Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Pyrex and why I wish I had taken Physics in school.

On Sunday I learned a very important lesson in my kitchen through one of the worst cooking disasters in my kitchen's history.  It made me wish I had opted to take Physics in school.  Maybe I'll go back and take a class one of these days, not only to learn the mechanics of tassel twirling, but to learn how and why a Pyrex casserole dish explodes in your oven.

In my travels this past year, I spent a month in London.  While I was there, some of my favorite moments were spent over Sunday Roast.  Their tradition for Sunday Roast made me so happy.  It's pretty much the same thing as our Weekend Brunch, but I've never really been a big fan of breakfast food (there's really only so many times you can have eggs benedict)  But the Roast is a completely different story! And a leg of lamb is way more delicious to me than stupid eggs. Since I've been home from London, I've cooked Sunday Roast many times for The Husband.  This weekends roast will go down in history.

I set out on Sunday afternoon, a little late, and hoped to catch the last hour of the farmers market.  My plan was to buy whatever cut of meat was left and a bunch of root veggies, head home and turn on the oven.  I left too late however, and missed the market all together.  Feeling adventurous The Husband and I decided we would see what Fairway in Red Hook was like.  I had heard that they carried a lot of local food, and they might, but it is HUGE.  Way too big for me, and the exact opposite of any store I would willingly go into.  We were so overwhelmed that we ran, screaming, "How the fuck do we get out of here!!???"  Big box stores are SO not my thing.  Maybe if it was open 24 hours, I could go at 3am and enjoy it when there's no one in there.  Probably not...over-abundant supermarkets make me a little nauseous.

After that defeat we decided to go to a new butcher shop.  Closed.  Fuck it, we are going to our butcher. We went to our butcher shop, got a beautiful leg of lamb, and I jumped for joy! I even bought a few beef bones for future stock!

We headed home, and I started the roast, rubbed the leg with honey, garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper.  Put it in a Pyrex pan, and popped it in the oven for what was to be an hour and half.  At an hour and 20 minutes into the roast I added a little stock (which was cold) to the pan to add a little moisture to the bottom of the pan, and as I was adding it, the pyrex pan EXPLODED! And I mean EXPLODED! Smoke started billowing out of the oven, The Husband grabbed the fire extinguisher, I screamed, turned off the oven as fast as possible, opened the windows, closed all the doors to the kitchen and placed towels at the bottom of the doors.  There was glass EVERYWHERE.  I'm lucky that I didn't get hit with it. We did not end up needing the fire extinguisher because The Husband and I jumped into action!  The next half hour was spent fanning the smoke out the window, the kitchen was FILLED with smoke.  The smoke faded, as we rescued the lamb from the rubble.  Cut off the pieces that might have touched glass, and crunched the oven closed to worry about in the morning.

It was a disaster, but somehow the roast came out delicious, and perfectly cooked but it still felt like a defeat. I learned an important lesson...do not add cold liquid to pyrex that is already hot in the oven.  In fact, I am going one step farther.  I will never roast in pyrex, only cast iron, or metal.  I recommend that you do the same.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Peekaboo!

    Just in case you didn't hear Consumer Reports has a report about the problem with the Pyrex dish.

    http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/january/home-garden/glass-cookware/glass-cookware/index.htm

    Dizzy

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