Photo: Matthew Korfhage
Add vinegar and soap to make extra degreasing: Do you need an average substance? You don’t want to use it all the time, but vinegar can help you remove pans and ovens when you can’t do simple elbow grease. And although it’s a little harsher than basic dish soap, if reserved for the occasional power clean, it doesn’t do much harm.
Steam method: Try heating the tray with a layer of water before cleaning the oven. As the water evaporates, steam helps to loosen a little cancer to make cleaning easier.
Use a gentle degreaser and a magic eraser. Try a simple dish soap first. However, if the glass or sides of the oven are really oiled and you can’t get dish soap, then something a little stronger may be needed. But you still don’t want to use true abrasives. Try a more gentle degreaser Krud Kutter ($11). Breville spokesmen have also been quite vocal about their love. Mr Clean Magic Erase ($12) wipe.
Not a few things: Do not use bleach or ammonia. It is severely toxic and eats food in its oven. Do not use steel wool or other polishing pads. Do not use heavy-duty degreasers or overnight cleaners like simple off, which may not be suitable for toaster oven ingredients. Many toaster ovens, including Breville, have a non-stick coating for easy cleaning. Do not chemically peel this anti-stick coating off.
How to Clean the Heating Elements in a Toaster Oven
My feelings are to avoid doing so. Do it high and burn what you can. Avoid heating elements in a way that avoids fallen power lines. They are thin tubes of quartz glass that break easily, with thin pressure. And in many ovens, they are extremely difficult and expensive to replace. Ruining this is an easy way to have no oven and I know this from experience.
But if you have to: Do not use cleaning agents. Do not use baking soda. Do not use anything except the gentlest whispers of water dump sponge or cloth. Runs softly along the length of the heating element. Do not apply pressure. Also, if it gets wet, make sure the heating elements are dry again before turning them on again. This is all advice from Breville. Breville is the heating element I broke while trying to calm down.
Have you actually tried to pray?
As a last resort, embrace what you cannot change
However, if you own a toaster oven for more than a year, no matter what you do, you will almost certainly accumulate at least one grease spot or discoloration that has just become part of the oven. Maybe it’s on top of the aluminum acid steel in your clam tray and is now permanently discolored with burnt butter stains. Maybe it’s some sputtering by the heating element. Maybe it’s a permanent dark place above the glass in your oven door and marks beauty by something unknown.
You’ve tried everything, but it’s just there. It’s a part of your life now. Well: Please forgive yourself. Life sometimes appears to you. I was 8 years old and had a small visible wound in my hand from a skateboarding accident in my babysitter’s driveway, and from then on the rest of my jagged elbow was robbed in Chicago. I try to believe it gives me character. Your oven may now have a personality.
