Do I HAVE to use aluminum foil?

[MrsMike]

I'm being a pest as I asked this question in my post about mushy rice. I just want to make sure it doesn't get missed. I plan on baking rice tonight as per Alton Brown's recipe. It calls for covering the baking dish with aluminum foil. I just realized I don't have any in the house as we rarely use it. Can I get away with not using it? Will it affect my rice?

[mysticmomma]

It will get dry and crust like.

[mysticmomma]

Can you cover it with a baking sheet?

[KatWrangler]

Originally Posted by mysticmomma

It will get dry and crust like.

This! Just like cooking rice on the stove. You have to cover it. Do you have a baking dish with a glass lid you could use?

[tashantx]

Originally Posted by KatWrangler

This! Just like cooking rice on the stove. You have to cover it. Do you have a baking dish with a glass lid you could use?

thats what I do.

[dachshundqueen]

Well, you can always put parchment paper on top.

Liz

[MrsMike]

Nevermind. I realized a friend gave us brownies wrapped in tine foil. So, I ate half the brownies and put the rest in a glass container. So, now I have foil and my rice is in the oven. Wish me luck.

[MrsMike]

And never mind again. My pyrex baking dish just exploded in my oven.

[staceychev]

Originally Posted by MrsMike

Nevermind. I realized a friend gave us brownies wrapped in tine foil. So, I ate half the brownies and put the rest in a glass container. So, now I have foil and my rice is in the oven. Wish me luck.

And you got to have brownies before dinner!

[noobmom]

Originally Posted by MrsMike

And never mind again. My pyrex baking dish just exploded in my oven.

Holy cow! I hope everyone and everything (well, except your dish) is unharmed. I've heard of pyrex dishes exploding. I was thinking of buying more until I read about it.

[MrsMike]

Originally Posted by noobmom

Holy cow! I hope everyone and everything (well, except your dish) is unharmed. I've heard of pyrex dishes exploding. I was thinking of buying more until I read about it.

We're all good! Dh was kind enough to clean it all up for me. The sad thing is that the rice came out perfect - peppered with sards of glass, but fluffy and perfect. Grrr!

[karkli]

Originally Posted by MrsMike

And never mind again. My pyrex baking dish just exploded in my oven.

I had to comment because I had a Pyrex baking dish (the 9 x 13 casserole kind) explode on me last month - spontaneously, on the counter. It was the craziest thing. I've used that dish several times weekly for the past ten years, and then (literally) BOOM!

Since that happened and I've mentioned it to others, you would not believe the number of exploding Pyrex stories I've heard. I just found a replacement Pyrex dish at a yard sale for $0.50...Couldn't pass up the deal. I have to say, though, that I'm more than a little concerned about a repeat of what happened to the first one.

Glad your rice turned out. I hope you can repeat your success using less volatile cookware in the future!

[CookiePie]

I use a corningware casserole that has a glass lid with Alton's recipe. Wow I can't beleive that happened to you!

[karkli]

Okay, by odd coincidence, my mother-in-law forwarded this e-mail to me this evening.

About 5:30 PM there was a loud bang from the oven. Sylvia opened the oven door and the Pyrex dish had shattered into a million pieces. The roast beef (our first in many months) was peppered with small shards of very sharp glass. Normally, I am quick to inform Sylvia she did something stupid. However, this time she was nowhere near the stove when it blew. I shoveled the glass and the now mashed potatoes into a bucket with two putty knives. I then sucked the remains with the shop vac. I let everything cool down and then scrubbed the oven with Simple Green and some hot soapy water. It took over an hour to clean up the goo. Upon completion I ran the oven empty to see if the temperature controller was working OK. I suspected the oven got too hot and the dish simply blew. This was not the case however. The oven came up to temperature and cycled normally. We threw a disgusting frozen pizza in the oven and it cooked OK.



What is going on?



I Googled exploding Pyrex dishes and got ten million hits. Exploding Pyrex is very common.



Here is the story.



A long, long time ago in a country we all know and love was a company named Corning . They made Pyrex dishes. The material they used is called borosilicate glass. This stuff is indestructible. But like everything else, the Bottom Liners had a great idea: sell the technology to another company. The Chinese discovered that using soda lime glass was almost as good as borosilicate glass and a lot cheaper. Today, Wal-Mart is the largest distributor of Pyrex products. Corning not only sold the technology to a company called World Kitchen, they also sold the rights to the original Pyrex logo. Seamless. The consumer will never know.



Now it seems people are getting hurt using soda lime Pyrex. We were lucky because the dish broke while the oven was closed and the damage was limited to the oven cavity. Others have been less fortunate. Some dishes explode when they are lifted from the heating rack in the oven with devastating results. Some people are heavily scarred. World Kitchen is in denial. They say that the dishes are another brand, not theirs. Contrary to their denials the victims usually have more than one of these dishes and the Pyrex logo is clearly visible.


If you buy a Pyrex dish beware. The label on the front says oven safe, freezer safe, microwave safe. The instructions on the back tell another story. You cannot move a soda lime Pyrex dish from the freezer to the oven and expect it to survive. The fine print goes on and on about what you are not allowed to do with the Pyrex dish. The fine print has prevented World Kitchen from being sued because they have warned the consumer that their Pyrex dishes are junk from the get go. And they are the same price as the original Corning dishes. What a bunch of losers we all are for buying this crap.

What to do?

If you own borosilicate Pyrex dishes no fear. They have to be more than

25 years old to be sure they are indeed Corning dishes. I am not sure if the old Pyrex dishes have anything stamped in them that indicates they are made by Corning . You may continue to use the soda lime dishes for holding stuff. Just do not attempt to roast or microwave with them as the hazard is very clear.


The reason the soda lime dishes let go is that over time they develop micro-cracks. Once a few micro-cracks are present and once some liquid finds its way into the cracks you have the bomb situation. The liquid is like shoving a crowbar in the dish and pulling it apart. Super heated liquids expand rapidly and it is the super heated liquids that force the soda lime glass to shatter into tens of thousands of shards.



Since Corning no longer makes Pyrex and Sylvia proudly holds a large collection of the soda lime Pyrex, we decided that one bomb in the kitchen is enough. The Pyrex dishes will go bye-bye in this week's trash. I do not know what we will use for cake and pie dishes going forward. If you have some suggestions we are listening.

I strongly urge you not to use the soda lime Pyrex for the oven, stove top or microwave. The slightest invisible crack is all it takes to have a mess and a possible injury.

As to World Kitchen: avoid them and their cheap dishes. In case you are wondering: World Kitchen is not a USA company.

[Corning still appears to be making some dishes in the USA - Corelle for instance. If anyone has a way to be SURE that their Pyrex is the old stuff made by Corning, please pass that info on to all. I have boiled water in a Pyrex 2 cup pitcher in the microwave, won't be doing that again.]

I usually ignore "FWD:" type e-mails like this, but the subject line "Exploding Pyrex" caught my attention.

I just put an eggplant parm in the oven in my Pyrex pie dish. I checked the bottom and it is marked "Corning". Hopefully that means the chances of explosion are low!

[MrsMike]

Wow! Bye bye Pyrex. Sadly, Anchor is soda lime glass as well. Soda lime glass usually shatters into smaller and more rounded pieces. It's what's used to make safety glass. I had emailed Pyrex and they offered a replacement. I declined.