Question about Breaking Bad

[james_davis_nicoll]

What was that transparent frying pan Jesse was using made from?

Comments

[0jack]

I haven't seen the ep you're referencing but we did at one point have glass frying pans when the whole glass pot craze was going on.

[technoknob]

Hey, I'm only just now finishing season one. (Nobody gets shot at Taco Cabeza.) You should use SPOILER SPACES oh wait you don't do those never mind.

Love the tag, though.

[ms-danson.livejournal.com]

Did it look like this?

[emt-hawk.livejournal.com]

I had one of those. Worked OK for cooking stuff in liquids, but I didn't like the way food burned onto it. It wasn't as non-stick as one would think.

--Hawk

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

More or less. Thank you.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Transparent aluminum, eh?

[seawasp]

I can't say for sure for that show, but I have a transparent frying pan made of a variant of Pyrex.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

If it's brown glass with a ribbed base I have one too - part of a range of Pyrex cookware made by Dow Corning.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Forgot to add that the big problem with them, for me, is that they didn't provide a way of hanging them on hooks, which means they use precious shelf space.

[dsrtao]

Not Dow Corning. That's a joint venture, not related to Pyrex.

Corning (formerly Corning Glass Works) made Pyrex for many years, then sold the operation to World Kitchen, who promptly moved the jobs out of the US and dropped the actual borosilicate glass in favor of cheap soda-lime glass, which has significantly inferior resistance to uneven heating, and high temperatures.

My father used to work at CGW, doing quality-control statistics.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Ah! That explains a lot. Corning seems to be self-destructing, if much less explosively than the new temperamental glass.

[dsrtao]

Some of their products are doing well: fiber optic glass, flat-panel TV glass, cellphone glass. Others, not so much.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Corning is actually doing fairly well, last I heard. They sold off the housewares line because it was a low-margin commodity field, to focus on high-tech (and high-margin) stuff like touchscreens, fiber optics, and ceramic filter substrates. They've been an R&D-focused company for decades, but R&D doesn't add a lot of value to pots and plates.

(Disclosure: My father is a recent-retired Corning researcher.)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, that leaves me feeling even more smug that I tend to buy my 'vintage' Corning cookware second-hand these days. Pity about the jobs, though, and the decline of the brand.

[avram]

According to Consumer Reports, you can still get borosilicate Pyrex in Europe under the "Pyrex Classic" brand, for a bit more money.

Also, MetaFilter has a thread on this, complete with a comment from someone claiming to be "the custodian of the world's largest collection of Australian made pyrex". Because I suppose someone has to be.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Good to know, (about the Euro Pyrex) but for me the money quote from the Consumer Reports piece is, "When the oven was turned up to 500 degrees, all three of the European Pyrex dishes broke and two of the three Arcuisine dishes broke. We also tested a decades-old Pyrex dish in like-new condition given to us by a staff member's mother. Made by Corning of borosilicate glass, it didn't break, even at 500 degrees." In other words, vintage Pyrex in good shape is not only cheaper and easier to get than European Pyrex, it's also just plain more resistant to thermal shock breakage. As I've said before, St. Vincent de Paul, for the win.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I still use thick pyrex oven plates my mother bought in a jumble sale in the 1970s - and regularly cook on them at all oven temperatures.

But if you damage one badly it disintegrates into hundreds of tiny sharp shards, which can be a bit startling.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

You're probably right - Corning is the bit I'm sure of.

[andrewducker]

How well does it conduct heat? Does the handle get very hot?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Borosilicate glass, most likely.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Corningware Visions(TM) was a most beta-silica glass ceramic, intended for cooktop use. Could that have been what you saw?

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

That's what I immediately thought of. They looked nicer than they worked, iF I recall correctly.