Question for the day

[james_davis_nicoll]

Why would someone make an oven mitt out of what turned out to be flammable materials?

Comments

[soon_lee]

In my (limited) experience, oven mitt materials are chosen for their insulation properties, not their inflammability.

[ellarien]

I have a pair with silicone gripping surfaces, but otherwise they're still padded cotton. I think I have seen all-silicone ones, though.

[rosefox]

The all-silicone ones are incredibly thick and awkward and I hate them.

[(Anonymous)]

I know just what you mean - they are quite thick and awkward - but mine make me feel all safe and invulnerable, and I love them!

Louis Wu's impact armor was thick and awkward when it was doing its job too. Not the same in other respects, but I think in those terms when I use my new silicone oven mitts!

[daev.livejournal.com]

There's a product called the "Ove Glove" which is an oven glove (not mitt) that seems far more resistant to heat than the usual padded oven mitt. The down side is that it is in the form of a knitted glove, and thus offers scant protection against hot liquids. I have a pair, and use them when I need to do something a bit more dangerous, like get a pizza out of the oven, where you must manually fiddle around in there. (A basic mitt is a lot easier to slip on and off, though.)

[hattifattener]

I like the all-silicone ones. They don't seem any more awkward than the traditional thick-cotton-or-whatever ones to me. And I don't have to worry about hot liquids soaking through them. Which can be very painful.

[dubiousprospects.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

The clammy feel is no fun, I agree, and yes, they are thick and awkward, but they are also impervious to steam, a feature for which I am quite willing to forgive all the other unfortunate characteristics. No more poached thumbs.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I tried silicone gloves in a store and I was not able to bend them enough to hold something. I'm not as strong as most people, but I was pushing hard.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Yes, there are silicon gloves out there in the retail world. Some have a lining, some don't.

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

I set pot holders on fire all the time. Dang gas burners...

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Schadenfreude.

[alyxyn.livejournal.com]

Booby trap for someone they didn't like?

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Is that what that fireball to the east was?

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

I actually got a skillet for Christmas with a metal handle. I kept looking at it thinking "That bad design can't possibly be as bad in practice as it appears in theory."

Turns out, it is.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

All my skillets are cast iron. The handle included. It may be a flawed design, but it's a traditional flawed design.

[avram]

There are recipes that requires that design, where one stage of the cooking is done on the range-top, and then you take the whole skillet and stick in in the oven for a while.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I have a Scanpan skillet with a plastic handle that's safe up to about 200C/400F. They're out there.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

No, no, I would never complain about a cast-iron skillet. But this is definitely more of a dollar-store skillet. The handle isn't of a piece with the pan, it's *metal*. Shiny. It gets very, very hot.

(This makes my mom sound really bad for giving it to me, but she gave me lots of other nice presents. I'm sure she was just randomly passing by someplace and thought "Ooh, cheap skillet" and picked it up as a stocking stuffer. Still, it really sucks.)

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I was mostly being facetious. I forget that doesn't translate well on LJ.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

What on earth were you doing to set your glove on fire!?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Trying to get a tray off the bottom rack in the oven. The glove brushed the lower burner and went up like a road flare.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

I often us cotton kitchen towels as pot holders, mostly because the silicone ones go walkabout now and again.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

I tried for two christmas' to get my mom an Ov Glove as it was on her list. I finally found a Canadian Tire who had just received a shipment. The guy in line behind me had already bought 17! He was giving them to all the old ladies at his 55+ apartment building.

What is it about 55+ apartments... it seems like most of the tenants are actually little old ladies in the 70+ range (at least that is what it is like at my mom's and the ones where my aunts had lived)?

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Well, traditionally, pot holders were knitted or crocheted and of wool or cotton, neither of which burn that quickly. Acrylic/polyester, though, goes up like crazy. So even now, maybe pot holders are cotton, but some are still polyester. What was yours made of?

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

A few years ago, when I worked for Crate and Barrel, they sold a Chanukah Menorah which would ignite if the candles burnt down to their base.

Since you aren't supposed to blow out Chanukah candles, they invariably burn down to the base.

The menorahs were quickly recalled.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Those little scented candles with the wick anchored on a metal base turn out to be little bombs if you let them burn down. The metal base heats up enough to ignite the wax directly and it is a bit of bother to extinguish the wax fire once it gets going.

The one time it happened to me, I had a faint memory that throwing water on a wax fire was a very bad idea (steam explosion scattering flaming wax, I think) so I smothered it with a pot. I guess kitty litter would have worked as well.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Ah, a little googling shows that it is even worse than I thought. From wikipedia:

A wax fire is created when melted or boiling wax is doused in water. The following reaction creates a large fireball or enlarges the flame of the already existing fire incredibly. Only a small amount of wax and water is needed to create a wax fire.

I am torn between "Glad I didn't try that," and "Cool. I have to test that under safe conditions some time."

[(Anonymous)]

I have Orka all-silicone mitts. They are very very good. I do have quite large hands (the ring on my ring finger is too big for most folks' thumbs) so you might want to try them out rather than just go with what works for me.