How to Clean a Toaster Oven: Tips and Tricks

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Add vinegar to dish soap for extra degreasing: Need a meaner substance? You don’t want to use it all the time, but vinegar does help degrease a pan or an oven when simple elbow grease won’t do. And while it’s a little harsher than basic dish soap, it won’t do a lot of harm when reserved for the occasional power clean.

The steam method: Before cleaning your oven, try heating up a tray with a layer of water in it. As water evaporates, the steam will help loosen up a bit of the gunk for easy cleaning.

Use gentle degreasers and magic erasers: Try simple dish soap first. But if your oven glass or sides are really greased up, and dish soap won’t do, you may need something a little stronger. But you still don’t want to use truly abrasive substances. Try a more gentle degreaser like Krud Kutter ($11). Breville’s spokespeople have also been pretty vocal about their love for Mr. Clean Magic Erase ($12) wipes.

Some don’ts: Don’t use bleach or ammonia, it’s harsh and toxic and you eat the food in that oven. Don’t use steel wool or other abrasive pads. Don’t use heavy-duty degreasers or overnight cleaners like Easy-Off, which may not be suitable for the materials on your toaster oven. Many toaster ovens, including Breville, have nonstick coatings for easy cleaning: You’d rather not chemically peel off this nonstick coating.

How to Clean Toaster Oven Heating Elements

My feeling is, avoid doing so. Run it on high, burn off what you can. Avoid your heating elements the way you avoid downed power lines. They’re fragile, a thin tube of quartz glass that’ll break at minor pressure. And on many ovens they’re quite difficult and expensive to replace. Messing this up is an easy way to not have an oven, and I know this from experience.

But if you must: Don’t use cleaning agents. Don’t use baking soda. Don’t use anything but the gentlest whisper of a water-damp sponge or cloth, run softly along the length of the heating element. Don’t apply pressure. Also, make sure the heating element is dry again before you turn it back on, if you’ve gotten it wet. This is all advice from Breville, whose heating element I nonetheless broke while trying to be gentle.

Actually, have you tried prayer?

As a Last Resort, Accept the Things You Cannot Change

But if you own a toaster oven for longer than a year, no matter what you do, you will almost certainly accumulate at least one grease spot or discoloration that has just become a part of your oven. Maybe it’s on the aluminized steel of your crumb tray, now permanently discolored with a stain from burnt butter. Maybe it’s some spatter up by the heating elements. Maybe it’s that permanent dark spot on the glass of your oven door, beauty-marked by something unknown.

You’ve tried everything, but it’s just there. It’s part of your life now. Well: Forgive yourself. Life shows up on you sometimes. I still have a small but visible scar on my hand from a skateboard accident on my babysitter’s driveway when I was 8, and a jagged remnant on my elbow from that time I got mugged in Chicago. I try to believe it gives me character. Your oven, too, may now have character.