How to stop splatter in the kitchen

We all deal with splatter in the kitchen, and some of it is inevitable.

But there are a few strategies you can employ to reduce splatter considerably

And that's good for both sanitation and safety. First, what even is the stuff that comes flying out of the pan and lands on the counter? Well, most often it's oil or some other kind of liquid fat. But don't blame the fat — blame the water. Oil is merely the payload at the end of the rocket. The water is the propellant.

I'm going to show you. There's a pasta dish I've seen people making all over the internet. It's based on super thin slices of zucchini fried in olive oil until brown. I'll get these sliced up, and then season with salt. And within minutes, you're going to see how much water the salt draws out. Some olive oil in the pan, heat until shimmering. Now, I'll just take one of these paper thin slices, drop it in the oil, and watch — messy, dangerous explosion. And what's exploding is the water.

The water hits the hot oil, it expands rapidly into steam, and that sudden explosion sends the surrounding oil flying out of the pan and onto the counter. And that's if you're lucky. It could also land on your skin and burn you. Or it could hit the open flame on a gas stove, and when enough oil droplets hit the flame at the same time, well, devotees, remember when that explosion happened. I did not stage it. It happened because my food was wet. Let's try this again. Same salted zucchini slice, but I will simply dry it first on a towel.

That oil is smoking hot. I'll drop in the slice, and look at the difference — hardly a single droplet of oil is leaving that pan. What a difference. So that is the top tip for avoiding kitchen splatter: Dry off the food before it hits the hot oil. Dab it on a towel, or maybe on a paper towel when you're dealing with something particularly germy, like these meatballs. Speaking of germs, let me show you my favorite feature of the ASUS Vivobook S 15 from ASUS and AMD. This crazy powerful laptop has an Antibacterial Guard, a coating of positively charged silver ions that penetrate the structure of bacteria, bind with their cell membranes, and stop them from reproducing. I know I'm not the only person who rolls out meatballs one minute, and then jumps on the computer the next minute after a too-short handwashing.

This is a recipe for cross-contamination, but remember the ASUS Antibacterial Guard. When they did their clinical tests on the coating, ISO 22196 Standard Protocol Testing, they actually used E. coli bacteria, which is commonly found in beef, of course.

They also used staphylococcus, and they found

That the antibacterial guard inhibits bacterial growth by more than 99% over a 24-hour period.

And other tests show that it's effective for a minimum of three years under regular use. We can actually see the silver ion coating at work ourselves. Got some water on the track pad, some water on the counter, sprinkle some yeast onto each little pool, let them bloom. The next day, both pools are dry.

I'll wet my finger to get some of the yeast off of the computer and mix it with some flour and water, do the same with the yeast on the counter, cover both samples, and within minutes, the yeast from the counter is fermenting this flour. You can see some bubbles and it smells like bread. The yeast from the computer show no signs of fermentation — no bubbles, no yeasty smell, no signs of life. The laptop with the latest ASUS hygiene technology makes it powerfully antimicrobial. And it's a great computer. It's thin and light. Check this out — it goes all the way down. Love that.

It's got the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX CPU. If it's powerful enough to edit this high frame rate footage of the zucchini test, then it's definitely powerful enough for hardcore gaming or whatever. And speaking of that zucchini test, let's talk about what else you can do to minimize splatter. Absolutely, get stuff dry before it goes in the hot oil. That's going to keep you out of most trouble. But eventually, water from inside the food starts to surface, as you can see in these meatballs. And we're going to get some steam explosions again. For some reason, I have a mental block about using lids on frying pans.

It just never really occurs to me. But they make lids for frying pans for a reason. Sometimes it's as simple as plopping a lid down. You just have to be aware that you're trapping more than just oil droplets. You're trapping steam. This is going to turn the pan into a steamer. All that trapped water could make browning a little bit harder. Plus, steam will cook the whole body of the meatball faster.

The insides might end up overcooked by the time the outsides are brown. So what you really want is one of these — a splatter guard. It's basically a flat wire sieve. Place it over the pan and steam can escape, but oil droplets get trapped in the wire grate. The key, in my opinion, is to buy one that is flat — no offset handle. Why? Because a flat one takes up hardly any space in the dishwasher, and you definitely want to wash it in the dishwasher. It's quite hard to clean in the sink. Time to deglaze this pan.

But here's another tip: Don't drizzle. If I pour just a little bit of wine, it hits the hot oil and it explodes. But if I'm bold and I pour a lot of wine all at once, there simply is not enough energy in the pan to vaporize all of that liquid, so no explosions. Dump in the canned tomatoes, simmer for a few hours, and when the sauce gets really thick, then you might start to see some sauce splatter, which is different from oil splatter. The fix here is to simply turn the heat down. Because if the sauce is splattering, that means the heat is high enough to burn the sauce that's at the bottom of the pan, right on the pan's surface — in which case, splatter is really the least of your problems. Either turn the heat down or stir more frequently just to keep the heat and steam from building up on that bottom layer. Let's see how this meatball footage looks on my new ASUS laptop.