Maybe your grandma used to use tinfoil to line her oven floor to aid cleanup. But times have changed; tinfoil is no longer made of tin. The stuff you use to shield your ham is actually aluminum foil, which has a lower heat tolerance.
A Case Study on Aluminum Foil in the Oven
Warners’ Stellian‘s expert service guy, Gene, passed on a cautionary tale after he ordered a new, $90 oven floor for a customer.
A well-meaning woman lined the bottom of her oven with aluminum foil, to catch all the food that bakes into the oven.
Instead of having to scrape it all off, she could just pull out the aluminum foil, and voila, no more mess.
Except she ended up with a bigger mess when the aluminum foil melted onto the oven. Turns out the heat tolerance between aluminum foil and tinfoil from the good old days makes a difference.
Aluminum foil-maker Reynolds warns against the practice of lining your oven.
From the Reynolds FAQ webpage:
To avoid possible heat damage to your oven, we do not recommend using aluminum foil to line the bottom of your oven. Rather, we recommend that you place a sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil on the oven rack beneath the pie or casserole you are baking. The foil should be only a few inches larger than the baking pan to allow for proper heat circulation. The foil will catch any drips before they reach the oven bottom.
There you go. Smart play on Reynolds part, right? Because you know people will end up getting rid of the sheet of foil and using a new one next time.
Just when I thought I knew everything… 🙂
Thanks for the tip!
You’re welcome, Ari. I learned something myself with this one.
This happened to my neighbor and they ended up catching fire with the trapped grease and it was a huge mess and a very expensive thing to get fixed. So don’t do it.
Wow, that’s sounds a lot worse than just ruining the bottom of the oven. Thanks for the warning, John.
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Of course Reynolds advises the use of aluminum foil on the lower rack. (Not mentioning whether it can off-gas aluminum vapor, and aluminum is implicated in Alzheimer’s.)
I use a cookie sheet on the lower rack under my pies, and the advantage is that it is reusable. I just wash any spills off.
I have used aluminum foil all my life and have never had a problem. Not to say this couldn’t happen. However, you are speaking of larger ovens. I live in an apartment building and we have small ovens. It has 4 burners on top. The oven can barely take in a 9×13 pan or a cookie sheet. We only have one oven rack, so you see your suggestions dont really apply to our ovens.
Never again. I did it and my oven started on fire!!! Scary
I knew this one…by trial and error. Works much better
They sell aluminum trays at stores to use in the bottom of the oven. Are these safe to use?
The melting point of aluminum is over 1220 F and tin is less than 450 F. This doesn’t make sense to me.