We’ve seen all the memes and the evidence in our kitchens. Baking sheets inevitably get nasty over time. We can either live with stained baking sheets or buy new ones that quickly get dirty. What if there’s a magic formula of household chemicals that can fix the otherwise inevitable fate of our cookware? I don’t believe it either but Southern Living claims to have the answer. They say that combining different products with baking soda can create a paste that’s strong enough to cut through years of baked on grease. Here’s part of their writeup with three methods to clean, with more at the source. They don’t recommend using steel wool pads or oven cleaner.
How To Clean Baking Sheets
Method 1: Baking Soda and Hydrogen Peroxide Paste
Step 1: Rinse the baking sheet with water to remove any loose food particles.
Step 2: Dry off the baking sheet with a clean towel or paper towel.
Step 3: In a small bowl, mix ½ cup of baking soda with 2-3 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide. If the paste isn’t a similar consistency to toothpaste, add more hydrogen peroxide until you get the right consistency.
Step 4: Spread the paste evenly over the surface of the baking sheet. You can use your hands (with gloves) or a spoon to apply it.
Step 5: Behar recommends letting this sit for at least 15-20 minutes to soften up the debris and make scrubbing easier.
Step 6: Use a scour pad to scrub the baking sheet.
Step 7: After you’ve fully scrubbed the entire baking sheet, rinse it under warm water.
Step 8: Dry the baking sheet with a clean towel or paper towel.Method 2: Baking Soda and Vinegar
Step 1: Rinse the baking sheet with water to remove any loose food particles.
Step 2: Dry off the baking sheet with a clean towel or paper towel.
Step 3: Sprinkle baking soda over the surface of the baking sheet.
Step 4: Pour or spray (using a spray bottle) white vinegar over the baking soda. Don’t be alarmed when the vinegar reacts with the baking soda. It will create a fizzy action that’ll help lift the grime from the baking sheet.
Step 5: Behar recommends letting this sit for at least 15-20 minutes to soften up the debris and make scrubbing easier.
Step 6: Use a scour pad to scrub the baking sheet.
Step 7: After you’ve fully scrubbed the entire baking sheet, rinse it under warm water.
Step 8: Dry the baking sheet with a clean towel or paper towel.Method 3: Baking Soda and Dish Soap
Step 1: Rinse the baking sheet with water to remove any loose food particles.
Step 2: Dry off the baking sheet with a clean towel or paper towel.
Step 3: Sprinkle baking soda over the surface of the baking sheet.
Step 4: Pour a small amount of dish soap directly onto the baking soda-covered areas. Another way to do this is to mix dish soap and baking soda together in a small bowl to create a paste. Then, apply that paste directly to the baking sheet.
Step 5: Behar recommends letting this sit for at least 15-20 minutes to soften up the debris and make scrubbing easier.
Step 6: Use a scour pad to scrub the baking sheet.
Step 7: After you’ve fully scrubbed the entire baking sheet, rinse it under warm water.
Step 8: Dry the baking sheet with a clean towel or paper towel.
Social media has been around for 20 years and this is a universal problem. If this really worked we would have heard about it by now. I was willing to give it a try though. (I bake about twice a week on two baking pans that are about a year old. I always use silicon baking mats but they still get stained.) At first I used the baking soda and vinegar. (Shout out to my mom, who bought me a five pound bag of baking soda on Amazon after I mentioned as an aside that I’d run out.) I let it sit overnight and it formed a strong-ish paste that cleaned somewhat. Of course it didn’t work to get out most of the grease, but the middle part without grease stains was shiny. It also caused a mess as the baking soda ran down the sink and onto my pants. I then tried baking soda and hydrogen peroxide, although my peroxide was admittedly flat. This worked about the same. It got off the surface level stains but not the baked in stuff at the edges.
The best method, by far, was the third. The baking soda and Dawn dish soap got about 60% of the stains out (image above), but I had to scrub hard. I used a Scrub Daddy Scour Daddy. The baking pans did not look like new and were still stained at the edges, but they were a lot cleaner.
Also I found this Better Homes and Gardens video (below) that claims you can get stains out with boiling water and baking soda. They make it look like alchemy so I tried it. The baking soda fizzed up in the boiling water like it did with vinegar, but it didn’t work much better. Plus my baking sheets were so much dirtier than the one they showed.
This experiment used up most of the five pound bag of baking soda. That was around $19 and I could have bought a new baking sheet at that cost. You could probably do this for about $5 in dish soap and baking soda, but the only reason I tried was for this story. I’ve never cared that my baking sheets are grimy.
Your baking sheet has seen some things 😭
This pan has been through every holiday cookie disaster, late-night nacho emergency, and 'I'll just broil it real quick' regret since 2012.
Seasoned by actual fire, seasoned by actual tears.
She's not dirty… she's battle-worn. A… pic.twitter.com/ZawdLB5wgk— 𝐿𝒶𝒹𝓎 𝒱 🥀 (@V_Lady2024) March 6, 2026
Baking Sheet Has Seen Some Shit: https://t.co/IKmR0PaA6z pic.twitter.com/nTwZ5PqrTD
— Reductress (@Reductress) April 29, 2020
My pans aren’t dirty. They are well-seasoned. Like cast iron.
Exactly. Just talk to a chef.
For real. If you really feel compelled to clean them, Barkeeper’s Friend with steel wool will do the trick.
Dear lord. A blackened sheet pan is a treasure for roasting vegetables. Keep pristine ones for cookies if you wish but just wash, not scrub, your blackened ones.
This! America’s Test Kitchen did comparisons and the “dirty” pans beat the shiny new ones. They heated more evenly because they were absorbing the heat from the oven instead of reflecting it back.
My peeve is silicone mats. Just don’t like the texture of them. They never feel like I’ve gotten them clean. Parchment paper all the way.
I get them as clean as I can and think of any left over “crust” as a flavor enhancer.
Dirty cooking sheets are a badge of honor and don’t bother me. Use parchment paper if you don’t want your food to touch the cooking sheet/stick. But. A combination of old-fashioned blue Dawn, white vinegar and lemon juice concentrate is an extremely effective cleaner. It will clean ovens and greasy ick from kitchen/outdoor garbage cans as effectively as most commercial cleaners I have tried. I also make a version of Dawn powerwash with Dawn, white vinegar and rubbing alcohol that works well for dishes. Letting a cooking sheet set with a thin coating of cheap kechup can also remove some of the ick. I do use baking soda sometimes to scrub dirty pans, but it wrecks havoc on my hands. I love using baking soda in laundry.
Ooh. I like that idea. What I want to know is which one of these, if any, are good for induction stovetops? Any kitchen scientists know?
Thanks @tn for the suggestions. The best way I know to remove it would be to boil it in water with baking soda, for a long time. I just don’t think I have anymore a receptacle big enough to hold my crusty sheet pan!
Here’s what will make stainless steel baking sheets as silver and shiny as the day they were made: the clean cycle on *some* ovens. If your oven clean cycle gets up to 800 degrees and you leave your baking sheets in the oven during the long clean cycle, it will burn up all the grease, every speck, even the thickest layers that have been there for years. But this will not work on ovens with clean cycles that do not get hot enough. My previous electric stove worked great for this. My current gas stove does not. It may also be possible to use your grill but this would be a 5-6 hour endeavor, minimum. Also, your house will smell horrible as the grease eviscerates, so keep your house aggressively well ventilated.
Although these pans claim to be safe for ovens up to 450°F/230°C. I think anything over 350°F/176°C causes the baked on burn/residue issues.
I just put a sheet of parchment paper on my cookie sheets for baking and foil for roasting peppers. I gave up on trying to make it pretty.🤷♀️ Mine is about 30+ years old so maybe it’s time to get a new one.
@Celebitchy: thank you for your service! Practical science, I love it!