- 37 minutes ago
The fastest way to stop a kitchen fire is not to panic, pick up the pan, or throw water on burning oil. The right first move is simple: turn off the heat, slide a lid over the pan, and leave it alone until it cools. If there is no lid, salt can help by smothering the flames at the base, but only if you throw a large amount low and close to the fire.
This practical home safety guide explains why grease fires spread so quickly, when salt is useful, and when the fire has already gone too far. It also covers what not to use, including flour, sugar, and water, plus why a kitchen fire can become a house fire in seconds. The video then expands into a wider set of everyday salt uses around the home, from cleaning a burnt pan and a dirty iron to removing fresh spills, deodorizing cloths, and helping with winter ice.
You also get clear warnings about the damage salt can cause on steel, concrete, plants, knives, and stainless surfaces, plus why it is not a disinfectant and not a replacement for soap, water, or a proper fire extinguisher. The result is part kitchen safety video, part household tips and cleaning guide, with a strong focus on emergency response, grease fire control, and everyday practical uses for salt.
Created for viewers searching for kitchen fire safety, grease fire tips, how to put out a pan fire, salt trick for fire, home safety advice, and practical cleaning hacks. It also fits searches for household survival tips, emergency kitchen guide, and everyday uses for salt in the home.
This practical home safety guide explains why grease fires spread so quickly, when salt is useful, and when the fire has already gone too far. It also covers what not to use, including flour, sugar, and water, plus why a kitchen fire can become a house fire in seconds. The video then expands into a wider set of everyday salt uses around the home, from cleaning a burnt pan and a dirty iron to removing fresh spills, deodorizing cloths, and helping with winter ice.
You also get clear warnings about the damage salt can cause on steel, concrete, plants, knives, and stainless surfaces, plus why it is not a disinfectant and not a replacement for soap, water, or a proper fire extinguisher. The result is part kitchen safety video, part household tips and cleaning guide, with a strong focus on emergency response, grease fire control, and everyday practical uses for salt.
Created for viewers searching for kitchen fire safety, grease fire tips, how to put out a pan fire, salt trick for fire, home safety advice, and practical cleaning hacks. It also fits searches for household survival tips, emergency kitchen guide, and everyday uses for salt in the home.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00The pan is on fire. You stepped away for a minute. The oil in the skillet went past hot and
00:06caught
00:06and now there is a sheet of flame standing up out of that pan about a foot high and it
00:12is throwing
00:12black smoke at your ceiling. And every instinct you have is wrong. You want to pick the pan up
00:19and carry it to the sink. Do not. You will be walking across a kitchen with a torch in your
00:25hand and it will slop. You want to throw water on it. Do not. Water hits burning oil, turns to
00:33steam
00:34in an instant and blows the fire up and out in every direction. That is how people get burned and
00:40it is the single commonest way a small kitchen fire becomes a house fire. Here is what you do in
00:48this
00:48order and it takes four seconds. Turn the heat off. The burner, the ring, the gas. Off. Then slide a
00:58lid
00:58across the top of that pan. Slide it. Do not drop it so your hand stays behind the lid and
01:05out of the
01:05flame. A saucepan lid, a baking sheet, a flat tray, a metal cooking sheet, anything solid that covers it.
01:13Fire needs air and a lid takes the air away and the flame dies almost at once. Then leave it
01:22alone.
01:23Do not lift the lid to look. Oil stays above its flashpoint for a long while and lifting that lid
01:31too soon lets the air back in and it will light again. Leave it covered until the whole pan is
01:37cold,
01:3820 minutes at the least. I am Elias Yoder. I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We cook on a wood
01:46range and we render lard by the kettle and a pan of hot fat is a thing I have grown
01:52up beside my whole
01:54life. I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version.
02:01If you want it, it is there. I will not mention it again. That is first and that is best.
02:09And now let
02:10me tell you where the salt comes in because there is a very good reason to have a box of
02:15it beside the
02:16stove. Sometimes there is no lid. You are using a wide skillet and every lid you own is smaller than
02:24it. The lid is in the dishwasher. Your hands are full. It happens. Then you smother it with salt.
02:32Not a pinch. A great deal of it. The whole box, if that is what you have, thrown low at
02:39the base of
02:40the flames rather than dropped from above. Salt does not burn and it does not react. It lies down on
02:48the
02:48surface of the oil and shuts the air off, which is the same job the lid does, done with a
02:54solid instead
02:55of a pan. And know the one fire salt will not fix. If the flames have left the pan and
03:03got into the
03:03extractor hood above it or up a wall or into a cupboard, you are past the point where anything
03:10in your kitchen will help. Get everybody out, shut the door behind you to starve it, and call for the
03:16fire service from outside. A pan is a pan. A hood full of old grease is a house fire, and
03:24the difference
03:25between them is about 90 seconds. Keep an unopened box of plain salt within reach of your stove. Not in
03:33a
03:33cupboard on the other side of the kitchen, within reach. And a word on how you throw it, because it
03:40matters. Low and across, at the base of the flame where the oil is, not dropped from above through
03:48the fire. Reaching over a flame to sprinkle something is how you burn a forearm, and a handful scattered
03:55from height mostly misses. And never flour. Never sugar. Never baking powder. Fine flour dust thrown
04:05into a flame can flash. Baking soda will work in a small flare, but you would need a great deal,
04:12and most people do not have enough of it to hand, and salt is cheaper by far. The rest of
04:19this video is
04:20about salt, because that box does about ten other jobs in a house, and every one of them, the fire
04:27included, comes from one thing that salt does. My grandfather taught it to me in the smokehouse when
04:34I was small, and he did not explain a word of it. He just let me see. We had killed
04:40a hog, and he had
04:42packed a ham down in a wooden box, buried in dry salt, and I helped him do it. The salt
04:48went in dry.
04:50I ran it through my fingers. There was no wet in it anywhere. The next morning he took me back
04:57out,
04:57and had me look in the box. There was liquid standing in the bottom of it. A good deal of
05:03it.
05:03I asked him who had poured water in, because somebody must have, and he said nobody had been
05:09near it but the two of us. Then he asked me where I supposed it had come from. He waited
05:15a good while
05:16before he told me, and I have always thought he did that on purpose, so I would guess wrong first,
05:22which I did. It had come out of the ham. The salt had pulled it out through the night, and
05:28that is
05:28exactly why the ham would keep all year, because whatever would have spoiled it needed that water,
05:34and the salt had taken it. Salt does not add anything. It pulls the water out of whatever
05:41it touches. Hold on to that, because it is the whole of the list, and it is the whole of
05:46the warnings
05:47at the end as well. The fire is the one exception, where salt is simply a solid that will not
05:53burn.
05:54Everything else comes back to water. One thing before the list, on the salt itself.
06:00Plain salt is what you want for nearly all of this, the cheap kind in a box or a sack.
06:06Coarse is better where you want grit, on a pan or in a bottle. Fine is better where you want
06:12it to draw,
06:13on a spill or a stain. The expensive sorts with the pretty colors do the same job and cost a
06:20great deal
06:21more, and the fine table salt with the free-running powder in it is the one I would keep away
06:26from a cast-iron pan.
06:28Now the ten. 1. Cleaning the face of an iron. If something has melted onto the sole plate,
06:35lay a sheet of brown paper or newspaper on the board. Pour a good heap of salt on it. Set
06:42the iron to
06:42hot with the steam off and run it back and forth over the salt for a minute. The grit lifts
06:49the residue
06:49and it collects on the paper. Let it cool, wipe it, and it is clean. This works because the salt
06:56is
06:57doing two things at once. It is grit, which lifts what is stuck, and it is dry, which stops the
07:04melted
07:04stuff smearing about the way it would on a damp cloth. Do it with the steam off and the water
07:10tank empty,
07:11or you will spit water into the salt and make a paste of it. 2. A Dropped Egg. This is
07:18the one I like
07:18best because it seems like a trick and it is only the principle again. A raw egg on a floor
07:25is almost
07:25impossible to wipe up. It slides and it smears, and you go through half a roll of paper. Pour salt
07:33over the
07:33whole of it, a good covering, and walk away for 10 or 15 minutes. The salt draws the water out
07:40of the egg,
07:41and it goes stiff and dull, and then you sweep the whole lot straight into a pan. Works for anything
07:48wet and slippery on a floor. 3. A Burnt Pan. Cover the bottom in a layer of salt, add just
07:55enough hot water
07:56to make a paste, and leave it an hour. Then work it with the corner of a wooden spoon. Most
08:03of what is
08:03stuck will let go. For cast iron this is the only scouring I use, because coarse salt and a little
08:10oil
08:10on a rag takes the burnt bits off without touching the seasoning, which a scouring pad would strip
08:17straight off. 4. A Sour Sponge or Dishcloth. Two cups of water, a quarter cup of salt, stir it until
08:25it dissolves, and leave the sponge in it overnight. Ring it out in the morning. The salt draws the water
08:32out of what is living in there, which is why a cloth comes back sweet instead of sour. It is
08:38the ham
08:38again, in a bowl on the sink. 5. A Fresh Stain, and the key word is fresh, so much so
08:46that I would say
08:46it twice. Red wine, grease, blood. Pile salt on it thick while it is still wet and leave it. It
08:55pulls
08:55the liquid up out of the cloth and holds it, and then you shake the salt off and wash the
09:00thing. Once a
09:01stain has dried, salt will do nothing for it, and you want a different method entirely. The whole of this
09:08trick is that the liquid is still liquid and the salt can take hold of it. 5 minutes matters. 5
09:14hours is
09:15too late. And if you have cast iron and you have never done this, it is worth the whole video
09:21on its own.
09:22A tablespoon of coarse salt in the warm pan, a little oil, and work it round with a folded rag
09:28or a paper. The salt does the scrubbing and the oil carries it. Wipe it out. Wipe a film of
09:35oil over
09:35the inside and set it back on the stove a minute. No soap, no scourer, no stripping the black finish
09:42you
09:43have spent years building. 6. Cleaning inside a narrow bottle, a vase, or a jug you cannot get a brush
09:51into. Coarse salt, a little water, a hand over the top, and shake it hard. The salt scours where nothing
09:59else can reach. 7. A stained cup, and the same works on a teapot or a thermos flask. The brown
10:08ring inside a
10:09coffee or teacup is a film, and salt on a damp cloth takes it off without scratching the glaze the
10:16way a
10:16harsh powder would. 8. Wilting flowers in a vase and greens that have gone limp. This one wants a light
10:25hand because the same drawing power that firms a lettuce will finish it off if you overdo it. A pinch,
10:32not a spoonful, and a short soak rather than a long one. 10 minutes in lightly salted cold water will
10:40bring a tired lettuce back. An hour in heavily salted water will give you a wilted lettuce that
10:46also tastes of salt, and there is no coming back from that. A little salt in the water helps. The
10:53same in the water you soak a wilted lettuce in, briefly, will firm it. 9. Slugs in the garden,
11:01and I will be plain that I do not much like this one, and I will tell you why shortly.
11:06Salt on a slug kills it, and it kills it by pulling the water straight out of it. It is
11:12the ham again,
11:13and that is a hard way for anything to go. 10. Ice on a step, which is the one everybody
11:21already does,
11:22and the one most worth thinking about. Salt lowers the point at which water will freeze,
11:28so it melts ice and keeps it from forming again for a while. It works, there is no arguing with
11:35it,
11:35and it has kept a great many people off their backs on a winter morning. Which brings me straight to
11:42the
11:42harm, because this is also where salt does nearly all the damage it will ever do to your place. Two
11:49more
11:49that belong in the same family and did not make the 10. Salt in the water you boil eggs in
11:55makes them
11:56easier to shell, and a spoonful in the water for a greasy pan helps the soap get hold. And an
12:03old one
12:04from the smokehouse. A sack of salt, kept open in a damp cellar or a tool cupboard, will pull moisture
12:11out of the air and hold it, which keeps the damp off what is stored near it. Change it when
12:17it goes hard
12:18and clumped, because that means it is full and has stopped working. Now the three places salt does
12:25real damage, and all three are the same principle working against you. The first is anything made of
12:31steel, and this is the big one. Salt holds water against metal, and it will not let it dry,
12:38and that is exactly the condition rust needs. So salt on a step means salt tracked onto the porch,
12:46onto the floor, into the mudroom, and salt in the driveway means salt on the underside of everything
12:53that drives over it. If you must use it on ice, use as little as will do, sweep up what
13:00is left when the
13:01thaw comes, rather than leaving it to wash about, and put a mat down at the door. And a better
13:07answer for
13:07most steps is grit, sand, ash out of the stove, or fine gravel. It does not melt anything, but it
13:16gives
13:16you your feet back, which is what you actually wanted, and it does nothing to metal at all.
13:22That is what we use. And it is not only your own steel. The salt you put on a public
13:27path in the
13:28morning ends up in the wheel arches of every vehicle that passes, and in the paws of every dog that
13:34walks it,
13:35and a dog's feet want rinsing after a salted path because it stings and they lick it off.
13:42The second is concrete, and people do not connect the two. Salt water soaks into the pores of concrete,
13:49and when it freezes and thaws in there, over and over, it works away at it until the face of
13:55the step
13:56starts to flake and spall off in patches. Young concrete is worst. If your steps are less than a
14:03year old, keep salt off them entirely. And the third is ground you want things to grow in. Salt
14:11does not break down, and it does not wash away quickly. It stays. So salt used along a path or
14:17a
14:17fence line finds its way into the soil beside it, and it pulls the water out of the roots there
14:23just
14:24as it pulled it out of that ham, and grass and plants go brown in a band and may not
14:29come back
14:30for a good while. That is also why I am uneasy about the slug. Not the slug, but where the
14:36salt lands
14:37afterward. And one place people put it that surprises them. Do not leave salt standing on a stainless steel
14:44sink or a good knife blade. Stainless resists rust. It does not refuse it. And a ring of wet salt
14:52left
14:53sitting overnight will pit the surface and leave a mark you cannot polish out. Rinse it away when you
14:59are done, rather than leaving it to dry where it fell. And the winter one people ask about every year.
15:05Salt stops working when it gets cold enough. Somewhere below about 15 degrees it does very little,
15:12and below that it is simply expensive grit that also rusts your car. On a genuinely cold morning reach
15:20for the ash bucket instead and save yourself the money and the damage. Now the plane limits. Salt is
15:27not a disinfectant. It holds spoilage back by taking water away, and over days that matters a great deal,
15:35which is how curing works. In a minute on a counter it does nothing of the sort. Do not use
15:41it in place of
15:42soap and hot water. And it is abrasive. That is a virtue on a burnt pan, and a fault on
15:48anything polished,
15:50painted, or non-stick. Coarse salt on a soft surface will scratch it as surely as sand would. So think
15:57about what a
15:58thing is made of before you scour it, which is a rule I have given you before about a different
16:03bottle,
16:03and it holds just as well here. There is no scheme in any of this, and nobody arranged anything. The
16:10money simply runs the other way. A box of plain salt costs less than a dollar, and there is a
16:16separate product on a shelf for nearly every job on this list. Those products are real, and some are
16:22better at their one thing. It is only that nobody makes a living telling you to keep a cheap box
16:28within
16:28arm's reach of the stove, so nobody says it, and a thing nobody has a reason to say gets forgotten
16:34inside of one generation. One last word on the fire, since it is the reason most of you came.
16:41Nothing I have said is a substitute for a proper extinguisher, and a small one rated for cooking
16:46fires costs less than a week of groceries and hangs on a wall. If you have one, read the label
16:53before you
16:53need it, rather than in the dark with a flame in front of you. And if a smoke alarm is
16:58what tells
16:58you about all this, go and press the button on yours tonight while you are thinking of it.
17:03So here is what I would have you do tonight, and it costs nothing at all. Go and stand at
17:08your stove
17:09and answer two questions out loud. Which lid covers your biggest frying pan, and where is it right now?
17:16And if you cannot lay your hand on a lid in four seconds, go and buy a plain box of
17:21salt tomorrow,
17:21and put it where you can reach it without moving your feet. That is four seconds of thinking now,
17:27against the worst four seconds of your life later. So tell me in the comments whether you could answer
17:32the lid question without going to look. Be truthful, because I had to go and check myself before I wrote
17:38this, and I was not pleased with the answer. And if you are new here, tell me what county you
17:43are in as
17:43well, so I know who I am talking to. Next time I want to go through plain baking soda the
17:48same way,
17:49because it works from the other end entirely. Salt takes water out of things. Soda goes after acid
17:56and after smell, and there are two or three jobs people give it every week where it is doing nothing
18:01whatever. Salt does not add anything. It pulls the water out of whatever it touches. The people who
18:07built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.