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When you protect your kitchen and bathroom surfaces from heat, you're making an investment in your home. Keeping it nice is just as important as making it nice in the first place. We are heavy users of trivets (also known as hot pads), because heat can be so damaging to your kitchen, tables, and even bathroom counters.
When selecting kitchen trivets, you have a lot of choices. Many of you may have grown up with ceramic or glass trivets, cork trivets, or even steel trivets. These are all very useful, but they have their limitations. Trivets made from silicone have moved in to do the jobs of all of these trivets, and more!
Glass and ceramic trivets can tolerate a lot of heat, but they also get hot themselves. When they're in use for more than a few minutes, they can get nearly as hot as the pot you place on them, especially if it is very hot and large. Steel trivets can also tolerate a lot of heat than silicone, but they also get hot.
How does that happen? The thermal mass of the hot pot will heat the trivet gradually, getting it closer and closer to its own temperature as time goes on. Eventually, the trivet temperature and the pot temperature will "meet in the middle". If you leave that on a counter, you might regret it. Be aware of this any time you use a kitchen trivet made of a material that conducts heat (metals, glass, ceramics)
Silicone trivets can tolerate the same high heat as (and sometimes more than) trivets made of ceramics, and cork trivets.
Hot pads made of silicone stay cool, for the most part. If you leave a hot pot on them for a long time, they'll heat up a little, but never to the point that they can damage anything. Most of the time they'll stay closer to room temperature. Silicone isn't a conductor of heat, making it a perfect material for trivets.
Silicone trivets have another added bonus. They're naturally non-stick. If you splash or spill tomato sauce on a silicone trivet, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how easily it comes off. Even if you leave it on there to get crusty, it will be effortless to remove. The same cannot be said for cork trivets, which will likely be stained by whatever you spill on them. They're porous, so they'll absorb oils and react to acidic liquids.
Steel trivets or glass trivets will only be as washable as the finish on their surface. As you know, some metals are coated with teflon or other non-stick compounds, so those can be easier to clean. But most metal trivets are made of dark metals like cast iron, without any protective coating. The texture of cast iron, as you know, makes it great for seasoning your pans for delicious breakfasts and more, but they require special steps to clean.
If not, you may be wondering why ti would even matter. What can a flexible trivet do that a non-flexible trivet can't? Lots of things!
A flexible silicone trivet can be used as a pot holder, just like a cloth pot holder would be. Hold it like a taco (mmmm, tacos), with the hot pot handle in the crook of the folded trivet. Be careful still, just as you would when using any pot holder, to make sure you have a good grip before you lift the pot. Our silicone trivets are heat-resistant up to 600 degrees, but we only recommend using them this way for pots up to 500 degrees.
This way if you're moving things around while cooking, your kitchen trivet can serve more than one purpose -saving you from having to dig around the back of a drawer for your pot holder. And, unlike a cloth pot holder, the heat will not come through the silicone trivet to punish you for holding the pot too long.
I'm pretty sure we've all uttered those words at least once. Tight jar lids can be a real drag when you're cooking. Spending five minutes trying to pry a lid like it's glued to the jar can really mess up the timing and rhythm of your cooking.
If you have a jar opener handy, you can whip it out and have those picked olives out in no time. But who ever has a jar opener handy? It's probably in the junk drawer somewhere, I'm guessing. Go look for it now, can you find it? I kid, don't go do that.
Instead, use your silicone trivet as a jar opener. There, you don't need to buy an ugly jar opener, because your stylish silicone trivet is always there on the counter, waiting to be the jaws of life for whatever delicious ingredients sit on the other side of that over-tightened lid. Is it just me, or is there always someone in the house trying to prove their strength by locking the artichoke jar down like Fort Knox..?
Use the silicone hot pad just like you would any other jar opener, placing it over the lid and using your hand to grab the lid and twist it. The grippy nature of the silicone trivet should be more than enough to pry loose the stubbornest of stuck lids.
It's ok, so have I. Let's have a moment of silence for all the family heirloom trivets that were displayed and used proudly only to be cracked by heat or impact.
Now that we've had that moment of silence, let's place the surviving breakable heirloom trivets out of harms way. Replace each one with an unbreakable, non-slip silicone trivet. Now pat yourself on the back, because you just avoided a lot of heartache.
Silicone trivets aren't completely indestructible. But, they're about as close to it as you can get with a trivet. Impact-impervious, super heat resistant, and easily washed, a silicone trivet will be the last trivet you ever need to buy (except for another silicone trivet because one is never enough).
Cork trivets wither with age. Iron rusts (and it can even break, too - or break tiles and dent floors when dropped. Ceramic sometimes breaks even if looked at with anything less than admiration. Very delicate stuff. To avoid these types of destruction, you know which type of trivet or hot pad to buy.
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Have you ever panicked, scanning the room for a place to set your hot glue gun, as molten lava glue pours out the front nozzle and drizzles onto things it shouldn’t be on? Your knee...the carpet…the coffee table? I know I have. I've made "accidental wood burning art" in a few tables, even - oops.
Now, whenever I work with the hot glue gun, I
