Kitchen discovery of the day

[Cookie]

Grits are flammable. I never would have guessed. It's not really easy to put them out, either, once they ignite.

[Treasure]

interesting - but did putting a lid on the pan and letting it smother not work?

[Cookie]

It was directly on the eye. This was dry grits and I spilled some. I tried to smother it unsuccessfully because there are so many air channels around the eye. I just had to let them burn out. Didn't end up hurting anything.

[thansal]

How?


I mean....

There isn't any booze (and if there is, I want your recipe).

And the flash point of butter is around 600 degrees (iirc).


With the viscosity of grits, would this have made some decent Napalm?



Ninja Edit: And now it all makes sense.

[Dreamstalker]

I set a slice of pizza on fire last night *_*

First time that's ever happened...I hear sizzling, open the toaster oven to take it out and see little flames and a few flaming drops falling through the grate O_o

Turns out the topping had an excessive amount of olive oil.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Never had that happen, but I guess it makes sense. Grits are corn, and corn is basically grass with a very high sugar content. Dry it and make it tiny, I reckon it would make excellent kindling.

[Parrothead]

If you are hard-boiling eggs, and you forget, and the water boils away, eggs will explode.



And smell bad.

[Cookie]

Dreamstalker, I've done that with a piece of bread I was toasting in the oven and forgot about. the whole slice was in flames.

RK, that definitely makes sense. I've had flour burst into flames the same way. I guess grits shouldn't have surprised me. With flour, it's a short little burst and then it's gone. Grits are larger pieces, though, so it burns a bit longer.

Parrothead...whoa. Haven't done that one, but I can imagine how bad that would smell.

[hinakiba777]

The first time I cooked with my new casserole dish I was making lasagna, and it needed to be covered. Since the dish came with a cover, I thought I would just use that instead of wasting foil.

Apparently, the cover was made of very hard plastic, and not glass as i had first thought. So my oven got a lot of burnt plastic in it. Oddly enough, none of the plastic got on the food. The plastic kind of bubbled out instead of caving in as it melted.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Oh, flour is CRAZY flamable. You can trun a cloud of airborne flour into an exploding fireball!

[Antisocial_Worker]

I managed to set soup on fire once.

I was making my specialty -- "snot stew" -- which is where you add flour to the canned chicken noodle soup until you have a viscous glop that won't come out even should you turn the pot upside down. The downside to this is that you can't let it simmer. Do that and the bottom burns, and you can't tell because everything looks hunky-dory up top, and when you eventually go to check on it because it seems awfully quiet there in the kitchen... when you stir it and air hits the bottom -- *foom*. Once it settled down, I ended up setting it out for the cats. Once it cooled, they loved it.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

Flour can explode from pressure. It's happened before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_explosion
this thread is awesome. I love it...
the only thing I've really done in the kitchen is the time the oven set itself on fire and when I put garlic bread under the broiler and forgot (for like 4 minutes) and was forcibly reminded by the billowing smoke. We had to just chuck the flaming pan out in the front yard like a frisbee.
EDIT: I've only set stuff on fire aside from those 2 on purpose. If you're out of matches, you can use spaghetti noodles-- hold one up against a burner on high until it lights, then use.

[Cookie]

Ooooh! A spaghetti noodle would make a nice, long match, too! Thanks for the tip!

[KiaKat]

We used to use dry spaghetti noodles to light the candles when I was bartending. It was easier than trying to either use one match for 40 candles, or light the candles off each other. A few dry strands of pasketti would keep burning long enough to light all of them.

[Dreamstalker]

Powdered creamer also makes a nice fireball, so I've been told by Mythbusters.