Fireproof hands?

[crazytocook]

Hello everyone,

I have recently just started my first cooking job at a smokehouse restaurant. I love the job, but today the head chef was angry when during clean up a hotel pan with holes in it fell into our steam tables water. He yelled at me to grab the pan (which was loaded with brisket) out of the water. I tried to grab it, but it was just too hot to hold onto. Long story short, he pulled the pan out with his hands and gave me a pissed off look.

I guess my question is how do i get used to the heat of the kitchen? Is there a way to get my hands used to hotter water and things like that? Is that even normal for most chefs?



Thanks!

[blueschef]

time my friend, time.

[Suzanne]

Sad but true. The more you work and the more you burn your hands, the more callous and scar tissue you'll build up to protect yourself. I've heard stories of longtime broiler cooks who can pull a sizzle platter out of the infrared broiler barehanded. (But I think those stories are just another urban legend.)

Although frankly, to me what your chef did was dangerous -- he could just have easily dropped the pan if he'd had to carry it farther than his "immunity" to the heat lasted. But I won't say any more about the unnecessary macho-ness of kitchens (partly because I've been guilty of it, too ).

Anyway, in the meantime, tongs and side towels are your best friends. Tongs would have allowed you to get under the edge of the hotel pan so that you could pry it up from the lip of the steam table, and then the folded side towel in your other hand would have functioned as a hot pad/pot holder for you to grab the pan edge to pull it out. At that point, you either put down the tongs and use another side towel on the opposite end, or if you're good with the tongs, you hold that edge with the tongs as you move it.

So my best advice to you is:

1. Always have several dry side towels secreted on your person (hanging off your apron, folded in a back pocket, etc.)
2. Always have a sturdy pair of tongs in a pocket where you can get to them quickly
3. Practice picking things up with the tongs anytime you can -- even down to a strand of (cooked) spaghetti

BTW: make sure the side towels are dry -- otherwise you'll get a nasty steam burn, which is just as bad as -- if not worse than -- the contact burn you'd otherwise get.

Hope this helps.