You probably hardly even think about cleaning your oven's knobs or throwing a tray of frozen chicken into the oven. If this sounds like you, then we've got some bad news, since you are probably exposing yourself and your loved ones to an unnecessary amount of risk. To keep your kitchen as safe as can be, follow these tips:
1. Cooking frozen foods that need to be
thawed
If you think cooking frozen chicken breasts without thawing them is a
good idea, you may be putting your family at risk of food poisoning.
According to Frank Proto, chef and instructor at the Institute of
Culinary Education, "if you put food that is frozen or partially frozen
in the oven, the timing will be off because it will need to defrost
before it cooks.”
2. Assume the temperature reading is accurate
Since your oven only measures temperature in a single spot, the reading
it shows can often be far from accurate, often missing the mark by as
much as 50°F. Thankfully, there's an easy solution which you can get
your hands on for under $10 - an oven thermometer. Chef Veronica Dailey,
founder of daileyfoods.com says that this is " the best kitchen
investment you’ll ever make,” since "an oven thermometer will help you
ensure your oven is properly heated and cooking your food at the
temperature you need it to be set at.”
3. Leave a mess for days at a time
When cleaning your kitchen, you probably pay a lot more attention to the
dishes than on your oven, but a few touchups will actually go quite a
long way. According to John Cohen, vice president of Molly Maid, "not
cleaning spills after each oven use can quickly add up and can smoke
during preheating the next time around." He also says that "if you use a
drip tray, don’t forget to remove it and dispose of the grease and
drippings after each use.”
4. Let food spill onto the oven floor
To make those annoying everyday spills easier to clean, Cohen recommends
that you endeavor to catch splatters and crumbs before they reach the
bottom of your oven. An empty cookie sheet or a drip tray at the bottom
of your oven will make cleaning it a breeze! You could also use
disposable oven liners, too.
5. Leave racks in when self-cleaning
When making use of your oven's self-cleaning feature, make sure that you
don't leave any racks in. While you think it might be saving you time
and effort, self-cleaning can actually cause damage by discoloring them
and eroding their protective coating. We'd recommend scrubbing them by
hand instead.
6. Use the convection setting on the wrong types of food
If your oven has a convection (fan) setting, you shouldn't just
automatically assume that you can use it for everything you put into the
oven. This is because circulated air makes food cook much faster, which
could result in your food getting burned if you're following a recipe
that doesn't call for its use.
7. Cook with wax paper
While wax paper and parchment paper look almost identical, wax actually
makes a massive difference. Even though wax is good at wicking away
moisture, it isn’t very strong when it comes up against heat. Putting it
inside a hot oven may cause it to melt or even catch on fire if you're
unlucky enough.
8. Leave the knobs dirty
If you've been touching your oven's knobs after handling food, there's a
pretty good chance that you've left a lot of nasty germs behind. This
is why it's essential to clean your oven's knobs as often as possible.
To ensure you hit every part of the knobs when cleaning them, we'd
recommend popping them off the stove before scrubbing. You might want to
try soaking them in a bucket of warm water mixed a quarter of a cup of
all-purpose cleaner in it to properly disinfect them.