A woman in Aberdeen has been left with blisters all over one of her hands after a tub of scalding curry sauce from her local chipper exploded as she was carrying it.
Arleen Mcdonald visited the Torry Fish Bar on Victoria Road last Friday with her daughter Hayley and her friend, to buy a quick meal while they were helping to decorate her kitchen.
Alongside the regular set of suppers, she also bought a tub of the shop’s curry sauce for her husband.
Arleen said nothing seemed unusual until the family were back in their Torry home, and she took the lid off the polysterene tub – causing it to explode, and covering her hand with “bubbling” sauce.
She said: “I obviously just screamed, dropped it all over my husband, but the plastic had stuck all through my hand.
“I just managed to get my wedding ring and engagement ring off as I had my hand under the running water.”
The sauce was already hot enough to burn her when she bought it from the shop, she said – though this accusation is refuted by the Torry Fish Bar.
Believing she could cope with the pain, Arleen went to bed on Friday night but was unable to sleep.
The following morning, large blisters had appeared on her left hand, and her husband rushed her to A&E.
A nurse there told her the injury was severe enough that she should have come in just after it happened, and said she would have to be seen by a plastic surgeon on Monday.
Luckily, the doctor at that appointment told her surgery would not be necessary, though the damage would take “some considerable time to heal”.
She will return to hospital on Thursday to get the wound redressed.
‘What if this happens to a child?’
Arleen, who has secondary progressive MS and has previously suffered a stroke, said: “My concerns are what if a kid goes in for chips and curry and this happens to a child?
“What if this happens to an elderly person who fancies something from the chip shop, lives all alone, gets home, and this explodes all over them?
“I was still in shock on Saturday afternoon.”
Hayley, Arleen’s daughter, posted about the incident on Facebook on Friday evening, prompting a number of friends to say they had similar issues with sauces from the chipper.
One person commented: “The curry sauce is far too hot for that containers I have came up the road with it and the container has started to melt.”
Several people also suggested the curry sauce may have been heated in a microwave, an accusation echoed by both Hayley and Arleen.
However, a representative of Torry Fish Bar said the curry sauce sold from the shop is not microwaved, and argued one of the Mcdonalds may have heated it up themselves as it could not be hot enough to melt the tub as sold.
He added: “We’ve been selling curry sauce here for 40 years and this has never happened before.”