A mother is warning festive chefs to always wear footwear in the kitchen after she suffered severe burns from boiling goose fat, which required skin grafts. Rebecca Evans was preparing a Sunday roast and had placed goose fat in the oven to heat up for perfect crispy roast potatoes.
However, while chatting with her daughter Katie Evans, the 51-year-old left the oil in the oven for 20 minutes before removing it to add the par-boiled potatoes. The hairdresser placed the extremely hot tray on her cooker hob, where it became unbalanced and tipped over.
Reacting instinctively, the mother-of-two reached out to steady the tray just as the scorching fat splashed onto her left hand and both feet. While Rebecca rushed to cool her hand under cold water, 24-year-old Katie, who had recently completed a paediatric first aid course, guided her mother to the shower to immerse her feet.
The primary school teacher then carefully wrapped the burns in cling film before rushing Rebecca to hospital, where doctors burst and scraped the blisters before applying antibacterial gel and burn dressings.
Rebecca, a grandmother from Maidstone in Kent, suffered severe burns that resulted in her needing skin grafts on both feet. She is now on a mission to warn other home cooks to protect themselves by wearing proper footwear in the kitchen, especially with the bustling festive season approaching.
Recalling the traumatic event that transpired in September, Rebecca said: “It’s instinct to stop something falling, I put my left hand out to stop it. When the oil hit my skin it was very painful, imagine pouring boiling water over your hand.”
She explained how her reflexes led to even greater injury: “That made me jump back and then it fell. As it fell to the floor the oil splashed out and went on both of my feet. I normally would be wearing slippers but I only had thin trainer socks on, so I don’t know why I wasn’t.
“I rushed over to the sink to put my hand in cold water. My feet didn’t really hurt because I now know the burns had burned through the nerves, it had gone so deep I couldn’t feel it. Both my feet were completely white, which basically means it’s already done a lot of damage.”
The accident occurred as the gran-of-three was preparing a Sunday roast, parboiling potatoes before their disastrous encounter with the roasting tin and hot goose fat on September 22.
Rebecca recounted: “It was a Sunday and I was doing my usual roast dinner. I’d done quite a lot of cooking that day, I had scones and other bits and pieces on the side. The best roast potatoes are when the fat is super hot. I put the fat in the oven to heat up, I had the potatoes on the hob ready to go into the oil.
“I was chatting and I lost track of time, it ended up being in there about 20 minutes in the end. I got a bit sidetracked and thought ‘I need to get the potatoes in’ so I got it out of the oven.”
In her distraction, she said: “I didn’t have anywhere to put them so I thought ‘I’ll just put it on the hob next to the potatoes and as I let go of it it just tipped. I ended up with hot goose fat on my left hand and both of my feet.”
After spending half an hour in the shower, Rebecca went to A&E at Maidstone Hospital where she had to have skin grafts. She added: “If my daughter hadn’t done the first aid treatment she did it would have burned through to the tendons and my bones, so I would have been in a lot more trouble.”
At the hospital, staff scraped off the blisters before soaking her hands and feet in antibacterial gel-soaked dressings. Rebecca explained: “They took all the blisters off, it was painful, then dressed the burns. They don’t grade burns anymore. The burn on my hand was partial thickness, but my feet were full thickness burns – it had burned all the way through all the layers. At that point they said ‘you’re going to need skin grafts’.”
After battling infections with both oral and IV antibiotics, Rebecca underwent skin grafts on her feet at Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead on October 4. The painful ordeal has made Rebecca more cautious about cooking, yet she was determined to return to the kitchen as soon as possible.
She said: “It’s made me more apprehensive about cooking but I made sure that as soon as I could I did a roast dinner because I didn’t want this to become a phobia. Now I’m very aware of the room around me and needing somewhere stable to put things, you just think about what you’re doing before you do it.
“I’ve got grandchildren and it just makes you realise how easily that could have been a horrific accident if it had splashed all over them. I would advise anyone cooking to always wear footwear in the kitchen. The socks made it worse because the oil soaked in and sat there.”
Rebecca also noted the importance of proper footwear, saying, “Had I been wearing something more substantial it would have cooled by the time it got to my skin. I’ve realised since having the burns that more people than you think wouldn’t have a clue how to administer first aid to burns.”
She stressed the critical nature of immediate care for burns: “Those first few seconds are the most important. I knew to put them under cold water but I didn’t appreciate for how long. I would have only done 10 minutes, but I was in the shower for 30 minutes.”