Hi All,
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----- Original Message -----
Pyrex dishes: I HOPE EVERYONE TAKES THE TIME TO READ THIS MESSAGE.
Got any new Pyrex dishes in your cooking utensils? This is a must read.
I Checked at Walmart and all the warnings are there.
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 okay. 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 okay.
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,
Walmart 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 P 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, stovetop
or microwave. The slightest invisible crack is all it takes to have a mess and
a possible injury.
In case you are wondering: World Kitchen is not a USA company.
I went to Snopes & checked this out. Be careful when using Pyrex. --
http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/pyrex.asp
You can also click on the above Snopes address for the same verification.
Peter
