You might think the worst part about accidentally burning food is the smoke alarm beeping loudly in your ear or the waste of ingredients, because food is expensive these days.
But apparently, a charred meal can come back to haunt you in the most unexpected way.
An EMT named Ally (@themommyconfessionsss) is on TikTok warning people not to throw burnt food in the garbage after one woman did this very thing and her house caught on fire. Ally was an EMT at a fire department for over 10 years, so she knows a thing or two about fire safety.
According to Ally, one woman went to heat up a brownie in the microwave. Instead of putting it in the microwave for 20 seconds, she set the time for 20 minutes by mistake.
The brownie started smoking, and it was obviously burned, so she wasn’t going to eat it.
Her next course of action was to throw the brownie in the trash. However, it ended up starting a huge fire. Many people actually don’t know that they shouldn’t toss burned food into the trash right away because of the risk of starting a fire.
If you burn something in the microwave or oven and you see smoke, what you should do instead is shut the door to the appliance and make sure it’s turned off. If the smoke goes down, then you’re safe, but if it doesn’t, you should call the fire department.
“If you have burnt food, do not throw it in the trash until it first cools somewhere safe. That could be the sink, the stovetop, and if you can safely do so, run water over whatever’s smoking,” advised Ally.
Running water over the smoking food can help stop the process of burning. A house fire does not need a flame to start. It can start from something really hot, such as burned food.
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“Part of what made it burn is it got really hot, and inside the black, charred, burnt parts of the food, there can actually be little embers like a campfire,” she added.
The trash is also filled with other items that can fuel a fire. So, don’t throw out anything that is actively smoking because smoke means fire.
Before throwing out burned food, make sure to douse it in cold water and that it has no signs of smoke coming from it. After tossing it in the garbage, set a timer for 10 minutes and another for 20 minutes so you can check on it.
The story triggered calls for better fire safety education, and several TikTok users shared stories about how they or someone else almost started a fire due to a lack of knowledge about how fires start.
“I learned this in college. Every week, my dorm was evacuated over burnt popcorn. Every single week…” commented one user.
“We got evacuated because a girl forgot water in Easy Mac, and the entire microwave was on fire…and we lost microwave privileges for the rest of that semester,” wrote another.
“When I was little, I put a corndog in the microwave for six minutes instead of 60 seconds, and this is how my family found out I do not have a sense of smell. My dog alerted me while I stood watching TV 10 feet away,” chimed in a third.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
