Your frying up your families favorite dinner and whoosh – the pan erupts into flames known as a grease fire. Grease fires happen when collections of oil or grease on a stove, oven or fryer get hot enough to ignite. What do you do?
Try these step by step instructions for putting out grease fires.
1. Using an oven mitt, slide a tight-fitting lid over the pan. Don’t just plop it on, you risk spreading the fire. If a tight fitting lid isn’t handy, use a large baking sheet.
2. Turn off the heat source.
3. Move the pan to a cooler burner. Never put a grease fire in the sink.
4. Cover with a large wet cloth.
5. Throw salt or baking soda on the flames or use a fire extinguisher.
Grease fires spread very quickly so should the fire escape the pan, don’t try to put it out. Get out of the house and call the fire department.
If you don’t have a set of instructions on the inside of a kitchen cabinet, I would suggest you print these or others from your site of choice and tape them inside a cabinet for quick reference.
Fire-Extinguisher101 has some great fire prevention tips for the kitchen.