Newspaper to pay damages after readers burned attempting recipe

Chile’s Supreme Court has ordered a newspaper to pay out more than $120,000 to 13 people who suffered burns when they attempted a recipe the paper had published for churros, a snack of deep-fried dough dusted in sugar that’s popular in Latin America. Days after the recipe was published in 2004, hospitals around the country began treating people for burns after the dough had shot out of their pots, showering them with hot oil. The high court found that the newspaper failed to properly test the recipe before publication: If readers followed the instructions, their churros had a good chance of exploding once the oil reached the suggested temperature, which was too high. “The explosions were so violent that in some cases the splashes hit the ceiling and covered the person who was cooking,” the ruling said. “Faithfully following the recipe published in the newspaper, this damage could not have been avoided.” The publisher of the newspaper, La Tercera, will pay damages ranging from $279 to $48,000, the latter to one woman whose burns were especially severe.