How to Melt a Cutting Board in Your Oven… (And How to Remove the Evidence)

Let me tell you about the time I melted a cutting board in my oven. I hope this experience provides you with a dash of humor wrapping up in an important safety lesson. Like most people who live in New York City, I’ve never been blessed with a large kitchen. And because of that, I used to store things in my oven. When you think about it, it makes complete sense. It’s a space that doesn’t get used frequently, so why not store kitchen-related items in it?

My first New York apartment was very tiny. There wasn’t even counter space, so I bought burner covers for the stovetop to create extra surfaces. Naturally, I used the oven to store the few pots and pans I owned. Now that I think of it, I don’t believe the inside of the oven was ever used in the one and a half years I lived there with a roommate. And therefore there were never any mishaps with melting the contents of the oven.

When I moved into my first solo apartment with a proper kitchen, there was ample cabinet space, but I still stored a few items inside the oven. It had become a habit. And being 5’4” I preferred it to storing things in places that required standing on a chair to reach. At the time I was a single woman living alone. I naturally feared I would fall off said chair and not be found for days. So instead of storing my plastic cutting boards and muffin tins on a proper shelf, I put them in the oven.

I wanted to get back into baking so I promised my office I’d bring in a batch of my famous red velvet cupcakes to enjoy during a Monday morning meeting. On Sunday night after preheating the oven, smoke started wafting off the top. I opened the door to find two plastic cutting boards melted across a muffin tin and draped over the sides, dripping onto the bottom. The smoke detector, which was located a whopping 15 feet or so from the oven, went off and fumes filled up my apartment. I was so nervous about falling off a chair reaching for items tucked away on high shelves, I hadn’t considered the dangers of smoke inhalation. I hadn’t been in that apartment for more than a few weeks, so I feared I was going to get evicted. I was a serious danger to myself and others.

After I turned off the oven and waved a kitchen towel in front of the smoke detector, I was too nervous to touch anything inside the oven. I let it cool before I investigated, nervous that anything inside might spontaneously ignite. The melted cutting boards peeled right off from the nonstick muffin tin – but what to do about the parts that had dripped onto the oven rack and onto the bottom? I removed the rack and scraped the plastic bits off. I thought I could just peel the remainder off the bottom of the oven, but soon realized it wouldn’t be that easy.

I took to Google and found that I wasn’t the first idiot to inadvertently melt something in one’s oven. Yahoo! Answers revealed others had scorched all kinds of objects – Tupperware, bowls, even a laptop. Unfortunately all of the suggestions on how to remove the offending object involved turning the oven on at a low temperature. I wasn’t about to further subject myself to fumes and the ear-scratching sound of the smoke detector. So I let it be and I slept on it.

Too embarrassed to admit my mistake, I told my hungry office that I didn’t prepare the cupcakes because I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to get everyone sick. I returned home, reasoning that I could leave the oven as-is and just never clean it or cook again until I moved. There would be another oven in my future. But I persevered. I tried softening the plastic by balancing bowls of boiling water on top. That did nothing. Then I found my new best friend – Easy Off. The curious thing about Easy Off is it can dissolve anything, including human flesh. It’s so abrasive, it left a scab on my upper forearm where it made contact with skin that wasn’t covered with rubber gloves. But it got the job done.

Over the course of a few nights, I gradually scrubbed the melted plastic off the bottom of the oven, while wrestling with my irrational fear the oven would turn itself on while my upper body was inside it. Maybe I’d heard Hansel and Gretel a few too many times as a child? On the plus side, my oven became spotless, but it left me with paranoia about oven smells and sounds. I learned never to store anything inside an oven that wouldn’t survive 400-degree heat. And I still go through a “What’s that smell? What’s that sound?” dance each time I turn an oven on.