I bought these to place on my new induction cooktop under the pot or pan. This prevents scratching from bare cast iron bottoms, and catches spills and splatter. This is possible with an induction cooktop because the heat is generated in the pot rather than in the cooktop under the pot. With a pot of boiling water or chili the pot and hence the silicon mat and cooktop never get hotter than 212 F. This is not possible with a normal glass/ceramic cooktop that uses radiant heat. Before buying these mats I tried parchment and while it worked it scorched when I used it under a frying pan. I also tried some other silicon mats that I had but they were not rated to as high a temperature and they distorted temporarily from the uneven heating cause by the cookware.
My one concern was frying because the smoke point for ghee and avocado oil is above the 480 F rating for these mats. Some care is required to avoid preheating a frying pan excessively, but once I have food in the pan it is usually below 480 F. I plan to simply not use the mat if I intend to use an extremely hot pan.
The mats are thin and reinforced with what appears to be fibreglass cloth. The cloth is sealed in by the red edge so the ends of the strands are not visible.
Under a hot frying pan these do not emit any odour. They wipe clean. They have a slightly sticky rubber feel which I like because the pots don't slide like they do on the ceramic cooktop surface. Unlike some other silicone mats that I tried, these ones don't distort or change shape when heated. From the many silicone mat offerings, I chose these because the set of 3 would cover my 4 cooktop elements and they got good reviews. I would buy again.
Three months later: Still happy with these but am writing to report what happens if they are overheated (abused). I was frying corn tortillas in a cast iron pan at high temperature. Temperature was high and the seasoning oil on the casr iron smoked until it was gone. The cast iron pan was well above 500 F for more than half an hour. When done, the mat was discoloured where the pan touched it. After the mat cooled I tried washing away the discolouration and found that the discoloured silicone rubbed off the mat exposing the fibreglass. I am not unhappy about this. Over the months I have used these under my cookware for all of my cooking, including a lot of frying. This is unusual cooking that most people don't do very often, and I was exploring to find the limits of the mat's heat resistance.
Based on the experience described in the previous paragraph, I have found that these mats are excellent between an induction cooktop and cookware if the cookware contains food containing water or oil (e.g. soup, spaghetti sauce, stir fry, frying meat). In future I will avoid using these mats under cookware if I am dry heating (no oil) cookware to cook things like tortillas or roti (flat breads) where the pan gets well above the smoke point of any cooking oil, or if I am going to greatly preheat a dry pan as I might do with cast iron for searing a steak. As long as there is oil in the cookware and food is added to reduce the temperature when the oil starts to smoke, these mats work well. Most oils smoke at or below the mat rating of 480 F and the few that are higher (e.g. ghee, avocado) have not been a problem because these higher temperature excursions are brief -the cookware heats up quickly, oil smokes, then cools quickly when food is added.
2022 (3 years later): Time to replace these. In all cases I allowed a pot or pan to get too hot, resulting in the silicone turning brown and lifting off of the mat, exposing the woven fibreglass reinforcement and allowing liquids to run through the mat to the underside. Lesson learned: Probably should avoid frying with one of these between the pan and the induction cooktop. The peak temperature of the bottom of a pan or pot can exceed 480 F when frying when I go for a sear, want to produce fond, or want to pan roast vegetables. I did some experiments with an IR temperature gun (thermometer) on black cast iron and can see that the temperature can be very uneven with a very high peak in some places. The temperature varies a lot with the choice of pot/pan and which induction element.
These stood up well for the first 2 years of everyday use and I think they deserve a good rating. I also used them for baking sometimes. After about 2 years they lost the slightly sticky feel so they slide around on the glass cooktop like a plastic bag would. I liked the slightly sticky feel because it kept my pots from sliding around so they stayed centered on the induction element. When I say sticky, the mats don't cause food to stick and they wipe clean easily, but if you slide your hand or a pot across them, there is a slight stick.
As the mats accumulate more damage, there is a risk of them shedding glass fibres from the fibreglass reinforcing weave inside the mat as it becomes exposed. For that reason I stopped using them for baking, but I never noticed any fibres. The silicone that comes off from overheating is a silicone plastic. So far, I have not seen any health warnings about silicone, but I expect that one day we will see warnings about it. Twenty years ago we didn't see any health warnings about plastic. Silicone is a rubber in which the main carbon atoms are replaced by silicon atoms and with less need for added chemicals to make it soft and flexible. Since the overheated silicone came off in sheets somewhat like excess silicone rubber caulking can lift off I just discarded it and didn't have much concern about adverse health effects.
| Brand | PrettyCare |
|---|---|
| Model Number | 2HPD |
| Colour | Red 2pack |
| Product Dimensions | 42 x 30 x 0.25 cm; 260 g |
| Material | Silicone |
| Item Weight | 260 g |
