Kitchen Tips How To Kitchen Tools and Techniques Can You Put a Cooling Rack In the Oven? Will it warp or is it all good? By Sara Tane Sara Tane Sara Tane is a classically trained chef who has worked in restaurant kitchens, test kitchens, and home kitchens. She can bridge the gap between the professional chef and the home cook from her 6 years of experience in food media, sharing her knowledge on specific ingredients, techniques, and everything you need to know to become a more confident cook. Allrecipes' editorial guidelines Published on August 9, 2021 Cooling racks are a functional, multi-use, kitchen tool. They are extremely handy to have on hand when it comes time to rest cooked meats or baked goods that are fresh out the oven. They're also great to use (when set over a sheet pan) if you're holding a seasoned slab of meat or poultry in the fridge overnight. Need to ice a cake? Do it on a cooling rack set over a paper towel so that any icing that drips away can be easily cleaned up. However, their functionality is not just for tasks outside of an oven. In fact, cooling racks are a great tool to use when you're looking to roast something and want to allow air to circulate around all sides of the item. You can simply nest the metal cooling rack on top of a sheet pan, and perch the food on top of the rack. Getty Images 6 Things to Cook While You Have the Oven On Anyway That said, not all cooling racks are created equal, so when it comes time to slide them into the oven, you should first ask yourself if your rack is oven-safe. If a cooling rack has a non-stick coating, that typically means that it's not safe for your oven. These coatings generally cannot handle the hot temperatures and it will likely cause the rack to warp (which is obviously not what you want). While this non-stick coating makes the rack super easy to clean, it does prevent you from using them in the oven, so that's definitely something to consider if you're in the market for a new cooling rack. On the other hand, metal cooling racks are perfectly safe to put in your oven, though they may not be as breezy to clean as non-stick. (But hey, they're safe for your dishwasher too!) The Two Critical Details You Need to Consider When Shopping for a Cooling Rack So, to answer your question — yes, you can put metal cooling racks in the oven, but don't put a nonstick rack in the oven. Honestly, if you roast a lot of veggies, it's not a bad idea to get in the habit of roasting your veggies on a rack that's set over a sheet pan, because this is the quickest and easiest way to achieve browning and caramelization on all sides of the food. Seems like a pretty good reason to put a cooling rack in the oven, huh? Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit