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Tip of the week: Kitchen Safety Tips for the Holiday Season

Depending on who is doing what, the holidays can be a carefree break from work or school, or they can be a stress-filled time of work and organization. Pulling family members from across the country into a single home and keeping them comfortable is no easy task.

When things get hectic, it can be easy to forget some tasks, but ensuring kitchen safety is one duty that can’t be overlooked. Here are our kitchen safety tips on keeping the family safe over the holidays.

Prepare with Safety Checks

First things first, you need to do a safety check of the house. Errors in kitchen safety can mean fires, so go around the house and check every single fire alarm. Don’t leave this until the last minute in case any of them need to be completely replaced. It’s a simple task, but one of the most important.

You should also invest in some fire extinguishers if you haven’t already. They can be the fine line between a ruined dinner and a burned down house. If you already have some, make sure they are accessible and in working order. You don’t want to try and face a fire with a faulty extinguisher.

Clear Up All the Clutter

Before any major kitchen operation, you always need to clean it up. This not only serves the purpose of making cooking easier, but it’s good for kitchen safety, too. The errant wrapper or discarded cloth poses a fire risk. It’s smart to get anything you don’t need out of the way.

It’s important to keep on top of this through the cooking process. Trash and utensils pile up quickly and it’s easy to put them an inch too close to a flame in all the hubbub of cooking. Pay attention to where you’re putting things down and when you’ve got a spare second, try to clean up some of the mess you’ve made so far.

Always Keep Your Eye on the Kitchen

With the family and kids running around, the TV on, and any other number of interruptions, it’s all too easy to get distracted and completely forget about kitchen safety. This can lead to disaster. Whether it’s a pan fire or a kid getting too close to some knives, it only takes a second for things to go wrong.

You can’t be expected to have eyes in the back of your head the entire time, so enlist some help when you can. If you need to leave the room for a second, ask someone to keep an eye on things.

Follow the Right Steps for Deep-Frying Your Turkey

When it comes to kitchen safety deep-frying anything can be dangerous, so it’s important to take extra care with something as big as a turkey. Now, we don’t claim to be experts on food, so we suggest turning to the experts.

The piece reassuringly titled ‘How to Deep-Fry a Turkey Without Killing Yourself, Indoors and Out’ from Serious Eats tells you all you need to know.

Here are some of their critical kitchen safety points:

• Children and pets should be nowhere near a deep-frying setup. There shouldn’t be even the remotest chance that they’ll get anywhere close to it.
• You should read and follow all the manufacturer’s instructions and warnings included with your deep fryer, and follow those instructions very carefully.
• Never use an outdoor frying setup indoors or in any enclosed or covered space, and never use an indoor fryer outdoors.
• If you live in a colder climate, plan to be outside in the cold for a couple of hours: Responsible turkey fryers never leave things unattended. (Alternatively, find people to relieve you if you want to go back inside.)
• Don’t drink and fry.