Freeze Up a Grease Fire With These Unusual (but Effective) Tips

7/13/2021 (Permalink)

A grease fire can get out of hand very quickly.

Ways To Put Out Grease Fire

A grease fire is probably one of the worst-case fire scenarios you can encounter in your own kitchen, as grease fires aren’t combatted like normal fires. Instead of snuffing them out, water can aggravate a fat fire and cause a small stovetop flare-up to quickly turn into a raging inferno. If you ever encounter a fire caused by grease, it is important that you know what to do to put it out, and quickly. The fire cleanup experts in Van Nuys South, CA, provide these tips for you to implement in the event of a stovetop fire caused by animal fat:

• Do NOT throw water on the fire.
  
• Turn off the heat source ASAP.
  
• Remove all the oxygen from the flame, which you can do by covering the flame with a pot or pot lid.
  
• If covering it up is not an option, dump baking soda on it, and lot of it!
  
  

Salt Works, Too

If you don’t have an abundance of baking soda on hand (because let’s face it, not many people do), salt works too. Depending on the size of the grease fire, you may need to dump a cup or more of salt over the inferno to squelch it. Salt works by sucking the heat out of the grease so that it simply cannot sustain its combustion anymore. In fact, it is so effective that experts recommend keeping a tub of salt on hand whenever you plan to cook with grease.

Do Not Pour Any Other Baking Ingredient on the Flame

Flour, sugar, salt, baking soda…they’re all white powders, so they should work the same, right? Wrong. Baking soda is effective for small fires, while salt is best for larger ones. Accidentally (or purposefully) dousing the flames in flour or sugar could spark an inferno.

A grease fire can get out of hand very quickly, especially if you don’t know the best way to put one out and accidentally use the wrong methods. Use the tips from the National Fire Protection Association to freeze up a kitchen fire fast and before it causes too much damage.