Slicing and Dicing Ourselves
Exploring Kitchen Injuries with Andrew Smith of GOATFURY WRITES
Over the years I have had my share of kitchen injuries, from burns and cuts to smashed fingers and toes. The list goes on and on. If you’re a chef or cook of any kind you’re bound to injure yourself from time to time, and you probably have the scars to show it.
Come join
and I as we re-live some of our most menacing injuries from the culinary world. It’s kitchen story time, let’s go!Leave the Finger, Cut the Zucchini
I was rushing through the many tasks of the day as a young prep cook, making salad dressings, sauces, appetizers, and so on. The work was fast-paced and constant. I needed to keep my energy level up, so I downed a 5-hour energy shot from the neighboring gas station.
As I was slicing zucchini for one of our appetizers I could feel the stimulant coursing through my veins. My heart pumping blood hard and fast. I watched the knife slide through that vegetable as if it wasn’t even there. Slice after slice I kept telling myself, “Tuck your ring finger in, tuck it in!” I didn’t listen.
Just as I finished that thought, wham! The 12-inch chef’s knife sliced right through the ring finger on my left hand. The blood that had just been rushing through me was now rushing onto the white cutting board. I dropped the knife and walked briskly to the bathroom. Holy shit, I cut my fucking finger off!
I hadn’t cut my finger off but instead had cut into it on a bias right underneath my fingernail. My fingerprint and the meat attached were still hanging on. It felt very strange. I sat down for a minute to wrap my finger in a thousand band-aids and some tape when my hard-ass boss asked me if I was okay. I nodded my head yes and he said ok, I need you on the line, right now.
Fast forward a few years and I am working in the kitchen for the community CO-OP. By now I should have enough experience to not make stupid mistakes right? Wrong!
I can’t believe I grabbed that Pan
I was searing some chicken thighs in a big Rondeau pan for a dish called Pollo a la Brasa. This pan had been on the fire for a few hours now as we were making enough food to feed an army of hippies. I had a couple of hours left in my shift when it happened. I grabbed the handle of that big hot pan with my bare hand.
It instantly stuck to the pan, so I did what anyone would do, I ripped my hand, all of the skin, and some of the meat off that pan. The palm of my hand looked like raw meat (because it was) and no amount of burn spray helped soothe the pain.
I dunked my hand into cold water until the pain was tolerable, wrapped it up, and finished my shift. I thought I was pretty badass back then, but I was probably just an idiot.
Long before becoming the king of Brazilian Jui-Jitsu
of spent his fair share of time in the kitchen as a younger man. Working his way through various restaurants he too has sustained a few of these infamous kitchen injuries and has lived to tell the tale. These are his stories.Prime Rib Knife
I was working on the sauté station, well positioned near the middle of the line, with pantry (salads, mostly) to my left, and mid-fry to my right. This station included sauté pans and a bunch of burners, of course, and I got pretty good at tossing food in a pan around over the years.
Sauté also included prime rib, a slow-roasted ribeye made in a particular oven that kept the ribeye loins warm and moist.
"Loins. Warm. Moist." No, I'm still talking about food and injuries here.
Prime rib was pretty low-key most days, but there was also a special night where you could get a 10-ounce prime rib for $10. Needless to say, this was incredibly popular, and instead of 10 or 15 cuts of prime rib on a typical Monday night, Prime Rib Night meant you might cut more than 100 slices in just a couple of hours. Maybe this doesn't sound like a ton, but because I had to alternate between 8-10 pans on the burners and a very busy night of slicing meat, I was going to be slammed on the night in question.
Slammed or not, I was ready to rock! I would often psych myself up for "the big game" - shifts that were busier than every other shift during the month. I looked forward to these moments.
I had probably cut around 50 of these bad boys like so: open the Alto-Shaam (the special oven), remove a ribeye loin (maybe 15 pounds), set it on the large cutting board, and grab the prime rib knife - a 20-inch blade specifically designed for this task, then carefully slice and weigh (and trim) the cut before serving on a plate with au jus and sour cream.
On this particular attempt, I had the loin set up on the cutting board, and as I pulled the knife out from its little covey on top of the Alto-Shaam, the knife's handle slid past my hand and toward the floor. I was either too slow or too dumb to move my hand out of the way, and a very deep cut was etched into my right middle finger as gravity assisted the blade in cleaving into my hand.
I was fortunate that this only resulted in a few stitches and a tetanus shot at the ER. it could have been so much worse!
Catching the Pan
I had just moved to Richmond, and I needed a job. Punk rock and age 19, my prospects were more limited than I wanted them to be, so I sucked it up and got a job at Subway. It turned out to be a pretty well-run franchise, and although I didn't particularly enjoy the work, I appreciated the challenge of keeping up with the rush and having everything ready to go for the next one.
Subway was good about baking their own bread, even during the 90s, and that's where this story goes next. The bread trays at Subway were designed to bake about 12 (or was it 20?) loaves of bread, so the sheet tray was pretty wide, perhaps more than 2 feet, and much longer. I was getting a hot tray of bread out of the oven when I started to lose my grip with the oven mitts I had on.
I did what any employee would under the circumstances: I caught the tray with my bare forearm. 30 years later, I can still see a trace of this mark, although the last decade has seen more fading than the previous 2. Ouch!
Also: anyone who has ever worked at Subway (or another sandwich place) probably knows this story too well.
If you haven’t checked out
by right here on Substack, I suggest that you go ahead and do that right now. Thank you for reading! | A guest post by
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This came out as a really, really fun piece!
I mean, also: ouch!
My fiance hurt herself the same exact way at Subway! Crazy. She also got held at gunpoint by a tweaker with a pink revolver. Yes, at Subway.