Technically, it’s called a “drop lid” and in some cultures it’s basically set on the surface of whatever soup or stew you’re cooking. I had literally never heard of this…method(?) until I saw pictures of this object being used that way 🤷♀️
But I use it as a microwave cover.
I am a huge proponent of eating in bowls or bowl-plates instead of regular flat plates (rather than chasing your escaping food, it’s always sort of being nudged back to you), so I don’t have to worry about a raised cover for whatever I’m microwaving. Instead, I just need a lid to ensure it doesn’t splatter.
This thing is great. It’s made of food grade silicone, so I can get it plenty hot without worrying about leaching or offgassing like I do with plastics, it has little ears (that stay cool) for easy gripping, and it injects a little whimsy into my hectic day-to-day.
I have the 8.5” white version—it fits on anything smaller and even though it slides down the tapered interior surface of some of my biggest bowls, it still does a great job of containing splatters. The underside is meant to be in contact with food, so I find that its slick surface rinses off without a problem. Even when I thought it might’ve been stained by a particularly bright sauce, it washed perfectly clean with a little pump from my favorite Foaming dish soap.
It does come in other sizes, as well as the color pink.
(In the promotional materials they advertise that you can use it as a silicone grip to open jars (though I think that’s not generally necessary, see Advice: Break the vacuum seal on jars to make them easier to open) and they also display the method of inserting chopsticks into the nostrils of the piggy face to lift the cover off, but I think that might be a bit much for me to handle…)
One awkward thing is that it’s a little floppy. So when I rinse it and place it in the dish drainer, it sags, but it’s not actually a problem, and I can also just leave it in the microwave.
I wish I remembered how this came into my life—it seems a little wild, but maybe it was an ancient pick from America’s Test Kitchen?