In which she wails at kitchenware

[zeborah]

My new Pyrex glassware says that it must be used in a preheated oven only.

My new Marinex glassware says that it must not be used in a preheated oven under any circumstances.

a) How on earth am I going to remember which is which, and
b) WHY?


[In shinier news, the New Zealand government has agreed to delay the implementation of guilt-upon-accusation in the new Copyright Amendment Act. "[T]he Creative Freedom Foundation's high-volume "blackout" campaign [...] will now go down in history as the first viral internet campaign to stop - or at least delay - a law." This is rocksome on many levels.]

Comments

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Can't help with (a) unless they look different enough (and then you wouldn't ask) but (b) is probably because they're actually *different kinds of glass* and the Marinex can't stand sudden changes in temperature.

That said, I have perhaps five different brands of glassware and I use them all in preheated and non-preheated ovens indiscriminately, and I've never broken any (well, not by doing that; I've dropped some on the floor).

[zeborah]

They do look different but if I try to remember "big rectangle = preheated" and "small circle = nonpreheated" then I'll just end up thinking "...or was it the other way around?" <checks to make sure it wasn't the other way around>

I'll probably just split the difference and use them both in semi-preheated ovens. :-)

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was going to say that about the semi-preheated ovens but forgot :-)

[poetrychook.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised that the Pyrex says only use in a preheated oven, because when I was younger you had to be careful with Pyrex not to shock it with sudden changes in temperature.

I remember Mum's apple pie catching fire in the oven once, and my brother and I poured cold water on it, which cracked the pyrex dish in half :)

I have however, never broken any Pyrex by using it in a preheated oven, or a non-preheated oven

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

The warning about the Marinex glassware makes sense because the sudden shock of a hot oven is a traditional way of cracking glass or pottery dishes. Likewise the sudden cooling caused by taking a hot dish and putting it into cold water or onto a cold work top can do the same thing.

The warning that doesn't make sense to me is the instructions re the Pyrex to only put it into a pre-heated oven.

I would have thought that the safe option was to treat both as though they couldn't stand sudden heat. I can't imagine the Pyrex dish coming to any harm by more gentle heating.

I've had two Pyrex dishes for more than 30 years and I've put them into cold, warm and hot ovens without any mishap. I can't imagine that they'd "improve" Pyrex dishes to make them less versatile.

[zeborah]

Yeah, the Pyrex instructions did seem weird. But they were very clear. They used underlines and everything.

I'm trying to remember a cookbook I had which said one must never put food into a cold oven. My reaction was roughly "??? Meh, whatever." I guess they're either worried about broken glass or about how it would screw up one's terribly precise reckoning of how long it's been exposed to what amount of heat, but as I cook by "Yeah, that's a nice shade of brown anyhow" it doesn't make much difference to me.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I know there are cakes that have to go straight into a hot oven, but I'm not really a cake baker.

I do pre-heat the oven for roasts, but other things, like frozen pizzas, go into a cold oven, despite the instructions on the packet to pre-heat. Our oven is a fan oven and even using a lower temperature and less time, I always burn things if I put them straight into a hot oven. It heats up pretty quickly anyway.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

(Love the icon)

I can understand the puzzlement, but I'm afraid my answer would be to use either of them in whatever manner I felt like, unless it cracked, and then never to buy another of its ilk.

And yay on not robbing people of teh Internetz.

[zeborah]

I like your way of thinking. Darwinian kitchenware!

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I kept a lot of Pyrex when I cleared out, and I use it in the microwave where it gets hot very quickly. Nothing's ever broken. But most of mine is at least 20 years old, so maybe it's being made differently now.