Melted plastic on oven rack

[askolover]

We'll, long story short...last night tony was in his Xanax stupor and decided he wanted some cookies. He sliced the Pillsbury dough on my plastic cutting board and decided to put it in the oven. He then passed out on the couch and was awakened by the smoke alarm to a house filled with smoke. The oven bottom itself cleaned right up but there's hardened plastic drippings hanging on both oven racks. Is there an easy way to remove that melted plastic or should I just replace them and be done with it? You can tell I'm P-O'd because I normally wouldn't share this but of information but I'm just over it.

 

[petek]

putting them through the self cleaning cycle, if so equipped, might make a another big smokey mess. What about using a blow torch outside and burning the rest of it off?

 

[ozzie908]

Melted plastic

I would try putting the racks in the dishwasher see if warming it up helps scrape it off? ? also would the DW detergent help in removing the plastic?
Do you have a wire brush for the BBQ ? That may help.

 

[ea56]

Greg,
Maybe you need to lock out the oven controls if you’re able to so you can prevent a reoccurrence, or something even worse.

To try and remove the plastic on the oven racks I’d try heating them on say 200 F or maybe lower heat for maybe 5-10 mins, with some foil underneath on the lower rack to catch any drips, to see if you can soften the hardened plastic.

Then take a piece of aluminum foil and wrap it around each slat of the rack and try to pull/wipe off the softened plastic. If this works, then use an SOS or Brillo pad to remove any of the plastic that may still be clinging to the racks. Also, sometimes using peanut butter will remove stuff like this. I use peanut nutter to remove the sticky glue from labels that I remove from plastic and glass jars and bottles.

I think that this may work and shouldn’t take more than an hour or less.

Eddie

 

[launderess]

Do you have access to a freezer large enough to old racks in question? My thinking is much like gum or other substances freezing the plastic will make it brittle enough to be chipped or otherwise removed in bits. Any remaining residue could be dealt with via solvents.

There are products sold to in spray cans to remove chewing gum that "freeze" things so can be chipped off.

Other solution involves first finding out what type of plastic one is dealing with, then what solvent will dissolve. Take project out of doors and using cloths soaked in said solvent (wearing protective gloves) wipe down racks to get at plastic. Wash racks thoroughly afterwards to remove traces of solvent.

 

[askolover]

Good ideas from all! I think it's HDPE so not sure about solvents but getting it warm and scraping might do it. Eddie I don't think I can lock the controls but I can turn off the gas! It's like the stories of Ambien users cooking and even driving while "asleep". He usually gives me the car keys. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try first but if worse comes to worse there's a rack on eBay did $22. The heavier one is like $33. I considered putting them on the gas grill or the fire pit for a while. I just don't want to damage the chrome plating. The dishwasher didn't cut it. Thought about the torch. MIL has a deep freezer I could put racks in.

 

[ea56]

Greg,
You know what else might work getting the remainder of the plastic off after warming the racks and scraping them is to scrub them with a Chore Girl Copper scrubbing pad or a Scotch Brite Stainless Steel Pad. These pads work wonders in getting burned on grease off of the oven floor and racks.

Good Luck! Its lucky that the smoke alarm went off. And also fortunate that you both didn’t become ill from the fumes of the burning plastic.

Many years ago when I was 23 I’d gone to a customers home after work to do a Comb Out for her. She and her husband were in their late 40’s and liked to drink, LOTS. And I wasn’t one to turn down a drink then either. Well I sat with Jack and Jane at their bar for a few drinks and got righteously loaded.

I hadn’t eaten dinner yet so on the way home I stopped a the store and bought a frozen dinner and threw it into the gas oven and laid down on the couch and promptly passed out. I awoke to the house full of smoke and the frozen dinner was cremated. I quite drinking when I was 30 and have never regretted that decision.

Eddie

Robot or human?

 

[askolover]

If he would just use the bake timer, the oven would turn itself off. We'd still have a bit of a mess but at least it would not be as bad. But when under the influence of medications the most sensible thing doesn't always make sense. I was at work when it happened, 50 miles away. I just have to deal with the aftermath of hurricane Tony as usual.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

I like the idea of freezing it off too, I have a ride by side freezer if I don’t have too many items in I’d take out a shelf or two if you have one or could get to fit in there…

Or: Maybe if it gets cold enough out you can put the rack outside and see if you can freeze the plastic off that way…

— Dave

 

[askolover]

Well this morning when I got home from work I started messing with the least problematic rack. I took pliers and grabbed the drip from the bottom and twisted...it cracked and popped off. In thirty minutes I had that whole rack clean. Now to tackle the worst one. I also took the bottom out of the oven to see what was beneath and it looks like a thin coating of that plastic made it to the pan under the burner. I scraped what I could off but it's so thin it won't flake off anymore. Gonna do a self clean cycle with the windows open and fan on and see how it smells after. I may have to replace that pan.. a couple are on eBay. At least it's not the whole stove!

 

[askolover]

Three hour self clean cycle finished at 2am and it's all cool now. At one point there were flames coming up the sides of the oven for about a minute and it smoked to high heaven. I made a deflector from Reynolds wrap to keep the smoke from missing the range hood and most of it went outside. I just finished pulling the oven floor to clean the ash from beneath. It doesn't even smell anymore. Now to get that other rack ..it's the worst one where the cutting board sat and heavily coated the wires. Thicker coating means I'll have to heat it first but it's doable. This was the first ever clean cycle done in this oven and probably the last. I'd rather use fume free oven cleaner. The oven bottom was glowing red while cleaning itself. That's hot!