Kitchen Klumsiness

There was once the daughter of a restaurateur/Chef who was clumsy but loved to cook. She had a large sign on the kitchen wall saying Gather. One time, her yells of terror echoed through her neighborhood. She had been using a hand blender, turned it off, and went to scrape some of the food off the blades with her finger when some latent energy left in the device sliced her finger deeply, spraying blood all over the kitchen. She was ok after a visit to the ER, but this story illustrates two things: kitchens are inherently challenging environments filled with sharp objects, heat, and spills. And more importantly: you shouldn’t let a lack of finesse or smoothness keep you out of the kitchen. Let’s see why clumsiness and kitchens aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. 

Bex Bang-Ups

“Chefs and people who’ve worked in kitchens have war stories that rival some veterans’ war stories,” Chef Becky recounts. “I was once cutting watermelon when a sharp knife went right through the fruit’s flesh and rind and into my finger. These things tend to happen, of course, at busy times when it’s least convenient. We couldn’t stop the bleeding so I drove myself to the ER, holding my hand above my head and driving with one hand with blood running down my arm.” 

Micro batch Hot Sauce, Danger in General 

If you’re on the clumsy side, you can actually embrace it in the kitchen. The folks at Satan’s Drano are musicians, skateboarders, and hot sauce makers: three activities that have one thing in common: danger! They do all of these things responsibly, but cooking can be a great way for adrenaline junkies to flirt with danger and get something delicious out of it in the process. “Always wear gloves when handling hot peppers, which we grow in the backyard,” a representative of the company says in a TikTok video. We touch our faces subconsciously more than we realize, and you don’t want hot sauce in your eyes or nose. The mouth can handle the heat, but not more sensitive facial areas. Anyone who has watched the food/talk show Hot Ones has seen celebrities eat increasingly hot chicken wings (or the vegan/vegetarian equivalent) with hilarious results. 

The Heat of the Kitchen

As great as the Food Network is, there are many things that go on behind the scenes to make cooking appear a smooth, clean, effortless experience for a passive audience. Cooking shows in the early days of public access were more realistic, with downtime moments of quietude while the water boiled or something cooked, but today’s shows are designed for attention-deficit audiences and are far flashier. It’s important to remember, as TS Eliot wrote, that between the reality of something and its ideal falls the shadow. Cooking is messy, and dirty, and rarely goes exactly as planned. “My background in soccer instilled in me quick decision-making skills and improvisation skills,” Chef Becky says. “Soccer is dirty, sweaty, fast, sometimes bloody – just like the kitchen!” she laughs. 

Au Jus and Danger Too 

Kitchens are designed to be as safe as possible – especially when well-managed – but the occasional burns, cuts, slips, and screw-ups are bound to happen. Sometimes mistakes lead to the invention: one of the rumored origins of the French Dip sandwich is that a regular beef sandwich accidentally fell into the jus, and the chef gave it away free to a patron, who was amazed at how good it was. When you learn to cook and develop your skills, don’t be afraid to make mistakes or a mess! Cookbooks are great, cooking shows are fun, and social media kitchen hacks/tips are helpful, but the real heart of cooking is in doing kinesthetically. Get bloody, get messy, get sweaty: get in there!