Don't Do This! Aluminum Foil Can Ruin Your Oven

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For decades, people have used aluminum foil as a popular way to avoid messy baking and cooking, believing it also helps to preserve the longevity of ovens. In theory, using foil makes sense: lining the oven with it can prevent major spills when food boils over or takes a tumble. However, this practice might actually be doing much more harm than good in the kitchen.

Lining the bottom of your oven or covering its baking racks with foil is risky for several reasons. First, the foil can disrupt the appliance's airflow and circulation, particularly in gas ovens, where it can block the flame and cause temperature fluctuations. Such swings in temperature make it incredibly difficult to properly bake or cook food, which, at the outset, sounds like a recipe for a not-so-tasty meal, but on a practical level, also means you can cause your oven to overheat or otherwise malfunction. Blocking airflow is a danger no matter what kind of oven you have, gas or electric, and can compromise your appliance, causing a larger headache than it's worth. Furthermore, foil can retain and radiate extra heat, and such residual heat can lead to the oven prematurely burning out. If you're wondering why your oven isn't heating, perhaps rethink your use of aluminum foil in this way. With all of this in mind, there's actually one, big messy con for using aluminum foil in the oven too — the risk of partial melting and damaging your oven racks.

If appliance malfunctions aren't enough of a concern, the additional hazard of long-term aesthetic damage should be another reason to avoid using foil in your ovens. At sustained high temperatures, foil can actually partially melt onto your baking racks or the oven floor, particularly in high-heat areas like the broiler. While the foil won't actually melt into a puddle, it may soften enough to stick to surfaces, causing a mess. In fact, several oven manufacturers specifically warn users against using foil to line the bottom of the oven or wrap the racks since trapped heat can melt foil products and can cause even bigger issues like surface damage (i.e., scratching and chipping porcelain). These warnings extend to baking and warming drawers as well. 

While it is possible to remove foil stuck to the bottom of the oven, the process is an arduous one. Some methods necessitate steaming your oven to loosen foil debris, while others call for careful scraping of the affected interiors. These clean up solutions can exacerbate chipping and scratching. Thus, it's best to look at alternative methods for preventing spills, ones that don't hazard potential damage, aesthetic or otherwise.

In lieu of aluminum foil, then, what can you use to prevent unfortunate spills? A good, old-fashioned cookie sheet should do the trick. Where you'd wrap the bottom of the oven with foil, just place a large cookie tray at the bottom instead. It will catch any mess, and you can easily wash the baking sheet afterwards. You can also employ this same trick with a large casserole or pie dish as well, but remember to only use oven-safe materials for this. Parchment paper is another easy material to line your ovens with instead of foil. In line with routine warnings, be sure to check on your brand of paper's heat tolerance, and keep in mind that parchment paper shouldn't be too long as to touch the sides of the oven.

There are also some new kitchen gadgets that'll up your baking game and can serve foil's purpose too. Silicone liners are one such alternative since they are largely heat resistant, non-reflective, and won't impact regular baking methods. Just be sure to confirm that they are suitable for use in your particular oven when it comes to temperature and air circulation type. Some liners are specifically made for the bottom of the oven as well, like these Buself Oven Liners, which are safe to use in both electric, gas, and convention ovens (a more particular model to work with), solving for aluminum foil temptations. All in all, there are so many alternatives to foil to use in the oven that won't do it harm.