Don't Line Your Oven With Aluminum Foil. Use This Instead
When you are cooking a big greasy, turkey dinner or casserole with ooey-gooey bubbling cheese, catching those spills, drips, and splatters by lining your oven with aluminum foil sounds like a good idea. After all, who wants to spend hours cleaning and scrubbing this appliance after all that time cooking? But before you break out a roll of this kitchen staple to wallpaper the inside of your oven, you might want to think twice. Aluminum foil can do more harm than good to both your oven and your culinary creations when used in this manner. But luckily, there are other options to combat this messy issue.
Instead of aluminum foil, you can always purchase a reusable silicon oven liner specifically designed for this purpose and can withstand temperatures up to 500 degrees; however, they can only be used in electric ovens. Gas stove owners are tough out of luck with this option. If you buy one of these liners, which are easy to wipe clean, make certain the liner isn't touching the oven walls. It would be best if you had a couple of inches to avoid any interference with heat transfer. Of course, you can also use your large sheet pans and casserole dishes to do this job. Just set them under your pots and pans and they will catch the bulk of those splatters.
What's the issue with aluminum foil?
Why can't you use aluminum foil? Here's the problem: Using aluminum foil as a liner is going to raise the temperature on your oven surfaces and prevent uniform cooking. Lining your oven with aluminum foil will reflect heat away from your dish and mess with the airflow. This means you can end up with a final product that is overcooked in some places and undercooked in others, and neither scenario is going to be an appetizer pleaser. But it can also cause some damage to the inside of your oven.
While aluminum foil is not flammable, high temperatures can cause it to lose its efficacy. This means if you line your oven with it, you are placing the interior surfaces along with the heating elements at risk of becoming damaged. This is particularly true if you are using your aluminum foil on the bottom of your oven where it is susceptible to melting. Take our word, and don't learn the hard way because it isn't easy to clean off either, so skip the foil as a liner and try a liner that is engineered to handle this job.