Just Flesh: A Cook’s Ode to Burns and Cuts

For me, it’s several inner arm spatter burns, a box grater hole-shaped scar on my right thumb, healed chef’s knifes cuts on most of the fingers on my left hand, and, currently, a pretty rocking singe mark just under my belly button. (Don’t ask.)

“Like a hot iron pressing into damp linen or the first pours of pancake batter onto a smoking griddle, a soft inner arm hisses when it brushes the lip of a 700-degree oven. A burn is audible first. You hear a tiny “tssssss” of quivering flesh, your own flesh, before your brain registers the coming pain. Instinctually you jump back, hoping to reverse the inevitable; but there is it—a raised mark, shades lighter than skin tone, a white light before an angry, consuming red.” 

When you do things properly in the kitchen, somehow it’s both safer – a sharper knife is less likely to cut you than a dull one – and more dangerous, as a sharper knife cut go lots deeper.   Read more of Scarlett Lindemann’s awe-inspiring ode to the dangers of the kitchen at the Atlantic.