UK HealthCast: Safe family cooking practices
UK HealthCast is a podcast series featuring interviews with UK HealthCare experts on a variety of health-related topics.
This edition features Sherri Hannan, RN, Safe Kids Fayette County Coordinator for Kentucky Children’s Hospital. Hannan provided advice for how families can enjoy cooking together during the holidays while ensuring everyone remains safe.
What are some benefits to families cooking together during the holidays?
It just creates memories. I know my children always did cookie baking with their grandmother, and that was something they did until they were probably in their early 20s. Just being in the kitchen together is just that hub of family togetherness.
What's the best way to get your family members to cook together?
You can do something like have everybody bring a dish to the meal, but it's always really fun to get together and do some of that meal prep together, even the night before to prepare casseroles or do some of the chopping and things like that.
If you have young or first-time cooks joining you, what are some of the most important things to impress upon them?
Safety is the most important thing. The kitchen can be a very dangerous place for kids. If kids are in the kitchen and they're participating, make sure they're actively supervised and being watched. If they just happen to be around and are not really contributing to the work of preparing the food, you need to have a kid-free zone where no one could trip over a kid playing in the floor or something could be spilled onto the child and they'd be injured.
What's the main safety concern when you have large groups cooking together?
Some things in the kitchen are really important to be aware of, like a hot stove, where things are being placed. If it's a gas stove, you wouldn't want a dish towel thrown nearby where it could catch fire. Make sure that anything that is spilled is quickly cleaned up so no one falls. Things like sharp like knives should be put into appropriate safe places and not just thrown into a sink with water where the next person could put their hand in and get cut.
When it comes to cooking with little ones, what is the best thing to make with them?
If you're making cookies, they can help measure ingredients, they can stir ingredients, they can take a dollop of cookie dough onto a cookie sheet and then have the adult take over with putting something into the oven, just so that they're being involved and they're being able to see how they contributed to the food that they're getting ready to eat. Make sure that whatever we're allowing children to do in the kitchen, they are developmentally appropriate (jobs). We're not letting a very young child have a sharp knife. Maybe to learn some knife skills, we would start with that butter knife or cutting butter or something else.
As a registered nurse, what is the most common accident you see during the holidays while people are cooking?
Burns are a big one, where you've touched a hot rack in the oven or something has spilled. To help avoid this, aim handles to the back and make sure cords aren’t dangling. Keep things like soups or coffee away from the edge of the table so kids can't knock them off.
Burns and cuts, slips and falls if something spills and it doesn't get cleaned up right away, those are some typical ones that happen more often around the holidays associated with the kitchen injuries.
Listen to Sherri Hannan’s entire UK HealthCast below:
