Your kitchen is arguably one of the most important rooms in your house. After all, it’s the only place in the house where you can cook all your meals. However, the kitchen can also be one of the most dangerous rooms in your house.
From fires to knife accidents, your kitchen has a lot of safety hazards. To help you navigate these hazards and the risks associated with them, here are a few kitchen safety guidelines that you should never ignore.
#1 Keep Your Workspace Clean and Organized
A cluttered and messy kitchen can pose numerous risks. To avoid accidents, start by keeping your workspace clean and organized. Ensure that countertops are free from spills and clutter. Knives, scissors, and other sharp utensils should be stored in a designated spot, such as a knife block or drawer with safety guards. Also, remember to store heavy items and cooking equipment at waist level to avoid strain when lifting them.
#2 Always Wash Your Hands
Proper handwashing is one of the simplest yet most effective ways to prevent foodborne illnesses. Before handling food, always wash your hands with soap and warm water. This is particularly important when handling raw meat, poultry, fish, or eggs. Bacteria can easily spread from these items to other surfaces, leading to cross-contamination and potentially making you and others sick.
#3 Never Leave Your Pressure Cooker Unattended
Leaving a pressure cooker unattended can be a recipe for disaster. These kitchen appliances rely on high pressure and temperature to cook food quickly, and any malfunction or human error can lead to dangerous situations. If left unattended, the pressure inside the cooker may build up excessively, causing explosions or steam eruptions. Such incidents can result in severe burns, scalds, and property damage.
Also, avoid buying pressure cookers that have a history of being unsafe. Such pressure cookers include brands like Tristar, Instant Pot, and Wolfgang Puck, according to TorHoerman Law. These pressure cookers have a reputation for exploding when being used, signaling that they have manufacturing defects.
The manufacturing defects in these brands led to the pressure cooker explosion lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed by attorneys to seek compensation for victims of pressure cooker explosions. If anything, the lawsuit acts as a reminder that you should always be aware of the brands you’re buying and check their reviews before purchasing.
#4 Practice Safe Cooking Temperatures
Food safety is a crucial aspect of kitchen safety. Ensure that meats, poultry, and fish are cooked to the appropriate internal temperatures to kill harmful bacteria. Invest in a reliable food thermometer to ensure safe cooking temperatures. Avoid eating raw or undercooked foods, as they can harbor dangerous pathogens that may cause food poisoning.
For packaged food, always follow the cooking instructions at the back of the packaging. Doing so will help you cook those foods at the intended temperatures avoiding overcooking or undercooking, as well as preventing your food from getting burned.
#5 Use Caution When Working with Heat and Fire
According to Gitnux, over 35 percent of home fires start in kitchens. That makes this particular room of your house a hotspot for potential fire hazards. Whether you’re working with the stove or an oven, there’s always a chance of a fire accident. Therefore, whenever you’re working with heat and fire in your kitchen, you need to practice caution.
Start by familiarizing yourself with flammable items, like oven mitts and paper towels, and keep them away from the stove, oven, or another fire source. Make sure there’s no wooden cabinet directly above your stove. Having a fire extinguisher near the kitchen is also important so that you can smother grease fires. Most importantly, don’t leave strong fires unattended as they can go out of control and cause the fire to spread to even far away objects.
#6 Childproof Your Kitchen
If you have young children, it’s essential to childproof your kitchen to prevent accidents and injuries. According to Gitnux, around 70 children under the age of 16 in the United Kingdom are either killed or injured every month because of kitchen accidents. Thus comes the need to childproof your kitchen so that you can avoid such situations.
To do so, consider ensuring safety latches on cabinets and drawers to keep dangerous items, like chemicals and sharp objects, away from your children. You should also use stove knobs so that your children don’t accidentally end up turning on the burners. Most importantly, if you have children in your house, always keep a close eye on them and make sure they don’t enter the kitchen unsupervised.
Conclusion
Statistics from the US Fire Administration reveal that there were 170,000 home cooking fires in the country in 2021. These fires led to the death of 135 and injured another 3,000. Factoring in other risks inside a kitchen, these numbers will likely shoot up.
Therefore, you must maintain utmost caution when it comes to your kitchen, and you can start doing so today by keeping the above-mentioned tips in mind.
