I was going to post this in the badassity sub-forum, but since I started the fire in addition to putting it out, I thought, maybe not so badass after all.
I love to cook. I’ve cooked nearly every day for 30 years with no incident, but had my first kitchen fire this morning.
Every morning for the past few months, I’ve been making myself sautéed vegetables (and other things). I’m trying to eat low fat (due to medical condition explained elsewhere on this forum), so I add just a little bit of oil to the pan — 3/4 tsp to be exact. I heat the pan & oil over moderate heat, then tilt the pan to spread the oil around once it gets less viscous.
Today, for whatever reason, I set the burner on high instead of medium. When I went to tilt the pan to spread the oil, I found that it was a lot less viscous that I was expecting. The oil flowed up over the sides of the pan, spilled directly onto the very hot burner and instantly caught fire with flames over a foot high. I immediately slammed the pan down on top of the flames which thankfully disappeared almost immediately.
I didn’t even think: don’t use water or any other thing you aren’t supposed to do with a grease fire, I just acted instinctively and apparently did exactly the right thing. Yay. But yikes, that was scary!
Anyone else ever survive a grease fire?