Baking Soda Is Key To Cleaning Melted Plastic Off Your Oven

Of all the dreaded sights possible in the kitchen, few can make your stomach drop as quickly as finding a plastic kitchen tool melted to your oven's glass stovetop or onto your oven rack. It looks awful and renders your appliance temporarily unusable as the fumes from melted plastic can be dangerous; it's also a potential fire hazard.

Once you've picked your jaw up off the floor (and the melted plastic has cooled), you quickly realize the melted mess isn't budging, at least not with your fingers alone. Luckily, there's an ingredient in your pantry ready to lend its services in this disaster. Baking soda is already the key to cleaning many common food stains, and its usefulness extends to plastic that has melted and attached itself — permanently, it might feel — to your oven.

To get this pantry staple involved in the rescue of your once-pristine stovetop or oven rack, mix some baking soda with just the amount of water needed to turn it into a thick paste. Spread the paste onto the melted plastic and leave it there for about three to five minutes. Then, using a scrubber or the rough side of a sponge, gently scrub at the baking soda-coated plastic. (Be careful not to rub too hard and damage your stove.) This simple trick could be the only thing you need to safely clean up all traces of your kitchen oopsie. If not, there are a few more reinforcements you can bring in to get that gunk off your oven.

Good old sodium hydrogen carbonate (that's baking soda's chemical name) can tackle a lot of kitchen and cooking disasters — baking soda can even upgrade the taste of bitter coffee and tenderize steaks — but some melted plastic can be especially stubborn. Vinegar and baking soda are a hard-hitting duo in times like these. Start by spreading straight baking soda — no water this time — onto the melted plastic. Get a good bubbly reaction going by spraying vinegar onto the baking soda. With your sponge or scrubber, carefully scrub at the melted plastic until it begins to break away from the oven top. If that's not doing it, go into it with more vinegar or more baking soda.

For the final stuck-on stragglers, a dinner knife or a safety razor blade held at a 45-degree angle can come in handy. If the razor or knife can't handle these last stuck-on pieces, enlist the help of your scrubber brush and a non-abrasive cleaning agent like The Pink Stuff. Whichever ingredients you bring into this battle, make sure to thoroughly clean the oven once the plastic is all gone to make sure no residue remains. Then your kitchen should be fume and disaster-free once again!