Depends on the brand/quality of the plastic wrap, IME. Since I was always too cheap for Saran, the only thing I can tell you is that the really cheap versions don't stick to much of anything. (I mostly stick to reusable containers now, but tell myself it's because I'm eco-conscious not just because I'm cheap.)
I remember it always sticking to dishware in my youth and beyond, but it doesn't to the Ikea set I have now. Maybe I should try brand-name.
I'm using the brand name loosely.
In other news, I just started a scary fire where the pan of oil burst into flames. Now the house is filled with a lot of dark smoke.
I thought the general practice was to wrap it around the dish sufficiently such that it doesn't matter whether it sticks or not?
I mean, the fire is out. I transported it to the sink, where it kept burning. Then I turned it upside down and it went out.
There is a newer kind, which sticks to stuff way better. Glad's version is called "Press and Seal" or something like that.
Wikipedia informs me: "Glad Press'n Seal has its surface covered by shaped dimples, which hold the adhesive away from the surface. While being handled, the wrap is unsticky, but when pressure is applied the dimples are flattened and the adhesive pushed against the contacting surface, sticking them together. The adhesive used is a special edible type similar to chewing gum."
Fascinating!
5: Saran wrap would definitely stick to that pan right about now, but I don't recommend trying it out.
Get a commercial-quality brand; Stretch-Tite is widely available.
5: Ooh. I did that recently myself. Sometimes, completely forgetting you've left a pan on the stove is a bad thing. On the other hand, last night I forgot I had left a pot of beans simmering on the stove, but they were simmering low enough that there was still liquid when I remembered them this morning. They are delicious.
Kitchen-fire liveblogging is really above and beyond, Heebie.
My experience is that really cheap brands stick to themselves a lot more - or perhaps, they're just more likely to fold into self-adhering shapes. More expensive brands are easier to get off the roll intact and unstuck, and the right size to attach to whatever the actual target is.
That said, why the preference for foil? This is a non-obvious run-the-numbers situation for environmental impact, but I'm pretty sure that the metal embodies a lot more energy than enough plastic wrap to cover the same area, and I've never been sure if metal foil gets successfully recycled with cans. Plastic wrap certainly doesn't get recycled at all, though.
Foil is more feasibly scavenged out of dumps, though (or it will be when the oceans turn to blood).
My mom forbade Saran Wrap because Dow Chemical manufactured napalm, and James Bond movies because they objectified women. Those were our two very specific post-hippie consumer proscriptions.
On the prescriptive side, we had a compost pile.
That said, why the preference for foil?
Only because it seems to always work when the saran wrap fails. I assume plastic wrap is slightly environmentally friendlier, but who knows.
Why not just make more humans so you won't have all these pesky leftovers?
In the lab we use a substance called "parafilm" which is sort of like Saran Wrap but stretches and can actually seal things. Also it has a retro look, being made by "American National Can" which seems to now be a sub-sub-sub-subdivision of some big company and not make anything but parafilm anymore.
Let's see, yes, a multiple-lifetime supply is available for $25 to the civilian market as well.
Parafilm, or as it was known in my youth, "condom paper".
Huh, I always thought it was called Parrafin. But yeah, that stuff is super fun.
The other awesome thing in chem lab was when you make a glass pipette. You take a glass pipe, and twirl it over the flame until it gets droopy. Then you gently pull it two feet long. Then just break off pieces as you need them. Voila! Capillary pipette!
It was called Paraffin. Glad I wasn't totally making stuff up.
Maybe Paraffin and Parafilm are different things, actually.
Definitely different things. Parafilm, the lab product of stretchy, waxy sheets, as compared to paraffin, the (IME) standard household wax bar product.
25: According to that link, however, parafilm is made out of paraffin.
I have no personal experience with either so I really can't weigh in on the matter beyond that.
5: No one seems as horrified as I am by this. I'm glad that everything worked out, but let's count the ways that carrying a hot heavy container of burning oil and then dumping it into the place where water lives could go worng.
In hindsight I should have put the lid back on. I was really not sure what to do, but scared that it was high enough that it could spread.
I know that you aren't supposed to be water on a grease fire but I never heard anything against putting a grease fire on water.
Water on a grease fire would be more dangerous, but it's the same principle: explosive steam causing hot oil/flames to leap.
I did this in my teens, which is why I was sympathetically horrified. The up side was that the we managed to put the fire out (not ideally - we used flour to smother the flame, though you're supposed to use baking soda as aerated flour can be flamable, then got the lid on) and my mom got to replace the damaged kitchen bits via insurance. The down side was that the fire could easily have spread and we had to live with smoke damage for a considerable time thereafter.
I transported it to the sink on the (weak) premise that there were fewer things overhead to get scorched and catch on fire. Then I got lucky with turning it upside down.
Is a blackened pan totally ruined?
Also there was an old (glass?) cutting board right by the fire. Afterwards I cut a tomato on it, and the tomato absorbed the taste of burnt plastic something. That was gross and I threw it out.
I want a floating grease fire because something similar worked for Cleveland.
When I was six or so, I started a fire by leaving my closet light on, and there was a blanket resting on the naked bulb. That was totally traumatic and I'm skittish about fires. And cars, although nothing ever happened to me about cars. And heights. Especially watching other people near edges. Even with strong barriers between them and the abyss. My stomach just goes nuts.
Is a blackened pan totally ruined?
If it has a non-stick coating, yes.
Nope. Just a plain formerly silver pan.
Another thing I'm scared of: spooky toxins in nonstick coatings.
Should be fine then, if less shiny.
Yeah, but I'm scared of elbow grease.
Chances are I just forgot it in the sink for a week with some soap in it.
32: Your pan's almost certainly done for. Glad nothing was seriously damaged. What were you cooking, anyway? Napalm cutlets? Gelignite au jus?
Hot oil alone... well, I guess it depends on how 'blackened' we're talking here. I once totally annihilated a metal pan by overheating it, but maybe this one will live.
There was some garlic in the oil. There was going to be other stuff in there, eventually. I think I had the heat up too high.
Um, so. Saran Wrap sticks to glass, as long as the glass isn't wet.
Another thing I'm scared of: spooky toxins in nonstick coatings.
I leave my non-stick pans in a sauna from time to time. Draws those toxins right out.
dum-dum-dum
dum-dum-dee-dum
dum-dum-dum
dee-dum
Saran Wrap sticks to construction adhesive.
I think I had the heat up too high.
I'd wait for the lab results before assuming that.
6 is absolutely right. Press and Seal is what Saran Wrap wants to be when it gets its life together.
I've accidentally started at least two fires and that's not counting kitchen fires small enough to go out just by removing the pan from the heat.
I once started a fire with flint and steel, but that was a huge pain in the ass.
I successfully unblackened a pan one time with a cleaning product called Barkeeper's Friend. Scrubbing like the dickens didn't work but this did.
I also endorse Stretch-Tite.
34: I'm mostly not scared of heights, but I do have a horrible gut-mangling hangup about people's necks and especially my own. Your other fears are all incredibly familiar.
59.2 that is the blog's prescribed method.
||Oh my goodness. I hadn't realized until now that the folks who died in that sweat lodge fiasco in Sedona weren't new age hippies, but rather devoté(e)s of The Secret.|>
What is this Secret of which you speak?
At age five I started a fire in the bathroom by lighting toilet paper with a lighter* and putting it in the trash can. My grandma caught me before anything got crazy, but holy shit was that stupid, five-year-old self.
*One of those stick-style lighters, with a trigger like a toy gun; I found it on a high bathroom shelf, as I recall.
The one that lets you not die in a sweat lodge.
(I am at my mom's watching Discovery ID.)
BANG! You got a Mercedes! That's how it works!
This? I had figured it would be ungooglable, but maybe not.
64: Pernicious nonsense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(book)
Basically, take the worst of libertarianism and the worst of hippies and the worst of daytime television.
70: Or that, yeah. Although this iteration of it involves a dude who writes about Harmonic Wealth. BANG! You got a Mercedes!
72: It is! But it's new agey for the purpose of getting lots more money.
How do you make money in a sweat lodge?
65: Note to self: don't leave five-year-old alone with lighter.
32: It sounds like you just accidentally seasoned your pan. Depending on the type of pan that might even be a good thing.
Basically seasoning is applying oil and cooking it until it blackens. It gives the pan what's effectively a safe, durable version of a nonstick surface (as long as you don't scrub too hard with soap), since the scorched oil doesn't react with anything else. I know you're supposed to season woks and cast iron pans. Why not other kinds as well?
Let us know if my hypothesis is correct and the pan is now nonstick.
By being the guy running the sweat lodge and charging 5 grand a day.
This guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Arthur_Ray
From the link in 80:
Print media began reporting that Mr. Ray conducted a conference call with some victims, one of whom recorded the call and provided it to the AP. During this call, a self-described channeler said that they had communicated with the dead and they had said they "were having so much fun" out of their bodies that they didn't want to return.
79: Alternately, locking them in there and stealing their Mercedes.
Speaking of the OP, MIT is on the case of ketchup not coming out of the ketchup bottle.
Pernicious nonsense
Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have 'em too.
Obligatory plug for union-made Reynolds Wrap. (I generally assume that aluminum foil is better for the environment because I reuse pieces, but I don't know where things begin to balance out.)
The $250 poncho seems like maybe leaving money on the table. Should also have a giant foam hand or something to catch people at a lower price point.
85: Just imagine if they had been allowed to drop out of middle school!
There was an America's Text Kitchen article about all the different kinds of plastic wrap and which were best but I'm too lazy to go look through a bunch of magazines for it (a real life search function is needed).
So you get Wikipedia: There are two main kinds of plastic wrap - PVC and LDPE. PVC is better at sticking but water and odors can get through. LDPE is less toxic and less permeable but doesn't stick. They're adding stuff to LDPE in an attempt to make it stickier so apparently we're right at the edge of a huge break-through in plastic wrap!
Oh, look what I found in the Wikipedia reference section http://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment/overview.asp?docid=18682 They recommend different plastics depending on what you want the wrap for.
So, British types, are there UK equivalents of these American high end clingfilm products? Because I really, really hate standard clingfilm, but I'm not spending £13 to import "Press and Seal" via Amazon.
Speaking of the OP, MIT is on the case of ketchup not coming out of the ketchup bottle.
Pah. Come back to me when they've made gaseous ketchup and cooled it until it becomes a superfluid.
I'm not sure the answer to ketchup not coming out of the bottle is ketchup that spontaneously climbs out of the bottle all by itself, Ginger.
It's an answer so awesome that it doesn't even need a question.
What does it stick to? Do you really need to be told?
I'm not spending £13 to import "Press and Seal" via Amazon
Whoa, that's four times the price of a 70 sq. ft. roll from my local Harris Teeter, according to their online shopping tool. Clearly, the next USian to traipse through London should gift each of the meetup attendees with a coveted box of fancy American plastic wrap.
Come back to me when they've made gaseous ketchup and cooled it until it becomes a superfluid.
Wouldn't that be superfluous?
If it were supercooled gaseous honey, it would be mellifluous.
If the supercooling caused the glass bottle to shatter and injure the consumer, it would be sanguifluous.
I'm glad you didn't set yourself on fire, Heebie.
At age five I started a fire in the bathroom
I was about seven or so when I burned down a barn.
Saran wrap (the actual brand) works a hell of a lot better than the plastic wraps sold in those parts of Europe that I'm familiar with. It sticks to itself, the others don't.
British clingfilm definitely sticks to itself. Not much else, except randomly when it does.
Even though my plastic wrap (which on inspection is Glad) doesn't stick to my dishware, I usually make do by slightly folding it in on itself so that the self-sticking keeps it wrapped around the plate or bowl.
They don"t still do 'Man from Glad' commercials, do they?
Costco's Kirkland brand is industrial strength. It's better than brand-name Saran Wrap or Glad.