Most plates are glass that I have seen for serving food
They break when dropped, they chip. Getting them too hot and crack them.
I suppose their advantage is that they keep the food hot a little easier than other materials but a suppose a similar thing could be done with plastic plates
Or is it just tradition and the some of the glass plates can have really funky designs and some of the them date back to the 19 th century so there is a history there
Or am I just whining?
I won’t eat off plastic. Don’t like taste, texture, possibility I’m ingesting plastic. You seem to have described ceramic plates as well.
Sorry, yes I am thinking of ceramic plates not glass. They just seem like glass when handling them
I am just bitching but I think there could be something better but I don’t know what. (no not paper plates)
Part of the reason we have ceramic plates is that plates have been around for thousands of years as an idea, before the comparatively recent development of plastic.
Plastic plates are horrible - not especially hard wearing, susceptible to staining and tainting - and they will melt or warp if they are heated. Glazed ceramic plates can last a lifetime - you only have to be a little bit careful.
Plus, plastic plates are tacky.
Try Corningware or Corelle. While technically all of the things you mentioned can happen, in practice, you can drop a Corningware plate and it usually won’t break, they never seem to chip, they look nice, are lightweight, etc. They can be used in ovens, but not directly on a stovetop surface or open flame.
Also, they are far more cleanable than plastic or paper plates - the hard, impermeable surface won’t stain or pick up residue from previous meals, and they can be cleaned in a dishwasher for decades. (they last pretty much until you exceed their drop limit. They are several layers of special glass, and its similar to tempered glass in that they are indestructible until some hidden limit is reached, and then they explode into many pieces fairly dramatically)
You can find this stuff at Walmart, it’s readily available.
Actually we have both ceramic and plastic plates. The ceramic ones are at least 40 years old. My wife wishes they would break so we’d be forced to get new ones.
If not plastic, what? Metal? I ate off metal mess kits in Boy Scouts and I don’t recommend it.
Enamelled metal isn’t unpleasant to eat off (although I suppose technically, you’re still eating off glass in this case) - although food will go cold quicker.
Plastic plates are acceptable for camping and picnics, I guess.
The biggest advantage I can think of to using porcelain or stoneware or such: Knives and other utensils usually won’t scratch them, so sanitation is easier. Plastic certainly doesn’t stand up well to metal utensils, and even other metals suitable for service will get marred by a stainless steel or carbon steel knife. (And, considering how long porcelain and pottery can last, it’s not really as fragile as all that. Sure, my everyday dishes having some dings, but I also own china pieces that are a couple of centuries old, and flawless.)
The last plate I broke was a plastic plate…which I hit lightly against my leg while walking to the kitchen to put it in the sink.
One of the ceramic ones has a crack that I’m expecting will turn into a break any time now (I think a manufacturing flaw), and has survived worse than that. (Hell, I’ve deliberately tried to break that one, just to justify tossing it.)
“No, Cindy, these aren’t my good China, they’re Chinete !”
Chili, curry, spaghetti sauce! They all stain plastic ware. And it scratches, which only makes the staining worse!
Plastic ware should be saved for children and campers, in my opinion.
I have Corelle plates and they are great. There’s a reason why they have been around so long. They almost never break.
The ceramic plates that I have seen and used must be fairly inexpensive to easily break or chip
Thanks for your responses on that.
Hear him, hear him!
ssgenius, what material would you suggest instead? Food plates – if the’re not going to be considered disposable – have to withstand cleaning with hot soapy water, unless you prefer to sterilize in an autoclave, in which case you’re talking about REALLY high temps. I’m unaware of other cleaning methods that would remove saliva-borne germs off the plate.
Wood is porous and difficult to machine-wash; ditto bamboo. Metal can impart unpleasant off flavors and/or make horrible sounds when scritched by a fork in normal use. What else, really, is there to use?
Yes. There’s a kind that’s basically baked clay or something with a coating. It’s heavy, the coating has lead in it if it’s old, and it chips very easily. And, there’s another kind made of transparent, tempered glass.
Corelle/Corningwear is a high tech, literally atomic age material that is enormously better.
I don’t have a suggestion. That is why I was asking
My impression was based on the older plates that I have which are NOT Corningwear and probably the older design of plates (they are 20+ years old)
I think that the Ceramic corningwear is the answer I was looking for.
Thanks
I’m not opposed to some kind of plastic plates. We have a pretty sturdy set we keep in the garage for BBQs and outdoor parties and they’ve held up well. (On the other hand, they only get used a dozen times a year).
However, good quality ceramic plates should stand up to abuse pretty well. I inherited a set of dishes from my mother. She used it for 15 years and I’ve used it for another 20. In 35 years of daily use, we have broken only about half of the dishes in the set, and many of those years had children involved. That’s a pretty solid performance. Plastic dishes are going to get marked up by knives, discolored, etc. much faster than that.
I thought this would be about pressed glass plates, which can break fairly easily and probably wouldn’t work so well for everyday use. I inherited a small set from my grandfather (Apparently they were quite the luxury once.) and unfortunately one has shattered during handling. On the other hand, vintage glass plates do look really nice for special occasions: http://www.reminis.co.uk/user/products/large/Vintage-Style-Plates-Glass-S.jpg
