Don't Try the Toaster Trick

[MaggieTheCat]

I heard that some Yank ovens don't have grills, integrated or otherwise, in their ovens...is this true?

Most ovens have what's called a "broiler" which is kind of like an upside-down grill (that's how I've heard it described anyway.) It's a metal coil that runs along the top of the oven and gets about as hot as a grill. We don't have an actual grill, but I can do things like bratwursts, grilled veggies, steak, etc. under the broiler instead.

Otherwise, I've never heard of an actual grill inside an oven before.

[SongsOfDragons]

Most ovens have what's called a "broiler" which is kind of like an upside-down grill (that's how I've heard it described anyway.) It's a metal coil that runs along the top of the oven and gets about as hot as a grill. We don't have an actual grill, but I can do things like bratwursts, grilled veggies, steak, etc. under the broiler instead.

Otherwise, I've never heard of an actual grill inside an oven before.

Aye, that's what I'm referring to. I've not heard them being called 'broilers' over here...

A grill to me is the element over the food; the heat being underneath is either a barbeque or a griddle pan, or else it goes into George or frying pan territory...

http://www.electrolux.co.uk/Products...vens/EOB63100X This is the newer version of the oven in our flat. It calls them grills too...

[ArcticChicken]

the heat being underneath is either a barbeque or a griddle pan

In my neck of the woods, at least, a grill is what you cook barbeque ON.

[lupo pazzesco]

just for Seraph.

PRESENT!!!

[Seraph]

D: they failed harder than me!!!!

[MaggieTheCat]

In the U.S., a "grill" is a piece of cooking equipment that is usually used outside and often in the summertime (to avoid heating the house during the warmer months.) Here's just an example of what one might look like: http://www.weber.com/explore/grills/...ouch-gold-26-1

They're powered either by gas (propane) or charcoal and are often used to cook steak, chicken, bratwursts/sausages, kebabs, etc.

The word "barbeque" has a couple of different meanings. Usually in the north, to have a barbeque is to cook outside on a grill; my family in Wisconsin often "barbeques steaks on the grill" in the summer. However, in the south (Texas, where I live now), "barbeque" is a very different method of cooking than what's considered "barbeque" in the north. Barbeque in the south involves cooking meat a very long time over a very low heat, sometimes on a grill, or else in a barbeque pit, which is usually like a big outdoor oven heated with wood. It be done in a home oven as well but usually grills are preferred for home barbeques. Barbequed meat in the south almost always has some kind of dry rub on it to give it flavor and is sometimes served with barbeque (BBQ) sauce, which also varies from region to region, but is usually tomato-based with some amount of vinegar and spices. Texas BBQ sauce is chili-based and spicy, whereas Louisiana BBQ sauce is vinegar-based.

In a home oven, the "broiler" is the top cooking coil whereas the bottom coil is...well, I have always just heard it called a "heating element." Usually when the oven is on, both coils are on to distribute heat evenly, but if you want to broil something, there's usually a special setting that allows you to turn just the top element (the broiler) on, which will make the top part of the oven very hot but leave the bottom heating element off. This mimics a standard U.S. grill, except it's inverted; in a grill, the heat comes from the bottom of the appliance, whereas with a broiler, the heat comes from the top of the oven.

[lupo pazzesco]

D: they failed harder than me!!!!

I know.

It was to cheer you up!! ^.^

[dalesys]

D: they failed harder than me!!!!

Lowering the limbo bar just for you, dear.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

The house I grew up in had a double oven and one of them had a rotisserie in it. I don't remember my mom ever using it...maybe once or twice in my lifetime

[Seraph]

Lowering the limbo bar just for you, dear.

Le cry, LMAO.

Guess I'll just have to tunnel under it next time.

[Food Lady]

I've set a toaster oven on fire, and almost the wood cabinets above it. If you're going to melt candles, you need to watch them.

[Kogarashi]

I have yet to set a toaster on fire, but I have set fire to three different ovens (well, two ovens and a stovetop), and half-killed my parents' microwave once. I'm sure I've related these stories here before, but I don't feel like digging for the posts.

Oven the first: when I was in middle school, my next-youngest sister and I decided to make sheet cookies (where you dump the whole bowl of cookie dough onto a cookie sheet and bake it as one large cookie, then cut it into bars), mostly because we were too lazy to scoop individual cookies. Problem: the only clean cookie sheet in the house was our mom's air-bake pan, which has only one raised edge. On the plus side, when the cookie dough dripped to the bottom of the oven and caught fire, we got to figure out how to use the fire extinguisher. Very educational.

The stovetop: when I was still living in a singles apartment, but dating Hubby, he was over at my place helping to make dinner. He cooked potatoes on the stove, which was a gas stove, and some of the potato water boiled over. He took off the pot and shut off the stove, or so I thought. Apparently it was left on just enough that there was no visible flame, but as soon as I started wiping up the potato water with a paper towel, the paper towel burst into flame as the burner relit. Oops. I think that one we just turned off the burner properly and waited for the paper towel to burn itself out.

Oven the second: Hubby and I had just moved to CT. We were making a Chinese chicken salad recipe we liked, which included a step where you broil dry ramen noodles before crumbling them over the salad. We were used to the gas oven in our previous apartment (not the one with the potato water), where it took forever for the ramen noodles to broil properly. So we put the noodles in the electric oven on the broil setting, and work on other steps for the salad. Not two minutes later, we both notice smoke coming out of the oven around the door. Did you know ramen burns blue? That's when we discovered that the electric broiler was a lot more powerful than the gas one we had.

As for the microwave...that was a hard lesson in making sure to read the reheat instructions on deli potato wedges carefully. I had some leftover from lunch at work, and the bag said you could reheat the potatoes right in the bag. I read the time, thought, "Gee, that sounds a little long. Oh well, they must know what they're talking about," and put the bag in the microwave. For seven minutes. I was standing in the door between the kitchen and living room, watching TV while waiting for my potatoes to finish reheating, when I heard a loud FOOM behind me. Smoke was coming out of the microwave, and when I opened the door I saw that the bag was on fire. I tried the fire extinguisher, but it had run out sometime after the cookie incident, so I just shut the microwave door and waited for the bag to burn itself out. The potatoes were ruined, of course, and the microwave's digital display had a dim spot in the middle. I double-checked on the next bag I got from the deli, and realized I'd read the conventional oven instructions by accident. Microwave instructions said to cook for thirty seconds.

[fireheart]

My boyfriend set fire to a spider once. And for the record, it was slightly deliberate.

Before I met him, they lived in this house in a town not that far from where they live now. They only had floorboards, rather than carpeting everywhere (their current house also has floorboards, but boyfriend went with a rug for his room). One particular day, my boyfriend was with his friends, when he spotted a spider crawling on the floor. So he grabbed what he THOUGHT was fly spray, only to turn out that it was surface spray (i.e. cleaning stuff, not fly spray). So while the spider was suffocating, it wasn't actually dead.

Boyfriend then gets the bright idea to set it alight. So he did. From memory, it was more like a small "poof" if anything. Now it's a story that's recounted frequently.

(he's a little bit of a pyromaniac...not going around lighting things, but whenever a fire is needed, he's usually in charge)

[Mishi]

When I was around 8, I made dinner for the first time. The carrots weren't quite cooked enough, so I shoved the whole saucepan into our large microwave. It was going rather well too until the handle scraped the wall and started throwing sparks everywhere. I stopped the microwave and took the carrots out, my mother freaked out about the broken microwave, but luckily Dad was able to fix it.

My little sister tried to boil an egg when she was about 8-9, I was doing my homework and told her to wait just a few minutes. She didn't want to, got everything ready and turned on the gas so that I could ignite it when I was done. I got there just before my little brother hit the igniter and we had a long talk about kitchen safety after that.

[MaggieTheCat]

I set fire to my oven just a couple weeks ago. It was a very small fire and there was no damage, thankfully. What we think happened was, a few days before this incident, I had made some beer bread and drizzled melted butter on top of the batter before baking it, and some of the butter overflowed and dripped down onto the bottom of the oven and solidified once the oven was turned off. Then when I used the oven again a couple days later, the little puddle of solidified-melted-butter caught on fire. X.x We turned the oven off, let it burn itself out (only took a minute or so) then cleaned out the oven really well once it was cool.

I think something sorta similar happened last year when I baked corn on the cob in the oven and some of the silk fell down on top of the bottom coil in the oven...but it didn't actually flame up, just got kinda smokey.