Sometime last spring I wanted a bagel. I buttered each half, put them under the broiler, and set the timer for three minutes. I have made enough bagels this way that I don’t even watch any more. I don’t watch, and I didn’t leave the oven door cracked.
[Mom-in-my-head interjects:] “Always leave the oven door ajar when you’re broiling, Ellen.”
I relied on the timer, instead, and I came back to a burnt bagel. “Weird,” I said.
[Mom-I-M-H:] “Oh. Weird? Is it?”
I sighed and prepped another bagel, turned on the broiler and —
“Click” said the broiler, and turned off.
I tried two more times and realized the burnt bagel was the result of a manic broiler element that flamed out in its last throes.
”Gary,” I said, “We need to have Sears come out and look at the broiler. It burnt a bagel and then it died on me.”
Gary: “That’s a sign we need a new range.’
“No, we don’t –”
Gary spent two days researching new range technology. And then I was so unenthusiastic about that prospect that he decided to wait for something else to break.
I tried to use the broiler in the microwave/airfryer/convectiontoaster chimera oven but it just did not bubble the milk solids they way I like them.
So, half a year, no buttered broiled bagel, and then last week he called Sears and they came out. I described the situation that precipitated the broiler failure.
He essentially told me you have to leave the door ajar when you broil things. Because — shut up, Mom — BECAUSE otherwise it will overheat. In fact it always overheats, but there’s a shut-off. It clicks, then the element goes from red to black, then it starts up again. And if you leave the door shut sometimes it can’t —
[M.I.M.H.] “I see, so if a MAN explains it to you …”
“No, you never explained it to me, Mom, you just said that’s how I should do it.”
Anyway, I also learned that if you close the door on a steak as it’s broiling you go from broiling a steak to cooking/steaming/broiling a steak, that’s another reason to keep the door open when you are broiling.
The worst part was —
[M.I.M.H.] “The fact that you haven’t had a broiled bagel for months even though the broiler was fine as soon as it cooled off?”
Yes. That was the worst part. But just punishment for defying my mother.
One response to “Mom-in-my-head shares her opinions”
… see, if you are not told *why* to do something, you end up with The Pot Roast Story or worse ( https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thinking-makes-it-so/201402/the-pot-roast-principle ) if you unthinkingly follow instructions. And you can overheat broilers (!!! I didn’t know that either, but I always leave it open to check on things and also so I catch it faster if it’s smoking badly) if you discard instructions without looking up whether there’s a reason for that instruction [i.e. discard all rhubarb leaves, they do in fact have reasonably toxic levels of oxalic acid].
I suspect your mother would enjoy your lesson and Appropriate Punishment thoroughly, however, from the bits I saw of her when browsing through occasional blog archive posts.