Escape HTML using jQuery

I came up with a hack to escape HTML using jQuery and I'm wondering if anyone sees a problem with it.

$('<i></i>').text(TEXT_TO_ESCAPE).html();

The <i> tag is just a dummy as jQuery needs a container to set the text of.

Is there perhaps an easier way to do this? Note that I need the text stored in a variable, not for display (otherwise I could just call elem.text(TEXT_TO_ESCAPE);).

Thanks!