Some trends don’t deserve to trend. And the latest “burn hack” making the rounds—smearing raw egg whites on fresh burns—sits squarely in that category. You’d think common sense would’ve retired this one decades ago, but here we are, watching people crack an egg directly onto their skin like they’re prepping breakfast on their own forearm.
Doctors aren’t whispering their warnings on this. They’re practically grabbing a megaphone. Raw egg whites carry bacteria, and burned skin is wide open territory. That’s a terrible pairing. Like sunscreen and candles. Or, if you grew up in my household, burns and butter.
Because here’s my two cents on home remedies that “everyone swears by.”
When I was 10, I spilled scalding hot water on my hand. Full-on cartoon steam, skin turning a shade it shouldn’t, me trying not to cry in front of my grandmother. She took one look, marched to the fridge, and came back with a stick of butter like she was preparing a skillet instead of a child. Before I could protest, she smeared it across my burned hand with total confidence. Zero hesitation. The kind of certainty you’d expect from someone fixing a lightbulb, not an injury.
Within an hour, I was in the emergency room.
The doctor gave me that look—the one halfway between sympathy and “why do people keep doing this?” Butter didn’t soothe anything; it trapped the heat, made everything worse, and turned my hand into a dairy-coated cautionary tale.
So whenever I see these “miracle burn hacks” pop up, I can practically smell the butter melting on my skin again. Some remedies should’ve retired with rotary phones.
Burns are tricky. They hurt, they scare you, and the instinct is to grab the nearest “soothing” thing. A cold compress, a bag of frozen peas, a kitchen ingredient that sounds vaguely healing because someone’s aunt said so in 1973. But damaged skin isn’t looking for culinary creativity. It’s looking for protection and actual medical care.
Doctors agree on the basics:
Cool water.
Clean covering.
Seek help if it’s more than mild.
Notice what’s missing from that list? Eggs, butter, toothpaste, mustard, vinegar, coffee grounds. All the usual suspects in the Home Remedy Hall of Fame.
These hacks feel folksy and comforting because they’ve been passed down for generations. But not everything Grandma swore by deserves a comeback. Mine meant well—and she was a world-class cook—but her kitchen-based medical practice had a zero percent success rate.
So here’s the PSA wrapped in a nostalgic memory:
You don’t have to turn your burn into a brunch experiment.
Keep the eggs in the bowl, the butter on the bread, and the treating of burns to the people who didn’t learn first aid from a recipe card.