Chances Are You’ve Been Using That Nifty Drawer Under Your Stove All Wrong

Jun 27, 2018 by apost team

Walk over to your oven. You see that drawer at the bottom? Do you know what the manufacturer’s intended purpose was in putting that drawer underneath your main oven? Odds are you’re like most everyone I know and you’re using it to store your baking gear like muffin tins and cookie sheets. If so, turns out you’re using the drawer all wrong. Hey, don’t shoot the messenger; I’m as guilty as you. So, what’s it really for and how is it supposed to be utilized?

Most likely you're using a sink plunger verses an actual flange toilet plunger, too. It’s surprisingly odd how sometimes it’s the most commonly used household items that we know so little about.

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The oven drawer does make for a handy storage space for ovenware or spare cooking implements, but turns out that’s not what most manufacturers designed it to do. Pull out that absurdly thick instructional manual that I can’t imagine anyone having actually read and you’ll find that most manufacturers have it labeled as a warning drawer for baked goods.

All these years of playing musical chairs with holiday dishes to keep them warm or serving up barely warm dishes to late arrivers has been completely unnecessary. Who knew? The oven drawer warmer acts similarly to the heat lamps you might’ve noticed over cafeteria-style serving lines.

It’s not designed to heat or cook food in any way. In fact, putting raw foods, particularly meats, in these warming drawers is highly dangerous since bacteria grows rapidly between the 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit that the drawer typically maintains.

Older ovens simply utilize the radiant heat from the oven to keep baked foods at their cooked oven temp for longer. No wasted energy. Today, basic oven models still function much the same. However, fancy oven models might’ve kicked it up a notch with adjustable heat, humidity, and moisture settings, such as those featured by the Thermador line. You can even buy warming drawers separately now to be installed under ovens without the feature or within a cabinet space.

Check your appliance manual to determine what your oven drawer is capable of and designed to accomplish. You might decide the manufacturer has it right in using the drawer as a built-in warmer, or you might decide mother knows best and keep your storage drawer as you’ve always used it.

What do you think? Are you cleaning out for an oven warming drawer or keeping your storage drawer? Or, maybe you’re a smart tart who’s already been using this feature as the manufacturer intended? Tell us about it and show this to a friend who's been doing it wrong!