Raise your hand if you’ve only just recently learned that those drawers under your oven were originally meant to be food warmers, like if you’re cooking a big meal and can’t fit it all in your oven at once?
I’m totally raising my hand, y’all. My whole life, my mother, then I, used them to store things like cookie sheets, muffin tins, and the like – but should you store things like that in there?
Let’s find out together, shall we?
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The basic rule is that anything that is safe to go in your oven can be stored in the drawer.
The oven drawer gets quite hot – which is how it also can keep your food hot – so anything that is plastic, cloth, paper, or the like, will probably melt. It could also catch fire, which means that for safety reasons, make sure you’re double checking everything that goes into it.
Things like pans, Pyrex dishes, skillets, pizza stones, those muffin tins I referenced earlier, and possibly glass lids for those items, should be safe down there. They are all made of oven-safe material and so should be able to safely withstand the warming heat from the oven above.
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I also keep cooling racks in mine, but some people keep grill utensils or extra oven racks inside – if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that adults everywhere are pressed for space in the kitchen.
Maybe we should all set Marie Kondo and her ideas loose in our cooking spaces, but I’d hate to lose some of my gadgets, even if I do only use them a couple of times a year!
In any case, remember that the best thing to do if you’re not sure is to check your manual.
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And since we live in the now and not the fifty-years ago (when people presumably knew what those drawers were meant for in the first place), you can go online and read up on your particular oven’s specifications and models, since you probably don’t know where your manual is.
Just me?
I didn’t think so.
Be safe out there friends!