Man vs. Oil

I keep telling myself that I've learned my lesson when it comes to cooking oil. Yet, every time I say that, it's not long before I find myself with yet another pan engulfed in flames on the stove, with me dodging grease bullets trying to get a lid on the situation.

It is easy to do. I don't clean my cast iron skillet very often, so grease builds up. When I do rinse it down (never use soap), the oils often end up running over the top and bottom of the pan, making it so much easier to ignite. In addition, cast iron is a whole different animal to cook with than stainless steel. Once it gets hot, it becomes a heat source of its own as it will continue to cook food long after you turn the burner off. Oils can really accelerate under these conditions.

Today was by far the worst. I heated up some oil in a skillet, no big deal. Got ready to throw some chicken chorizo sausages on it. I guess the pan had been heating for a while, because it was ready to blow. As soon as I threw the first sausage on the pan, a shotgun blast of grease pellets nailed me dead center on my bare-skinned stomach. This cast iron pan doesn't have more than a fraction of an inch of a rim to it, so it was practically a flat iron with nothing to keep it from shooting directly toward me.

Fortunately, the grease cooled pretty quickly on my skin, which is amazing as I think back on it. Grease can often continue to burn for quite a while once it makes contact. I'm guessing the splattering effect made the grease dissipate so that it cooled more easily?

Still, it was quite a shot. I ended up with significant red patch of skin on my belly. It hurt to wear a shirt when I finally put one on. I managed to find some sunburn lotion with aloe in the cabinet and applied it, and after a while the pain went down. Later on, much of the redness had gone away. I thought it was healing astonishingly well. Then in the evening, my hand brushed up against my belly and I felt little lumps. I pulled up my shirt to confirm what I already knew: Yes, I was blistering. My stomach is now the texture of a sheet of bubble wrap, but--unlike bubble wrap--I have no ambition to pop anything. Woe to me when that happens.