The Kitchen Ingredient That May Bring Life Back To Your Grimy Oven Racks

Spending hours in the kitchen cooking for your family and friends can be thrilling and tiresome. With the time spent grocery shopping, prepping, and cooking, it's only fair to leave the clean-up for the next day. You might follow TikTok's advice for setting a 10-minute timer to clean as much as you can before bed, which gives you time to wash the pots, pans, and dishware and give the counters a wipe-down. However, the oven racks get forgotten. As time passes, the more you use the oven without cleaning the racks, the more tough grime they are left with. Oven racks are challenging to clean because they don't fit perfectly in the sink or the dishwasher. Plus, washing them by hand with dish soap doesn't always remove all the gunk. While there are countless easy methods for cleaning oven racks, cornflour mixed with hot water may be a way to get them to sparkle like new.

Leaving your oven racks dirty can create foul odors when using them. The mixture of food residue and grease stuck to the racks gets re-heated in a hot oven. Sometimes, if there are too many burnt food spots, the burning smell can set off the fire alarm. Deep cleaning your oven racks with cornflour and hot water every couple of months can help prevent damaging the racks and setting off the fire alarm. The cornflour will effortlessly eliminate the grime from the nooks and crannies you can't scrub with dish soap and a sponge.

Cornflour, also known as cornstarch, is an incredible odor and stain absorber. The fine, white powder is a natural abrasive that can help remove tough grime. It might be a more suitable component to eliminate grease stains than baking soda. While the two have similar ingredients and purposes, cornflour is excellent at cleaning oven racks. You can clean your oven racks in two ways: creating a paste or a watery solution. Add ½ cup of cornflour and hot water to a bowl until a thick paste forms. Cover the oven rack with the paste and let it sit for 10 minutes, then wipe down the rack with a cloth and watch the grime disappear.

Another helpful way to clean your oven rack is with a cornflour water solution. Start by filling your sink with hot water and mix in ½ cup of cornflour. You can use your tub for extra space. Add more cornflour if needed. Dip one side of the oven rack into the water and swish it for a few minutes until the stains wash away. You can scrub the rack on stubborn spots that need a little help, but for the most part, the cornflour water should wash away the grease without scrubbing. Once the side is clean, repeat on the other side.  

You can use the cornflour solution on pans, pots, rangehood filters, etc.; however, it's vital to note that cornstarch should only be used on stainless steel appliances to prevent damaging other materials.