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.
