Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I really enjoyed this section in the older issues of CI and hope to resurrect it here. What follows is one of my rejections which still saves my ass occasionally.

Too recently over the past year have I blundered into the smug self-assurance trap and multi-tasked too many pots & pans over the flames. As butter is my friend and high heat one of my short cuts to getting things moving along on the range, I have too often discovered the intricacies of black butter & brown smoke. Whence practicing the black arts once again, I noticed the familiar golden liquid turning past its intended hue. I hurriedly grabbed a conveniently located, very wet dish rag. I threw the rag on the counter in a glopping mess and quickly slammed the offending skillet on top of it. The resultant steam and immediate subsidence of the yellowy froth instantly achieved my hopes. The butter was saved; the dish could go on!

In essence, the very wet rag acts as a heat sink. As it cannot go beyond boiling due to its wetness, it will not burn the rag and the resultant steam is not high enough to ruin the counter top. The pan cools very quickly, especially if you are using thin walled cookware. Obviously, cast iron is going to take longer. In the time that it takes for the pan and the rag to meet in the middle, you will have had time to soak another rag and move the pan to it to continue the rescue efforts. It is certainly worth a try, costs nothing, and if it fails, you are no worse off.

I see that you are all flocking to this discussion so I will be kind and add one more.

When using a spatter screen I still find the amount of fine grease splatter too much. I now place a damp paper towel on top of the splatter screen, being sure that it is 25% smaller than the total area. This works really well. It is quite simple and cheap to change towels when cooking for a longer period. I believe if you cover the entire screen you run the danger of steaming the food. Of course, this towel can be used in the initial clean-up when cooking is complete.

I like your splatter screen tip, and the wet rag tip is interesting.

We often use two spatter screens stacked up to beef it up, or even a piece of foil lightly tented over the screen.

eb

I made a huge pot of spaghetti sauce yesterday. Used your trick with the spatter guard and it worked perfect! Not a single splash.
Fitzie

Wino,

I'd recommend against doing the wet rag trick with cast iron, and especially not with ceramic or glass. Those all can crack with thermal shock.

As a less pan-threatening way of doing the cool-off, I have a large block of granite next to my stove. While it doesn't cool things as fast as a wet rag does, it is usually effective enough to prevent burning.

Love the splatter guard trick as I hate splatter. I would be careful with the wet rag as I think an extreme temp change can separate the layers or metal in your pan. I know some I got said not to put into cold water when hot for that reason.

Mary

I do appreciate your cautions but when your back is up against the wall and seconds count, it works. Since I seem to be a blockhead about this, and too cheap to buy a granite block to signify that I am a blockhead that can't keep track of 'what's cooking', I gotta go with what is handy. This is one of those situations akin to rebuking yourself for not draining the swamp earlier while the alligators are closing in you.

Considering how many heat sinks I have sitting around here, I wonder if I couldn't epoxy a bunch of them together into the über-trivet for just that sort of emergency.

Wino,

Thanks for starting this thread! My wife was just going over some back issues of CC (prior to recycling them) and noticed that the same tip got posted 3 times during the first year of CC, under different names.

So, my tip of the day is:

Use Two Spatulas

Quite a few frying, saute, and griddle tasks require quite a bit of dexterity to master with one spatula (turner-style): rolling omlettes, flipping pieces of small delicate fish, flipping anything frying in deep oil without splashing, breaking up hashed browns, etc. This is even worse in a large nonstick pan or griddle which provides no resistance.

If you use two spatulas, though, it becomes almost like being able to grab the food with your hands; you can flip, roll, and turn things, either by sandwiching them between the two spatulas, or by using one as turner and one as backstop. You could also use tongs for some tasks, but this doesn't really work for delicate things, or items which you need to to loosen from the pan.

Fuzzy, what a good idea. I'm always trying to give things a flip and slap and hope for the best. It's so obvious. Hopefully, I would have figured it out sooner or later.