circuit board. Another friend had his eyebrow broken open while doing some swordplay nonsense and blood was just pouring down his face. I ripped one of my fingernails off all the way down to the bed playing tetherball. My metalwork instructor sliced himself open on a sharp piece of copper sheeting and sprayed blood all over before passing out on the floor...

Yeah, I've probably just seen too much gore for reading about it to phase me.
posted by Urban Winter at 10:38 AM on August 22, 2013

I have a delicious barley-mushroom pilaf that I make in the microwave. I make it for holidays a lot because it doesn't take up a burner on the stove. It starts off by microwaving a chopped onion and half a stick of butter together for two minutes.

I've made this a dozen times, and this time I was actually making it the night before thanksgiving, along with my fabulous and deadly creamed onions which everyone looks forward to all year long. But when I took the dish out of the microwave after that first step, somehow the escaping steam had caused the lid to be sort of vacuum-welded on. I hit the kid with my hand to break the seal— and a jet of live steam blew out over my hand.

This hurt like unholy hell, but I had already started to lift the lid of the casserole dish, and I didn't want to drop it. Fortunately I had lifted the lid by tilting it away from my face (thank you Girl Scouts!), but as I moved the vertical lid to set it down on the counter, water from the rapidly condensing steam dropped off the lid and onto my chest. It must have been about 211.5 degrees, and I was wearing a thick heavy cotton sweater and a double-layered cotton sports bra. By the time I got those off, skin peeled away with them, leaving an open blister the size of a silver dollar right next to my nipple.

At the time, I had crazy good health insurance— so good that they sent a doctor to my house at 1 AM on Thanksgiving morning to clean and dress the burn. I didn't understand why she was spending so much time on the utterly painless burn on my breast when the steam scald on my hand hurt worse than labor, until she said "It scares me to death that this doesn't hurt. You should be screaming while I debride this. Please, PLEASE follow up with your doctor on Friday, or go to the ER if this looks at all distressing tomorrow."

She wrote me a scrip for two Vicodin to get me through the night, and I drove to the all night pharmacy with a bag of ice taped to my hand to make the pain bearable while my husband stayed at home with our sleeping (breastfed!) infant. The burn on my breast did start to throb about two days later, and healed up without even leaving a scar. But I will never forget the look on that Doctor's face as she poked my raw, oozing flesh with a sterile swab and muttered "I would be a lot happier if this was hurting you a lot more."
posted by KathrynT at 10:42 AM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

As for shop equipment: Don't get me started on the reason they're called hand grinders.

Is that like a thumb grinding wheel? Because I’ve used one of those and they’re remarkably effective.
posted by bongo_x at 11:21 AM on August 22, 2013

I do not like this thread one bit.

I have a pencil-eraser sized burn scar just below my left eye which was caused by a creme brulee accident, and I still shudder with grotesque horror when thinking about how close I came to potentially losing sight in that eye.
posted by elizardbits at 11:25 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

While she was being attended to, the doctor mentioned in passing that her injury was a remarkably common middle class injury.

Also, ER people will tell you that on Sunday mornings, they can pretty much count on stitching up two or three people who tried to cut a bagel in half. At least, at hospitals located in areas with high-bagel demographics.
posted by beagle at 11:25 AM on August 22, 2013

Thank goodness I'm a mediocre cook and have no idea what a mandoline is; the worst I've ever done was when I had just left for college and was new to the concept of hard-boiling eggs and managed, when carrying a potful of boiling water to the sink, to pour the contents all over my stomach. It's funny how the pain receptors take a nanosecond or so to tell your brain you should freak out. It went something like "Oh damn, I got my shirt all we-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!"

My dad must have been thrilled to get my quavering phone call just after -- "Hey, Dad? When, uh, when do you know a burn is bad enough to go to the hospital?"
posted by Mooseli at 11:34 AM on August 22, 2013

My classic kitchen horror story, AKA the time I tried to kill myself with grape juice:

It was New Year's Eve, and I was putting a bottle of sparkling grape juice to chill in the fridge for the midnight toast. We'd bought a Welch's value pack, 2 champagne-style glass bottles of fizzy grape juice glued together and wrapped in plastic. I began to pull the bottles apart. Cheap weak glass, strong superglue, contents under carbonated pressure. Guess where this is going.

BANG. I was drenched in grape juice, as was the entire kitchen: floor, ceiling, walls. My left hand still held the one intact juice bottle. My right wrist was sliced open in a gaping hole.

There was less blood than you'd think, but you could see the tendons and bone. By then my parents had been drawn by the noise. Dad studied my wrist for a minute, then said with memorable deadpan, "Well, I guess we should head to the ER."

He and I drove there, which took about five minutes. The very calm conversation was something like this:

Me: "I'm going to die, aren't I."
Dad: "You're not going to die."
Me: "Because you could tell me, if I am. I can take it."
Dad: "Okay, but you're not going to die."
Me: "That's fine. But I am going to die, so."

The best part was in the ER. I was still bright purple—my clothes soaked with grape juice, my entire body sticky, my hair dripping purple foam—and as the ER doctor stitched up my arm, he asked me very seriously if I'd been depressed over the holidays and if I'd ever thought of trying to hurt myself. Like by slitting my wrist with an exploding grape juice bottle.

Apparently I missed severing some tendons by millimeters, which probably would've netted me a nice settlement from Welch's at the cost of never moving my hand again. And I still have an impressive scar that probably does look like a dramatic self-injury attempt.
posted by nicebookrack at 11:36 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

This may be a better link, the one in the OP seems to only goes to one incident in the article. Give it a minute to load all of the pics and GIFs. The pics of the hand with all the skin burned off is especially cringe worthy.
posted by Daddy-O at 11:37 AM on August 22, 2013

The truism from the cooking world is that "Everything in a kitchen is designed to either burn you or cut you." I love to cook and have been doing it from small chef age. So I've done everything stupid possible in a kitchen. Burns, cuts, exploding glassware, stupid cans with their sharp edges (buy a seam splitter can opener to avoid this) and chipping knife edges hacking at something inappropriate and shooting the fragment into my eye.

But the one that really sticks in my head is when I was doing some fast veggie prep and managed to slice the tip of my left thumb off with my razor-sharp cleaver. Now that by itself is prolly not a big deal BUT the next day was the N64/Super Mario 64 release date. And I had pre-ordered mine and there was no way in HELL that I was not going to play it. So ten days later, when I had done enough tissue damage from button mashing, I saw a doctor who advised me that I'd probably done some nerve damage as well. Yup, still can't feel things with my left thumb. My piano playing really went to hell after that. Still love to cook though.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 11:44 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

With a chef's knife, whack the pit to lodge the blade into the pit.

The one thing I would add to Elsa's advice is that this step needs to be done with a part of the blade closer to the handle than to the tip, which gives you better leverage when you twist. Took me a while to figure that out. If you watch TV chefs closely when they're doing this, they'll lodge the blade into the pit at a point fairly close to the handle, but they almost always neglect to mention that it's important to do that.

I always use the hand guard with my mandolin, which means I've never cut myself with it while slicing food; no, it's cleaning the mandolin afterwards that gets me.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 11:57 AM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Last week I used my mandoline to make zucchini noodles. I lost the chariot handle years ago, so every time I use the mandoline, I think of that Rick Stein moment, which I saw on tv, and which has been haunting me for, oh, 15 years or so.

Sliced up three pounds of zucchini, caaaaaaaarefully. Rinsed and dried the mandoline, caaaaaaaaarefully. Put the blade guards on, put it back in the box. Success!

Not even ten seconds later, I tried to slice a lime in half with a paring knife I thought I had sharpened last week. Lime skittered out from under the blade, blade went directly into my index finger. (Cut wasn't too deep, but still bled like an s.o.b.)

Somewhere in the universe, Bender B. Rodriguez sang: "Now, THAT'S ironyyyyyy!"
posted by bakerina at 12:06 PM on August 22, 2013

The $1300 Dollar Chef's Knife -

Samizdata had just purchased a new chef's knife and was working in his kitchen. He's cutting and slicing and chopping when suddenly the ex-Mrs. Samizdata (actually fiance at the time) hears Samizdata yell "FUCK!" at the top of his lungs while she is in the bathroom. The use of the F-word at high volume is a common theme with Samizdata injuries.

Samizdata is standing at the sink flushing the wound (right index finger facing the thumb) with cold water when Mrs. Samizdata yells sarcastically from the bathroom "Do you need to go to the hospital?" Samizdata notices the blood from the wound is pulsing, so he says "Actually, I think I do." (Samizdata does NOT like doctors or hospitals, so he often does not seek treatment for what he thinks are minor wounds).

Mrs. Samizdata, knowing Samizdata's dislike of medical treatment, proceeds to run out of the bathroom and into the kitchen, pants around ankles, in a panic. Samizdata calmly apprises her of the injury. She proceeds to panic and pull up her pants and then bundles Samizdata into the car, finger wrapped in a clean rag.

During the trip, Mrs. S is crying and panicking. Mr. S is making jokes that since he is an ordained minister in both the Universal Life Church and the Church of the Subgenius, as well as uninsured, that it might be a good idea for us to pull over and allow me to conduct a quick wedding for us so I can get on her health care. Mrs. S is unimpressed with the idea. Mentally Mr. S reflects on how happy he is he has a high pain threshold.

Finger is sewed up (badly - It was buckled) and Mrs. S is now yelling at Mr. S for carelessness and an apparently lack of desire to take the whole thing seriously.

Months later, healing done, Mr. S discovers the nerve damage in the finger is highly useful for amusing kids from Mrs. S's family get togethers as "the magic finger." The kids find it morbidly fascinating to provide Mr. S with pins and needles to watch Samizdata stab himself repeatedly in said finger with no sigh of pain.

(Okay, so the ex was right. I didn't take it seriously.)

Now, do I mention the meat slicer incident from working in a deli in high school?
posted by Samizdata at 12:06 PM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

There needs to be a special prize for my mom, who managed to cut off part of her finger using a kitchen door.
posted by mikurski at 12:11 PM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

I have been very lucky in the kitchen. A college crush was missing a finger to the first knuckle and blamed the meat slicer at the Arby's where he worked, but could've been bullshitting me.

Husband, a dental tech, managed to grind down a fingertip at the lab a few years ago. On his fretting hand. It grew back.
posted by Occula at 12:19 PM on August 22, 2013

Anytime someone is chopping and talking, or frying and talking I ask them to focus on what they are doing; sometimes I yell. Fortunately I've never witnessed a really bad accident.
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:22 PM on August 22, 2013

Actually, I'm realizing burns have kind of been my kitchen nemesis. At this very moment, I have the following scars on my person:

* One two-day old burn from reaching into the oven to pull a cake out - the oven is down on the ground and in front of the fridge, so the only way to reach is to stand next to it and sort of lean over sideways. I burn my forearms on the upper lip of the oven a lot.

* A cluster of burns from when I was making quesadillas. they are located...okay, look - there is a lot of hue and cry in here about not frying things/cooking while naked. In my defense, it has been hot in New York this summer. At least they are in a place where people will not notice them unless we are about to get very friendly.

* The scalded hand from hot steam coming out of the kettle is healed, though.

I've also discovered that trying to rest a bunch of lamb chops directly on some sprigs of rosemary while broiling them starts minor kitchen fires.

But only one knife-related injury, from when I was twelve and was cutting an apple and holding the apple and knife in a dumb way. This happened two minutes before my piano teacher turned up at the house for my weekly lesson - when she did show up, she found me and my mom both holding a rag to the half-inch gash in my palm, and we both were all, "so, yeah, about today's lesson...." She just laughed, gave us some first aid advice and lead the way to the ER. I had a couple stitches, but the scar is totally gone by now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:46 PM on August 22, 2013

Did you know that if you slice off a bit of your thumb through the nail, the nail piece will stay connected to the thumb slice like some sort of little hat?
posted by orme at 5:37 AM on August 22

Bamboo hatchet on the day of the 2006 midterm election.
That is a memory that sticks with you.
posted by St. Sorryass at 12:52 PM on August 22, 2013

Sorta a kitchen injury but more a cooking and renovations. Middle of doing some reno work that involved some tearing out beside my computer desk. My house's first floor is entirely open and my computer desk just past the kitchen area at one side. Got hungry and decided to take a break and cook some food. So things are bubbling along and I decided to do some surfing while I waited. Got totally absorbed in it and lost track of time. I also slipped of my shoes as I normally tend to do when I'm at my desk. My brain sends me a message, "You smell burning."

So I leap up from my chair and somehow when turning around I lose my balance. The side step maneuver I so deftly performed ended with my now bare foot coming down on the small pile of wood I had teared out. Of course the laws that govern my life also proved to be working with full efficiency. My foot managed to land straight on what I swear was the only goddamned nail sticking up in the pile.

I know what cartoons are portraying when someone gets bonked and sees stars. Something I've only experience one other time. Once the split second of shock wore off I realized that I was now standing with my foot half raised because the nail and wood was still in my foot. Oh and my soup was still burning.

Of course in my addled mind the most important thing was the soup so next thing I knew I half hopped and dragged my foot close enough to be able to push the pot off the burner.

Thankfully I have a great autonomic system that whenever I injure myself gives me a good amount of 'pain blocking, to get my senses together and figure out what to do next time.'

Now I'm on the floor inspecting my wood and nail in foot problem and realize that the nail had pretty much gone entirely through my foot. I could see the end of it poking under the top of my foot. "Oh so that's why the damn thing is stuck. Ah I get it. Man this is REALLY going to start hurting soon."

For a second or so I pondered whether I should leave it and call for help. The whole don't remove a stuck object cause of bleeding thing. That seemed silly. I doubted I would bleed to death from a nail hole in my foot. So I gritted my teeth and pulled it out. Surprisingly it didn't hurt much coming out but holy hell did it start throbbing with waves of pain just after.

I've hurt myself enough to know that in the cases of small puncture wounds it's not a bad thing to let them bleed a bit. It can help clean potential nasties out. I grabbed a dishtowel and sat on the floor for a few minutes and watched my foot bleed. It slowed down nicely on it's own and I did some first aid bandaging.

And no I didn't go to the hospital. There was nothing much they would have done differently and I was up to date on my tetnus shot. I just kept and eye out for infection.


The whole thing is so typically Jalli for people that know me.
posted by Jalliah at 1:07 PM on August 22, 2013

I worked in the dining hall throughout college, so I have my share of injury stories. Nothing that involved going to a hospital, though they probably should have. Like the time I was working front line in the dishroom (this is a cafeteria where the customers put their trays & dirty dishes on a conveyor belt) and we BEG the customers not to put more than 2 drink glasses per tray but the drink glasses were like 8 oz so most of the big dudes had like 4-5 per tray. So we had all thought we perfected the method of grabbing 2 glasses per hand off the trays and slamming them into the empty glass racks that are situated on a shelf directly above the conveyor belt at about eye level. Well, eye level for most people but I'm 5'1" so basically over my head.

What doesn't work is when your aim is off so instead of each glass sliding neatly into the little compartment, you smash them both into shards and next thing you know your pinky finger has a weird flap of flesh hanging off the tip and there's a lot of blood.

The other thing that happens when you give 18-22 year olds supervisory authority at a dining hall is that on slow nights, it becomes a competition to see how quickly you can clean and shut down your station. This often requires cleaning while various cooking implements - in this case, the short order grill - are still on, because you have to be available to make that last cheeseburger at 8:04. So I, all 5'1" of me, was on my tip-toes reaching over a huge natural gas grill, which was still on, to scrub the back wall of the fume hood. My foot slipped or my hand slipped or something - and all I knew was that the inside of my forearm was now resting on the rocket-hot grill. That was the one burn I've ever had that didn't blister, the flesh just sort of turned black, and I can still make out the scar to this day, ~18 years later.
posted by misskaz at 1:15 PM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh I should add because I've gotten questions about it when telling this story. My foot still worked fine, toes could wiggle etc so I figured I managed to miss anything mechanically important. It swelled, turned some nice colors and I couldn't walk on it for a couple of days but it healed fine. I injure myself on a fairly regular basis and have learned through experience what is hosptial worthy and what isn't.
posted by Jalliah at 1:17 PM on August 22, 2013

I suppose I shouldn't mention with the slicer injury completely tearing it open again after two weeks of healing, then walking two miles into town for my volunteer librarian gig?
posted by Samizdata at 2:09 PM on August 22, 2013

I've had my share of painful kitchen injuries, but none of them arose from particularly interestng stories. I knew that Lawful Good I scored on the D&D Alignment Test was accurate when I couldn't bring myself to serve that tomato salad to the choir picnic even though the blood didn't show, and the skin graft scar from the Boiling Water Spill of 2001 is almost perfectly paisley-shaped.

The restaurant kitchen where I worked in high school was practically a Stooges set waiting to happen - you had to stand in a sink basin to change the lightbulbs, all of the refrigerators were next to doors which couldn't be opened at the same time, the ventilation hood was just nailed to the ceiling and not hooked up to anything, the floor was on a bunch of different levels (none without holes or weak spots), nobody really knew what all the wires dangling from the celing were connected to, and the favorite Friday night games were Putting Stuff In The Fryer To See What Happens followed by a round of Lighting Whatever Comes Out Of This Spray Can. And still, the only injuries I remember anyone getting were just garden variety cuts, burns, and falls. (Well, there was that one girl who was dancing backwards around the kitchen talking on the phone with one hand and holding a cigarette and a drink with the other, and burned her shin on an open oven door, which I had previously warned her would be open. She sued the boss and won.)

Legend has it that Great-Uncle Pete cut the end of his thumb off chopping wood in the winter, stuck it back on, bandaged it, and it eventually healed back together without medical intervention. And Mom ran one of those department-store price-tag-plastic-holder-onner-thing guns through her thumb once.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:09 PM on August 22, 2013

My story itself is not nearly as exciting as the rest of yours, so I will say only that it involved wet hands, a knife, and an attempt to halve a pomegranate. But what sticks with me about it is...did you know that fresh-cut pomegranate juice and fresh-cut human blood are pretty much exactly the same color? Yep.
posted by badgermushroomSNAKE at 3:39 PM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

The first time I cut myself with the mandoline resulted in a perfect, round slice of my finger left on the cutting board. Skin and also, like, MEAT. I didn't use the damned thing for almost a year, and then when I did, damned if I didn't cut myself AGAIN. My reflexes were better the second time, though, and I pulled back before cutting all the way through, so I only had a flap. I honestly have no earthly clue how I cut myself the second time, I was slicing a full apple and hadn't cut even four slices.

However, the worst kitchen injury I have ever seen belonged to a teenaged girl I saw at the TCBY in my hometown. She had the logo branded into her forearm because someone had mopped without telling her and she slipped on the wet floor and caught herself on the waffle iron on the way down.
posted by looli at 4:08 PM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

My dumbest ever kitchen injury was the time I managed to slice an inch-long gash into my thumb on some salsa that had dried to be sharp between the threads of the lid and the jar. Betrayed by salsa!
posted by lauranesson at 4:36 PM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

A friend who cooks just as much as i do remarked on how sharp I keep my knives, saying he's too scared of crazy sharp knives to do the same. The difference is that my knifes scars are smooth and thin, where his are larger and more jagged because of the extra force he uses. Crazy sharp knives don't stop you from cutting yourself, but the do require less force to use, and your slips usually cause shallower cuts.

This is rendered moot seeing as my thumbnail has only just regained its normal shape after my garlic-mincing-removal-of-the-corner-of-my-thumb incident from a couple weeks ago. That really didn't want to stop bleeding.

Other random story from my short time as a line cook in a Mexican restaurant: a coworker was draining the oil from the refried beans and slipped. Luckily he was wearing the insulated apron we had specifically for dealing with hot oil. Gallons of oil spilled all down the front of the apron, but he managed to back away from the rest fast enough. The owner insisted on him going to the emergency room to get checked out, but he was completely fine, if a little shaken. He could have been horrifically injured, but he was actually doing things the right way, and was fine.

Something I'm still trying to master is pulling things out of hot oil with tongs and remembering not to tilt the tongs upward, as most tongs are full of folds that allow still hot oil to run down directly to the palm of your hand.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:14 PM on August 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

My was-band was shucking oysters and managed to stab himself quite deeply in the fleshy part between the thumb and the index finger of his left hand.

He couldn't remember his last tetanus shot date, so we decided he needed to visit urgent care.

However, he insisted that he shuck the remaining oysters and we eat dinner before he would go - he didn't want them to "lose quality".

I got him one of those un-cuttable oyster gloves that Christmas.
posted by dotgirl at 5:15 PM on August 22, 2013

These tubes are made of rather thin glass and it immediately snapped into long thin shards and embedded themselves into my thumb and palm. I calmly wandered over to the sink and the shards of the tube were acting like needles and providing spigots for the blood to drain away. I pulled the two inch long pieces out and folded over the flap of skin that was cored from my thumb before anyone else noticed and then people started freaking out.

Ha ha, yeah. That reminds me a lot of the time I was shot in the face and all my teeth flew out the back of my head and I couldn't sip coke through my favourite curly straw for like nine hours.

My worst kitchen injury is pretty mild: I was drunkenly doing the dishes (after, it so happens, a Metafilter meetup) and smashed a wine glass and it cut open my thumb pretty badly and all the meat in my thumb sort of puffed out like baking bread. That was many years ago and I guess it got a nerve because it's still strangely sensitive, but I also can't feel anything with it, and if I ever get fingerprinted it's gonna be a dead giveaway.

My eldest brother did once lick the top of the freezer and his tongue stuck to it and instead of wharrgarbling for help he just tore his tongue away and left a big chunk of it stuck to the freezer. Also I once kicked a firepit with my bare foot to see if it was still hot underneath all the charcoal and ash, and it was.

The thing I hate the idea of most, though, is doing the dishes and having to sort of poke the dishcloth down into the "bowl" of a delicate wineglass, but all my fingers can't quite fit in there so I can only get in a couple, which means that as I rotate the glass to clean it the webbing between my middle and ring fingers is sliding along the rim of the glass, and boy it would suck if that glass suddenly cracked but I didn't notice because the shard was too razor-fine for it to register and oh god
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:23 PM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

And I won't ever tell the story of what happened when I licked peanut butter off a very sharp knife.

Oh yeah. I was in Home Economics (don't ask) at school in like grade 7 or 8 or whatever and once tested whether a knife was sharp or not by running the edge across the palm of my hand and yes the knife was sharp.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:36 PM on August 22, 2013

Once my father was bringing home a gallon of pickles in a glass jar, and it fell over and broke when he went around a corner. When he reached over to start picking it up, a big shard went through his left wrist and cut some tendons, and another one sliced him across the right hand. Since he was a tall guy and drove a little MGB, he figured he’d be OK driving himself to the hospital steering with a knee and an elbow and shifting through a bandanna. A cop pulled him over a couple of blocks from the hospital for weaving, saw the interior full of blood and kosher dills, and just waved him along.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:11 PM on August 22, 2013

The safety guidelines are established people! Follow them and don't hurt yourself!

However, I once burned myself on the wrist fairly badly on a broiler heating element and then gave myself a nasty gash the following day in the same spot with an iron breaker bar while gouging out a ditch in rocky ground, forming an X of gash and burn. I kinda let that one scar because I apparently prefer serendipitous body art.
posted by cmoj at 6:24 PM on August 22, 2013

So here's my story, not quite a kitchen accident, but a cooking accident nonetheless.

I was camping on an island off the Florida gulf coast, boiling a big pot of pasta on a tiny little whisperlite backpacking stove. In my infinite wisdom and abject laziness, I had the stove and pot in front of me on a rickety old picnic table I was sitting at. I heard "Hey Ben" behind me, and when I turned to answer, I bumped the table and knocked a pot of boiling water onto my lap.

Absolutely scalded my thighs. Rinsed the burn in a makeshift shower from the only fresh water on the island. Then had to wait two days for the boat to come pick us up, getting by on a lot of wine and a few pain pills my girlfriend happened to bring. I had blisters the size of golf balls for a week or two, was in excruciating pain anytime I moved for a month, and the scars took over five years to disappear.

I was wearing just a pair of thin nylon shorts, and I have no idea how I didn't boil my nuts.
posted by lost_cause at 7:12 PM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Wasn't there when it happened - it must have been terrifying: a co-worker at a restaurant where I worked many years ago had shut down the deep fryer at the end of the night shift to drain the unit and discard the used oil.

It was running at about 350° F. Fortunately no one was was injured.


He used a plastic bucket....
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 8:21 PM on August 22, 2013

I recalled this thread last night as I tried to pry apart a quartet of frozen sausages with a dull chef's knife. "MetaFilter would be disappointed in me," I thought, and gently relinquished the knife, opting instead to separate the sausages after I'd parboiled them.

Thanks for helping me avoid catastrophe, y'all!
posted by coppermoss at 5:17 AM on August 23, 2013 [2 favorites]

Not my injury (I have surprisingly few kitchen accidents), but an ex-girlfriend spilled a pot of boiling pasta water on herself once (long before I met her). I got to hear the story the first time we were in a state of dishabille after I asked her, as delicately as I could, "Honey, why do you have a scar on your thigh that looks exactly like a penis and testicles?"
posted by hanov3r at 6:26 AM on August 23, 2013 [1 favorite]

wait what was it penis-and-testicle pasta?
posted by ook at 10:10 AM on August 23, 2013

Nudles.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:09 AM on August 23, 2013 [1 favorite]

Manicotti.
posted by coppermoss at 11:36 AM on August 23, 2013 [2 favorites]

spaghetti and meatballs

wait I'm doing it wrong

wait I'm doing it right

wait I can't tell anymore
posted by ook at 12:27 PM on August 23, 2013

He used a plastic bucket....

Aw man, that was my fast-food horror story! New guy in the kitchen decided to be clever and use a 5gal disposable pickle bucket instead of the fancy stainless steel one that had to be carried back inside and cleaned out.

I remember watching the bucket slowly shrink in height as the bottom started to bulge out, ending in a five gallon SPLOOSH of hot oil all over the floor where it instantly coagulated back to it's white slippery inert state.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:11 PM on August 23, 2013

Managed to make dinner without injury, but when I reached up to second shelf in the wall cupboard for a Corelle plate, I pulled out two accidentally.

The second plate bounced on the counter, flew up, smacked the dropped ceiling light and smashed on the tile floor. Instant shrapnel in 1-3 inch slivers. I was wearing shorts.

We will now draw the veil mercifully closed....
posted by BlueHorse at 8:28 PM on August 23, 2013

Deep fryers are nasty, nasty things.

Five years of working with them but never had had a nasty accident with them. Sure, the occasional hot fat spatter on your hand or arm, but nothing major. To be honest, the manual potato slicer in the back scared me more.

The worst accident I ever witnesses wasn't in the kitchen, but was in woodwork class in primary school, when one my class mates used a gouge on a slightly harder piece of wood and gouged out a chunk of his hand, right through his palm.

That was impressive.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:11 PM on August 24, 2013

any major dude: "Here's the trick to cutting a bagel - don't move the knife, move the bagel. Cut until you reach the hole, then rotate keeping the knife blade at least half a bagel from your hand. It's foolproof."

Wait, is this why people keep hurting themselves while cutting bagels?

Put the bagel flat on the table and hold it still by pressing the palm of your hand on the top of the bagel. Your hand, the table, and the knife should all be in parallel planes. Do not curl your fingers down into the path of the blade.
posted by d. z. wang at 8:07 PM on August 25, 2013