A mum says she suffered the most "excruciating" pain of her life after her attempt at a TikTok cooking hack left her with burns to her face.
Shafia Bashir was attempting to poach an egg in the microwave when the boiling water exploded in her face as she placed a cold spoon in to fetch it out.
The explosion sent her to the kitchen sink where she immediately splashed her face in cold water in an attempt to mitigate the burn, before rushing to A&E.
The 37-year-old mum from Bolton said she was in "agony", and the burn has since left her with a nasty scar.
After spotting the trick on the video-sharing app, Shafia poured boiling water into a mug before adding the egg and then putting it in the microwave for a couple of minutes.
But when she put a cold spoon on the egg, the mug erupted “like a fountain”, scolding the right side of her face.
Shafia's burn was treated in A&E after the disaster on May 12, but her injury was still stinging 12 hours afterward.
Though her wounds have now healed, the mum-of-one has cautioned others to think twice about attempting the same thing.
She said: “I just don’t want anyone else going through that, because it is trending on TikTok…
“It was the most excruciating pain in my life. It was a terrifying time for me. I was in absolute agony.
“As soon as I put the cold spoon in, it exploded like a fountain and it scolded me. I put my face under the tap and then had to get my mate to look after my daughter so I could go to A&E.
“My face has healed now, luckily with no scars. I used Vaseline, Sudocrem, whatever I could get my hands on.”
Shafia said she has been making poached eggs for years, but the attempt to alleviate her hunger this time ended in disaster.
The hack, she said, had also been taught by her former mother-in-law, and she decided to attempt the microwave version to save time.
“I boiled the kettle, half-filled the mug with water, put salt inside, the egg inside, and microwaved it for a minute. It wasn’t cooked, so I put it in for another minute.
“After it happened, I put my face under the tap for 20 minutes. But the burning lasted for 12 hours. It just didn’t stop.”
The British Medical Journal has previously warned about cooking eggs in microwaves, which is dangerous because the casing holds in heat.
Once you have removed the egg from the microwave, it will carry on cooking itself and any disruption, such as Shafia's cold spoon, can cause an explosion.
In 2021, Chantelle Conway, also from Bolton, was left with horrific facial burns after similarly attempting to cook an egg in the microwave.
Shafia said she had been left "traumatised" after the incident, vowing never to eat an egg again.
But she has also seen the funny side of her experiences and made light of them to her 15,000 followers on TikTok.
Shafia said: “For my last videos on TikTok, I did Beauty and the Beast and Tony Montana from Scarface, with the burn. My followers thought it was a filter!”
