So, the other day, I set the oven on fire

comments 6
Life

Fire. Hot, dangerous fire. Here’s what happened.

I was craving bacon. Not just any old bacon. I was craving some pancetta. Grilled to crispy perfection. Getting a little hungry just thinking about it.

Anyway. I did my usual. Got a couple of strips of pancetta out of the fridge, slapped them on a foil covered tray and put it in the oven for a couple of minutes.

Now, let me tell you this. I’ve done this before. I know how to put bacon in the oven and just let it grill until it gets nice and crispy. I’m no fool!

Though clearly I was. I slipped away to the sofa for a couple of minutes. Smelt something ‘odd’. That odd thing was the oven on fire. The pancetta had got so crispy it just set on fire. VOOMPH! FIRE! All I cared about was not setting the bloody smoke alarm off.

After I shut doors and opened windows I did the stupid thing of opening the oven and putting it in the sink. I should have just switched the oven off and left the stuff in there.

This has never happened to me before! So I put it down to the amount of fat in the pancetta from Waitrose. I will stick to my Tesco pancetta from now on. Less risk of fire in the oven.

6 Comments

    • Flame grilled would have been great. Sadly, the flame killed the pancetta. Dead. It was just pools of fat.

      Funny that that didn’t put me off from doing a take 2.

  1. Damn bacon! I did that once at Uni, it’s always bacon that sets the oven on fire!

    I hadn’t even left it unattended, it just spat up at the element and WOOSH, flames. I used to cook at 3am so that nobody was in the kitchen with me and I could just get on with it- thank goodness that day I had decided to cook in the early evening and the kitchen was full of people!

    Chrissy managed to stop me from putting the grill pan under the tap (fat fire + water = bad – a fact I have known for years but yet in the heat of the moment my brain went FIRE! FIRE! WATER FIXES FIRE!”) and Colin shut the kitchen door while we opened all of the windows. Since we were in Halls if the smoke had reached the alarm and the fire brigade had come out, we would have had to pay their call out fee! We know this is true because the flat next door had to pay when they got called out because somebody’s shower-steam activated the smoke alarm.

    • You know, almost did that – put water on the burning tray of fat I was putting in the sink. Instead, I managed to damp a tea towel and put it over it. But still, FIRE FIRE FIRE does make me think WATER WATER WATER too!

      That’s what must have happened.. I thought I put my bacon far enough away from the element. Clearly, not.

      I hope we both have less bacon fires in our future.

  2. So those were really well done! My toaster almost caught fire yesterday. Hadn’t used it in ages and as I was sick at home I wanted to have some simple toast. Turned the thing on and after a little crackle sound smoke started appearing out of the thing. Immediately unplugged it and the smoke stopped, so I’ll be throwing the thing away to get a new one. Fortunately never had something like this happen in the oven!

    • So well done, you couldn’t even recognise what the mess was on the tray!

      You gotta love mild panics in the kitchen which involve fire, or even the thought of fire. The kitchen’s gotta be the most hazardous room in the house.

      I think I just stated the obvious up there…

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