The Hidden Burn Risk in Your Kitchen You May Not Know About

Keeping up with food recalls, storing food safely, and minimizing cross-contamination are all ways we can stay safe in the kitchen. But there’s another aspect of safety that sometimes gets overlooked during day-to-day cooking: personal safety.

Between sharp knives, open flames, and searing ovens, it’s not hard to accidentally hurt yourself in the kitchen. And while some rules—like using sharp knives instead of dull ones—may seem like common sense, many people, home cooks and professional chefs alike, often learn by mistake. 

I made this common kitchen mistake while I was working as a cook—it was a lesson I had to learn the hard way. After I made this mistake—and took days to recover—I told anyone who would listen how to avoid this painful injury. Hopefully after reading this article, you too can avoid this common practice and save yourself a lot of agony. 

The Hidden Risk in Your Kitchen

While timers ring, food burns, or smoke alarms go off, you may quickly grab whatever’s closest to get your food out of the oven—including a damp towel or pot holder. While these towels can still be used for a variety of tasks, they are no longer safe to use when handling anything in the oven.

A damp towel and a hot oven are an easy recipe for instant scalding. In fact, the same is true for a wet hand and dry towel. To keep yourself safe, make sure your hands and your oven mitt or dish towel are completely dry before opening the oven door. 

Water is around 23 times more efficient in transferring heat than air is, according to research shared by CTM Magnetics. The heat from your baking dish or sheet tray will instantaneously transfer to your wet dish towel, then on to your delicate skin, resulting in a scald of varied severity depending on the temperature of your oven. 

“If the oven mitt or your hand was wet and the oven mitt was exposed to oven temperatures of 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 400 degrees Fahrenheit, a third-degree burn could happen in as little as one second, depending on the material,” said Dr. Semra Peksoz, an Associate Professor of Design & Merchandising at Oklahoma State University who researches safer oven mitts.

An instant scald could cause you to drop whatever you’re holding—leading to more safety hazards. Hot food can splatter on your feet or legs—and around the oven. A glass baking dish could shatter, leaving shards of glass (with hot food) all around your kitchen. Essentially, this dangerous act could lead to extra-dangerous consequences. 

According to the 2024 Burn Injury Summary Report from the American Burn Association, there were over 30,000 inpatient hospitalization due to burn injuries in 2023 alone. Of those admissions, over 30% were due to scalding injuries. 

How To Avoid Wet Towels or Pot Holders

During the chaos of cooking, it’s easy to forget something so simple as drying your hands or using a dry towel before opening the oven. Using a dedicated dish towel or pot holder for oven use, and a separate dedicated dish towel for drying hands or surfaces, can go a long way in keeping you safe while you cook. To be on the safe side, always keep plenty of dry pot holders and dry towels on hand and easily accessible when cooking.