Television can make it look so glamorous. Giada De Laurentiis sautés veal for the camera while dressed in her signature low-cut top (sleeveless for summer), her long, shiny locks falling coyly over one cheek. Paula Deen chops bacon with hands laden with gaudy rings and long, talonlike nails, and when she comes out from behind the counter, we see that she's tottering on stiletto heels. Guy Fieri, who bops through kitchens in flip-flops and shorts, wears as many rings and bracelets as Deen, and lately sports shirts with big, flowing sleeves.

Nobody spills anything, nothing ever flames up or burns, knives never slip.

Reality, however, isn't so pretty. Real, working chefs wear sensible, nonslip shoes and long-sleeved, protective clothing and either tie their hair back out of the way or wear frumpy hairnets. Even so, their hands and arms are usually covered with cuts and burns and scars. In real kitchens, things spill, burn, splatter, explode and slip. A real kitchen is a very dangerous place to be.

While the television personalities are pretending to be home cooks, not restaurant chefs, they would be wise to follow safety rules required of chefs, and so would real home cooks. Accidents happen every day, as any hospital emergency room worker can attest. It just takes a second of distraction or a momentary lapse in judgment to send a knife into a hand or the kitchen in flames.



The numbers tell a story

Portland Fire & Rescue responded to 706 kitchen-related fires last year, according to Paul Corah, spokesman for the bureau. Of those, 74 were active fires and 577 were from burnt food causing smoke damage and setting off fire alarms. (Fifty-five were classified as "other," such as a scalding.)

About 20 people a year, mostly women and children, are injured seriously enough from kitchen fires to end up in the Oregon Burn Center. There were at least two deaths in Portland last year directly related to kitchen fires, both involving grease fires.

Most kitchen accidents are relatively minor. Some are amusing and end up the stuff of legends, both family and urban. Many families have funny, nostalgic stories of a holiday meal gone awry -- the charred turkey of 1962, for instance. Other, public tales amuse us, even as they're proven to be apocryphal, such as the supposed Sunday emergency room epidemic of bagel cuts, and last year's "exploding tofu" incident, which officials later attributed to an overheated skillet. Cooks whose homes are filled with smoke and whose meals are ruined are seldom amused, however.

But there are serious stories. A memory from childhood: A mother making after-school doughnuts for her children moves a pot of hot oil and trips over the family dog, severely burning her legs and sending the little dachshund to a horrifying death.

Curtis Ryun, outreach education coordinator for the Oregon Burn Center, knows many such stories: the toddler who pulled an oven door down to climb upon, causing the unanchored stove to topple over on him; the many children who reach up and grab pot handles extending over the stove; the little girl who tripped over a turkey fryer; a baby whose throat was scalded from a bottle heated in a microwave, causing undetected hot spots; people trying to put out fires with improper or improperly used fire extinguishers.

Adding kids increases dangers

It only takes a second for disaster to strike. In hindsight, most accidents are preventable, but cooks are human and, no matter how careful and diligent, are susceptible to being distracted and rushed and prey to unthinking panic. When children are added to the room, the odds of accidents occurring go up dramatically.

Ryun tells of children scalding themselves from collapsing flimsy microwave noodle containers and of a mother tripping while holding a baby in one arm and hot soup in another.

Even the most graceful cook can be clumsy. A slip of the knife can fillet a finger or wrist. A dropped knife can slice through an unprotected foot. A dropped heavy pan of lasagna can cause not only burns, but many breaks in the small bones of the foot.

A pretty throw rug or an ignored spill is just asking for trouble; falls in the kitchen can be more deadly than in other rooms because the person falling is often holding a knife or hot food.

Faulty or misused equipment is always a hazard. Glass bakeware taken from the oven to a cold surface shatters, sending glass shards and bubbling hot food over the bare legs and feet of the cook. An old, hand-me-down pressure cooker explodes, scalding and permanently scarring the arm of the cook.

Most cooks know the basic rules of kitchen safety. Problems happen when the rules are ignored because of rushing or panic.

And hanging over it all is the less violent but constant danger of poisoning from mishandled or tainted food.

Despite the dangers, though, cooks keep going back into the kitchen, even after being cut, burned, bruised and battered. Cooking can be a chore, but most cooks love the work and the rewards and won't give it up unless they absolutely have to. Remembering the basic rules of safety, though, can help keep cooking fun and the kitchen a pleasant place to be.

-- Joan Harvey

is a Portland freelance writer.

Safely, please





Here are 20 kitchen safety rules you may know, but which bear repeating.

1.

Never, ever, ever leave anything cooking unattended.

2.

Keep a kitchen-appropriate fire extinguisher near an exit door and know how to use it.

3.

When frying or sautéing, keep a lid handy to squelch any flare-ups. Using the lid as a shield, cover the nearest edge of the pan first, then the entire pan.

4.

Keep children under age 5 out of the kitchen. Never place a small child near the stove.

5.

Always use dry potholders or mitts.

6.

Wipe or sweep up spills on the floor immediately.

7.

Keep knives sharp. Dull knives require more force to cut and are more likely to slip.

8.

Learn how to use knives safely and don't be tempted to cheat.

9.

Never try to catch a falling knife, no matter how instinctive it is. Step out of the way.

10.

Extricate can lids with a tool, never your fingers.

11.

Always place hot glassware on hot pads.

12.

Always turn pot handles in, never extending over the stove.

13.

Never put hot grease in water or water in hot grease.

14.

Never leave knives lying in water.

15.

Store knives in a holder or on a wall magnet, never loose in a drawer.

16.

Don't store items on the stovetop or on the warming shelf above a range. Keep combustibles at least 19 inches from the stove.

17.

Clean exhaust hood and duct over stove regularly.

18.

Wash hands well before beginning to cook. Remove any jewelry that might get in the way or become entangled. Tie back long hair.

19.

When wiping blades, always point the cutting edge away from the hand.

20.

Before leaving the kitchen, always double-check that the stove is turned off. Then check again.

-- Joan Harvey