If you're cooking, sooner or later you're going to end up with a kitchen fire. Never assume you won't. Doesn't matter how good you are, the risk is always there. Maybe something greasy dripped onto a super hot element and caught fire. Maybe your heating element decided to shit itself and burn something that shouldn't be burning. Maybe an appliance decided it wanted to heat things up in a way it shouldn't. Or maybe you weren't paying attention and now you've got a small grease fire in your pan or on your stovetop. Oh no!

One of the most important tools you should have in your kitchen in the event of a fire is.... well, obviously a class ABC fire extinguisher (it is imperative you have an ABC rated extinguisher, as that will take care of ordinary combustibles such as wood or paper (A), liquid flammables like grease and oil (B), and electrical fires (C) where you don't want to electrocute everything in sight. There's also D rated, but you almost never need one of those outside a metalworking shop) and in most cases you will likely use one of these if for example your garbage can or blender or outlet is burning. You don't always need to waste a fire extinguisher and ruin everything you're cooking in the process though, and that's where baking soda comes in.

When it comes to kitchen fires, even though water is extremely accessible, it's not always the right choice. Especially if it's an electrical or grease fire. Water and live mains power is always a bad idea, and water is more likely to spread a grease fire, making things far worse. Especially if it's hot grease. Nothing like flaming gobs of goo spitting everywhere! Probably the most important thing you can have is baking soda! That's right, good ol' sodium bicarbonate. Hell, you probably have some in your fridge to keep the fridge smelling nice!

A good example of this is I had a stovetop fire just boiling water. That's right, just a clean pot of water on an element. And boom, fire. Apparently something was in the drip tray that wasn't cleaned out properly before I used it. It happens. The fire wasn't very big, and was mostly contained within the drip tray itself. So the pan came off quickly, and not knowing the actual source of fuel for the fire I didn't want to just dump the heating water on it (that's probably not good for the red hot element either) so I went to the fridge and grabbed a small box of baking soda! Sprinkled some on carefully until the fire was extinguished, and back into the fridge it went! Barely used much at all!

Now if the whole stovetop were on fire I'd probably not waste time with baking powder and just attack it with the fire extinguisher I keep nearby. Anything I was trying to cook would likely be ruined at that point, and potentially the stovetop itself would also be damaged. But this was a small fire, so sprinkling some baking soda worked to put it out while minimizing the damage. I'm going to have to scrub the drip tray and element real good to get the charred stuff off, but it's all useable, no potentially harmful chemicals everywhere, and no risk of making things worse with water.