Skillet of Doom
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Food on Monday, May 18, 2009 6:25 PM
On Saturday I made one of my favorite potato indulgences*, which is baked in a skillet with a metal handle.
I use this skillet almost every day. I generally use it on the stove-top. During stove-top use the insulated handle is fine to grab with a bare hand.
But on Saturday I was not using the skillet on the stove. I was using it inside the oven. It baked for an hour. The entire skillet, including the handle, heated to a toasty 350º.
Do you know how long it takes a nice metal handle to cool down from 350º? A nice metal handle that I can usually safely grab with my bare hand?
Can you see where this is going?
Using hot mitts, I carefully pulled the skillet from the oven and set it on a trivet. I made a mental note to remember that the handle was hot, and not to grab it bare-handed like I’m used to doing.
Not five minutes later, Bryan jumped about a foot off the floor when I shrieked because I had - you guessed it - grabbed the hot handle with my bare hand.
As I ran cold water over my burned fingers and tried to think happy thoughts, I reached for a hot mitt and slid it over the handle so that I would remember not to grab it again. It was a brilliant idea.
But I am apparently brilliant-idea-proof! A few minutes later I needed to move the skillet to clear some counter space. I carefully gripped the hot mitt with both hands, moved the skillet, then slid the hot mitt off. I figured I was done moving the pan, and wouldn’t need the mitt to protect me any more.
As I turned away, I burned my arm on the handle.
I stuck my arm under the cold water tap and thought about how this was now reaching ridiculous, comedy-of-errors levels. I mentally cursed the Skillet of Pain. I thought unkind thoughts about pans in general, about ovens, about heat, about whatever ancestor of ours discovered fire all those many years ago.
I was focused the the problem of the hot pan, is what I’m saying.
So you will not be surprised to hear that after I’d sufficiently cooled my arm, I walked over to the stove, realized I needed to move the skillet to a different spot, and…
...grabbed the handle with my bare hand. The same hand I’d burned six minutes earlier.
I thought about crying. I thought about quitting cooking altogether. But ultimately I decided to just laugh and move on. When you’re having a Hot Handle Dumb Day, there’s not really another option.
Do you have a great kitchen-oops story?
*Potato Indulgence recipe: Peel as many potatoes as desired and slice them very thinly (preferably using a food processor or mandoline). Brush the inside of a nonstick oven-proof skillet with melted butter. Layer potatoes in skillet, brushing with small amount of melted butter and sprinkling with salt and pepper after each layer. Bake at 350º for 1 hour.
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