Cookaholics Bulletin Board

The active ingredient is caustic soda in low concentration combined with solvents, surfactants and thickeners that appear to be instrumental in getting the concoction to cling to the troublesome shapes of an oven rack.

Sounds like it is reasonably safe and may be able to remove decades of buildup from the outside of a cast iron skillet.

FWIW, my other cleaning nightmare has been the glass cooktop on the Electrolux range I have. A number of years ago, I learned of Maas metal polish - which works quite well. In fact, I think Maas learned that their metal polish was being used for cooktops and now market virtually the same product as a glasstop cleaner. I still use the original as its a bit thicker and I think a bit more efficient.

But even better than the original Maas has been Carbona's Ceramic Cooktop Cleaner. The stuff rocks - one application and just about everything comes off and with significantly less effort.

Gerard