After a evening spent alternately deep-frying pork and setting off smoke alarms, I was a little more careful the next evening, when I went to use up the leftover rice.

I’m happy to report that I turned four cups of cold, steamed rice into a frypan full of yummy goodness – BBQ pork fried rice with green onions and egg – without setting anything on fire or setting off the smoke alarms.

Of course, I was cooking mostly on medium heat, but, see, the burner got used to cook something, which lulled my wife into a false sense of safety.

See, when I was cleaning up from the tonkatsu, I decanted the cooking oil – through cheesecloth, mind you – into a container for storage and reuse.  While I was doing this, I spilled some on the stove.

I cleaned it up pretty well with paper towels, but some of it managed to get into a burner pan unnoticed.

Cooking my fried rice, on medium heat, didn’t hit the ignition point.

On the other hand, when my wife went to boil some water, she turned the burner up to almost maximum.

The result, after a short pause, was a spectacular – if short lived – wreath of flame around the pan she was using. 🙂

…yeah, I won’t be living that down anytime soon.