Know your stuff - a kitchen warning

[kokopelli20878]

We had an interesting mishap the other day.  Whilst cooking dinner for another family, my wife took a pyrex pan from the oven and placed it on the burner of the stove.  Next, that burner was mistakenly turned on (the controls of the stove desperately need a better layout).  Result

Comments

[amamama]

Eep! I do understand the your wife was rattled! I'm rattled just reading about it. Ok, no Pyrex on burners. Unless it's borosilicate. Next question then is - how can you determine which it is?

Thanks for posting the warning, I had no idea.

how to tell

[kokopelli20878]

Most of the pyrex in my house was given to my wife and me at our wedding - in 1982. That stuff is the real deal. Some of the really old stuff has markings on it that indicate that it can be used on the stovetop, but that's rare and hard to find. So, mainly it's a matter of knowing when the stuff was made.

[aggiebell90]

We had something similar happen to us not too long ago, except we'd taken the pyrex pan out of the oven and set down on the counter...which just happened to have a wet washcloth on it. It also exploded into hundreds (or thousands) of little pieces...and took the casserole I was making for dinner with it! I never even thought about it, because I regularly use pyrex in the lab, super-heating it to melt the contents and then sticking the bottle/flask/beaker into a pan of water to cool them to working temperature. I'm nervous about it every time I do it now, though.

Nerves

[kokopelli20878]

And well you should be - that's why I retired my 9x13 and 11x15 pans and replaced them with Marinex. Pyrex knockoffs from China and Pyrex made in Europe is still borosilicate glass - so you can't tell with brand names any more - same with Anchor's Fireking - it's no longer borosilicate either.

Progress of a sort...