Food packaging question wrought by "duh" error...

Cafe Society
1

So I wanted to use my George Foreman grill to make a burger. I put in one of those prefrozen patties (yeah, yeah, I know, but it was late, and I didn’t want to go through the hassle) and slapped down the lid. When the six minutes was up, I opened it… And saw that I’d left a piece of the separator paper (the paper they put between the patties to keep them from freezing together) on the patty! It was melted in a little shell under the burger.

I threw it out and made another, partly because the paper kept it from cooking as much as it usually would. But it did make me wonder: why did the paper not burn (as much as I’m grateful that it didn’t)? Mere contact with the frozen patty? But why didn’t it burn later?

And I don’t think it left any residue on the grill or on the second burger (though I didn’t wipe it down in between), so unless I’m mistaken on that point, it’s not wax, is it?

2

This is just a guess, but the grill probably wasn’t hot enough to burn it. Paper ignites at around 451 degrees. You grill probably runs somewhere between 350 to 400 degrees. (I’m basing that on oven temperatures used to cook meat.)

3

whap forehead

Fahrenheit 451! Duh!

So does that paper come coated with anything, generally? Or does it not need it?

4

It’d wager that the surface of that grill gets hotter than 350 degrees, but the bigger point is that those aren’t just pieces of paper. They are either polyethylene sheets, silicone impregnated parchment paper or waxed paper. All of which are more flame resistant than plain old paper. If it melted and changed shape it’s almost certainly not a paper product and was probably polyethylene plastic.