It's all about timing, spatial awareness, and experience. I use an Ove Glove, kevlar and silicone based gloves that allow me to manipulate hot meat without getting burned, or at least provide a hand as I'm trying to turn and flip things with spatulas and tongs.

For eggs and general sauteing, I use a standard silicone spatula to push things around and stir, and I pay attention to the resistance I'm feeling to guage how done my eggs are. I can feel onion and other veggies softening up through tactile feedback from a spatula, and for all things, I have timers nearby. Timing is everything, and helps you gain experience on how to tactily tell when something is done. If you cook a mir pois on medium-high heat in olive oil for 5 minutes, you can feel the difference in the restistance of the contents in the pan as you stir, plus take in the smells as well since that is also a great indicator of how things are cooking.

So get your timing down for whatever you are trying to cook, get your heat right, use Ove Gloves to help with your food manipulation, use spatter guards, smell how well things are cooking, and don't be afraid to touch the surface of meat when it's in the pan to tell it's doneness. I'll use my bare fingers to steady a fillet of fish or meat as I get a spatula under it and make sure I flip it well. Quick touches, confident manipulation, all that comes with experience.

If you decide to do most of your cooking with an oven, like my blind edl teacher does, (every day living), normal oven mitts seems to work just fine. I guess that the fear of burning yourself will decrease in time, when you get used to the kitchen surroundings. I haven't gotten rid of it yet, but I don't cook that much either, so it's expected.

I'd also like to know if there are ways to know when eggs and meat are done. I assume that you have to use your ears and listen to the sounds food makes when it's done, but since I'm not experienced, I wouldn't trust myself doing that.

When I do try to cook, I usually read up on the thing I'm trying to cook, so I at least know how much spices I have to put in and for how long something should boil.

There're probably lots of ways to make a kitchen more accessible, than I can think of at the moment.

My mom HATED cutting things up after they were cooked. She also hated cutting meat off bones so we ate things like fried chicken at someone else's house. Her solution for steak was to cut it into chunks before she cooked it. It took less time and was never undercooked. While it never occurred to me to ask about her specific strategies, she taught me to pay attention to texture and smell and have minimum times for meaty things. She liked cast iron and had metal utensils.

She was very particular about placement of pans and handles and trained us to always have them at 3 o'clock. We had designated areas for utensil and spices. We all developed strong muscle memory skills from this.

Practice does reinforce skill and increase confidence but I'd add that spending time practicing placement and learning your range of reach developing your familiarity with your appliances while they're cold is a good idea. Maybe practice placement and basic movements or cooking gestures will give you a better feel for how things will be so you can adjust your motions or expectations for when things are hot. Practice reaching forits or the salt so you know where they're going to be.

Another thing is the shape of the pan you're using. Curved sides allow food to dodge your utensil. If you have good food alonge skills it's not a big problem but if you're dealing with stir fry veggies or Brussels sprouts a straight sided pan will contain them better.

That Ove Glove strategy is a great one. I'm stealing it for a client.

I don't use any type of gloves when frying stuff on a pan. The best way to know if something is fully cooked is to use your spatula and feel for example, the difference between uncooked meat and cooked meat. If you move your spatula and you feel that the meat is soft and somewhat squishy, its uncooked. If after a while of cooking it, you feel that the meat has hardened up, it is cooked fully. Feeling it as well as smelling the meat while its in the pan, and listening for the sizzling sound to get progressively quiet will tell you how cooked the meet is.
Don't be afraid of getting burned, as long as you don't touch the pan directly, it won't burn you.

Quite a few things have been covered well already, and honestly allot of it is just stuff you can only properly understand when you take that first step for your self and do it. Each time, your personal skillset and preferences develop more, and there is no one size fits all solution anyway because people's environments, tools, and limitations differ. These are just general guidelines that tend to help most people, ones that very well may be discarded for others with more experience.

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Anyway, Another tip is to center the frying pan onto the burner before turning the stove on, Making sure that the handle isn't going to be hanging really in your way, but can be found when needed. When you want to check to see if the pan is hot enough, just get a few drops of water on your fingers and flick it at the pan. It will loudly sizzle if it's ready.

Also, try putting your oil in the fridge so that it's a different temperature from your body, and therefore much easier to feel flowing, that way you wont' use far too much by accident. Works for other stuff like liquid medicine and vanilla extract too!

Personally I just rub the oil all around with my hand and make sure it's all covered with a thin but slick layer, including up the sides, and that seems to work well. If you find it hard to manage with stuff on your hands, then try using one hand for all of the messy stuff if possible, so you always have a cleaner one to pick clean stuff up with, turn things on/off ETC. It helps reduce cleanup.

If your pan moves a bit during cooking and you want to recenter it, try using a fork or the handle of your spatula to trace the outline of the burner and nudge the pan into the center again without having to touch the hot outside. Using a smaller burner for a smaller pan/pot, and a larger burner for a bigger one helps avoid this too.

It helps to have a spoon rest as well, though it's certainly not necessary, so you can always find your stirring tool without having to leave it in the pan and possibly have to fumble for it.

For serving, it's smart to put the plate/bowl as close to the pan as possible while using a utensil to help scrape things out slowly, and getting the edge of the pan right against the dish, which is admittedly a bit tricky to do sometimes without singeing your self slightly particularly with plates, but you get used to it.

Oh and, try to avoid serving over the stove if you can, cuz no one wants food in their burners stinking up the place.

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As for danger, as long as you don't lean in super close while cooking something which is loudly popping, or carelessly throw something big and frozen into a pan with allot of oil in it, the worst that could happen is likely a first degree burn that you'll forget about in two days max.

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For marking your stove's knobs, you can put a piece of duct tape or some puff paint or something on, or cut a small score into, the pointer part of the knob with a sighted person's help, then mark the 3, 6, and 9 O Clock positions with more puff paint, those bump dot things, or the poor man's alternative to that, those little drawer stops from the hardware store, assuming you have no way to make braille labels.

Those are just suggestions though, there are tons of ways to mark stuff and as long as it stays on, and you can use it accurately, it doesn't really matter what you use.

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But I'd say in the end, the biggest thing is, as the Navy Seals say, "Slow is steady, steady is smooth, smooth is fast."

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Disclaimer: I only started learning these skills my self a few months ago, but I'm in a pretty good program similar to the NFB centers, with blind teachers who do it every single day, and I've gotten pretty confident with it.

Hi. There are a lot of great suggestions here. I find it helpful to manipulate a spatula in my non dominant hand in order to determine the exact position of the food that I am cooking and flip or stir with the utensil in my dominant hand. The spatula in your non-dominant hand can then act as a sort of cooking cane. I hope that this helps.

I don't use gloves. I use a spatula to turn things, I use a metal spoon to feel if eggs are soft enough to be fully cooked.

Also a talking thermometer may help you a lot.

Hey OP! I'm not blind, but I have recently started cooking and have always liked doing things with my eyes closed just so I know I can operate should I ever fall into that category.

I'm out of town right now, but I recently have put in a minor effort to start learning how to cook. I'd like to give this a shot when I get home, (a place where making a mess isn't such a big deal,) and hopefully come up with some answers for ya!