What is that black stuff that builds up on cooking sheets after heavy use? Why is it so difficult to clean? Is it possible to clean it off completely?
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It’s mostly carbon. You get tiny bits of it burnt on when you cook and because it’s chemically neutral it’s very resistant to soaps and detergents. You can scrape it off with a lot of work but you might damage the baking sheets in the process.
It’s just carbon. Burn just about any food enough and that’s what you’re left with. White vinegar and dish soap gets it off after a good soak. Oven cleaner is harsher but works a lot faster
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You can think of it as ash from burnt on food bits. I’ve never tried it myself but I’ve heard using oven cleaner is a surefire method of cleaning it off.
Don’t clean it off!
Darker coloured cooking sheets absorb the infrared radiation of your oven elements better than light shiny ones. These will give you a better browning.
Feel free to watch this video for more information about it.
Carbon from burnt food, often bound together with polymerized oil. Polymerized oil is basically dried oil that turns kind of plastic-y. It’s extremely slick and binds to many surfaces easily during the drying process. It can turn dark colors at high heat because it traps burnt carbon, but also can stay pretty transparent if not exposed to high heat. Polymerized oil is the way that cast iron pans become nonstick. It’s also what happens if you end up with splattered oil on or next to your stove, don’t clean it, and have a very hard time removing it 1 year later.
As others have said, it’s mostly carbon.
You can use oven cleaner, but that is a bit of a nuclear option. I use copious quantities of Cif and leave it sitting for a while. You can then scrub it off with a plastic scritcher (I mean one of those sponges with a tough nylon scratchy surface and a soft sponge surface).
I wouldn’t use brillo pads on a cooking sheet, they usually have nonstick surface and it’ll get damaged.
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