Don’t Get Burned! 14 Quick and Easy Oven Safety Tips

Looking to get into baking this year? Maybe tackling your first big roast? Before you hop into loading up that oven, let’s review some quick and easy tips that’ll ensure you and your family are safe while you’re undertaking new culinary adventures.

Tip #1: Keep it clean!

Leftover grease spills and food debris in an oven will become bad smells at best if they aren’t cleaned up before you use your oven again. Left in the oven, splatters and stains will burn – creating foul-smelling smoke – and can often catch fire.

To avoid this potential safety hazard, make sure you keep a regular cleaning schedule that aligns with how often you use your oven. Only clean your oven when it is completely cool, and be sure to use only oven-safe cleaners when you do so.

Tip #2: Regularly check that everything is in good working order

There are a lot of things to keep track of on an oven, here are a few you’ll want to keep an eye on:

• If your range has a digital display, is it legible, and are the buttons responsive to your input? If not, you may need to replace that component.

• Similarly, if your oven has knobs, you’ll want to make sure they’re on all the way and do not spin freely when turned.

• The gasket around the oven door should be in good shape. If you notice it’s completely flattened, worn out, fraying, or has holes, it may need to be replaced.

• Are there any cracks in the oven’s front door glass? Do not operate your oven if so. The glass pack needs to be replaced before you use your appliance again.

• Does your oven door open and close with relative ease? If not, you may need to replace the hinges.

• Is it closing all the way when it’s shut? If not, your oven isn’t safe to use. We may be able to help diagnose the source of your issue, though, with our troubleshooting tutorial for oven doors.

• How’s the temperature, overall? All ovens have hot and cold spots that you can learn to work with, but if temperatures seem off, you may need to recalibrate your oven.

Tip #3: Invest in some quality oven mitts

Inadequate oven mitts can lead to serious, painful burns. Avoid a trip to the emergency room by making sure you have at least two high quality oven mitts in good shape. If you’ve got older mitts that are wearing out or showing signs of scorching, melting, or fraying, it’s time to get some new ones.

A good oven mitt can be cloth or silicone. It should be well-insulated enough to protect you from heat, but not so thick that you can’t adequately move your fingers to grip pans and dishes. For oven use, they should be long enough to cover your skin past the wrist.

Tip #4: Double-check your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors

You should have smoke alarms on every level of your home, but it’s especially important to have working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in or near the kitchen. Additionally, these should be tested regularly to ensure they’re still working and don’t need replacement batteries. If you hear an annoying chirp every two to three minutes, that’s your smoke or carbon monoxide detector telling you it needs a change of batteries!

Tip #5: Always have a working fire extinguisher nearby

While your first response to an oven fire should be to leave the door closed, it’s still important that you have a proper fire extinguisher somewhere nearby. A standard, rechargeable name-brand Class A kitchen extinguisher will run you around $30. Don’t skip out on this investment!

Once you have it, familiarize yourself with how it’s used by reviewing its labels and tags, and keep it stashed somewhere you can easily access from the kitchen – like under the sink, if there’s room. Check it annually to make sure it’s properly charged.

Tip #6: Don’t use your oven for extra storage

Check your oven before you preheat it and remove anything that shouldn’t be in there, like pots and pans. The exception to this is if a recipe specifically calls for preheating your gear in the oven – such as when using a pizza stone, or a pan intended to steam bread in the oven.

Tip #7: Don’t leave cooking unattended

You don’t need to pull a chair up and stare at your oven’s glass until dinner’s done braising, but you should keep an eye on things while your oven is on. Never leave the house or sleep while the oven is running. If you do need to leave emergently, shut everything off before you go, or make sure another responsible adult is on hand to watch the oven while you’re out.

Tip #8: Give that hot air a few seconds to clear out

Whether you’re just checking the temperature of a roast or getting ready to pull that fresh loaf of bread out of the oven, give the heat a second to clear before you stick your face in the open oven door. Depending on the temperature inside the oven, sticking your face or arms in right away could lead to burns.

Tip #9: Skip the aluminum foil lining

It may catch drips and spills, but aluminum foil left in the base of an oven presents a fire hazard and upsets the temperature management in your oven – leading to inaccurate bake times or uneven cooking.

Tip #10: Use only oven-safe cookware

Not all of your cookware can handle the constant, all-around, high temperatures of a standard oven. Make sure you’re only using oven-safe cookware when baking, broiling, or braising. 

• While parchment paper is designed to be used in an oven, other paper products like wax paper and paper towels are not. So, remove them from whatever you’re baking before you shut the oven door. They might catch fire, otherwise.

• Never put plastic in the oven – it’ll melt and release some pretty noxious fumes in the process.

• Make absolutely sure that any glassware you put inside is oven appropriate. It should say “tempered glass.”

• Skillets and pots that can go directly into the oven will be labeled as oven-safe. Cast iron is oven safe, for instance, but a skillet with a plastic or wooden handle might not be. Thoroughly check the packaging for any pots or pans before you pop them in the oven!

Relatedly, make sure any food you plan on cooking is placed in an appropriate pan, dish, or baking sheet. Don’t cook right on the rack. You’ll make a mess.

Tip #11: Be aware of major temperature fluctuations

Ovens are very hot, and putting anything that is dramatically cooler than the interior temperature inside poses a risk. Keep these things in mind:

• The interior of the oven’s front door glass gets extremely hot. Not only is it a burn hazard, but laying or dropping anything cool on it while it’s hot, like a wet rag or water, can potentially cause it to shatter.

• Cold glass dishes – say something taken right out of the refrigerator – can potentially shatter when placed in a hot oven without being allowed to come to temperature first. Thankfully, this may not happen until the oven door is closed, keeping you a little safer, but it’s still a serious safety hazard.

• The water on wet towels and oven mitts will immediately turn to steam when they come in contact with extremely hot oven components, which can result in burns. Only use dry oven mitts and towels when moving things around in the oven.

• This is one that anyone who’s made a few at-home pizzas probably knows: putting a cool pizza stone in the oven, or setting something too cool on a pizza stone while it’s hot, can cause it to crack very quickly, rendering it unsafe to use.

Tip #12: If you’re cooking something new, follow the recipe

Whether you’re baking loaf bread, broiling shiitake mushrooms, or braising beef, if you’ve never done it before, do some research before you get cooking. Look up a recipe that sounds appetizing and stick to it. Don’t experiment too much on the first go-around to avoid burnt food, spills, and a potential fire hazard.

Tip #13: If you’re big on roasting, broiling, and braising, get familiar with safe meat temperatures

Fish, pork, beef, and poultry must all reach different temperatures before they’re safe to eat. Since every oven is a little different, cook times may not align perfectly with what’s advised in a recipe. To avoid eating undercooked meat and getting sick, consider investing in a meat thermometer and checking temperatures as you go.

Also, don’t ignore “rest times” listed in recipes. Those aren’t about letting the temperature in the meat lower, they’re actually about letting it climb! Meat continues to cook after it’s come out of the oven, and a rest lets it reach an appropriate temperature without overcooking.

Tip #14: If you smell gas, don’t hesitate to evacuate

If you have a gas-powered oven, a little bit of that natural gas or propane smell is inevitable. However, if you’re smelling gas even when the range isn’t in use, or if you can smell gas even when you’re farther away from the stove, you may have a gas leak.

If you suspect your oven has a gas leak, shut it off, open a window, and get everyone safely out of the house ASAP. Call your local utility company for further assistance.

Wrapping Up

We hope our tips have made your kitchen a safer space for your culinary experiments. If you have questions not answered in this tutorial, why not check out the other great oven-related guides on our blog? If you’re looking for help replacing a damaged component, our friendly staff can help with that, too! AppliancePartsPros.com has tons of tips, tutorials, and a wide variety of genuine replacement parts that you can use to fix and maintain your home appliances.