Grease and grime in your oven can affect the way your food tastes and make the appliance wear out sooner than it should. Cleaning your oven doesn’t have to be a dreaded chore. These strategies can make the process simple and painless.
Use Your Oven’s Self-Cleaning Feature
If you have a self-cleaning oven, it can do most of the work for you. When an oven self-cleans, it heats up to a temperature that’s much higher than temperatures used for cooking or baking. Caked-on food is burned off, and it can then be wiped up. Self-cleaning takes several hours. Since self-cleaning makes an oven unusually hot, you probably won’t want to do it during the summer.
If you decide to self-clean your oven, take out the racks first. Extremely high temperatures can damage them. Keep your kids and pets away from the oven so they don’t get burned. It’s normal to smell a burning odor while an oven is self-cleaning. Open a window for ventilation.
Use a Store-Bought Cleaner
If you don’t want to heat up your house, you can use an oven cleaner. Check your owner’s manual or the oven manufacturer’s website first. It might recommend a particular type of cleaner or tell you to avoid products that contain certain chemicals. If you use a chemical product to clean your oven, follow the instructions carefully. Wear gloves and a mask and ventilate the kitchen. A chemical product that you use to clean your oven might damage surfaces that are made of other materials. Spread out some towels to catch spills and drips and protect your counters and flooring.
Use DIY Cleaning Products
You can also clean your oven using inexpensive ingredients that you most likely already have. One approach is to make a paste with baking soda and warm water and spread it over the inside of the oven. Then, mix equal parts vinegar and water and spray the solution on the oven’s interior. The vinegar and baking soda will begin to foam and loosen stuck-on grime. For best results, let the mixture work overnight, then wipe the oven clean.
Remember to Clean the Door and Racks
The inside of your oven door is probably covered with a layer of grease and grime. You can clean it with a store-bought product or a DIY cleaner. Check the oven manufacturer’s recommendations. Remove the oven racks for cleaning. If they’re covered with caked-on grime, put them in the sink or bathtub and soak them in a mixture of dish soap and hot water. Give the solution enough time to loosen grease and grime, then scrub the racks with a brush.
Clean Your Oven Regularly
How often you should clean your oven depends on how much you use it. Every three to six months works for most families, but you might have to clean the oven more frequently if you cook a lot. Wiping up spills right away can make cleaning easier.
