Best way to clean your oven
Perhaps you’ve had this experience: You cook or bake something and, accidentally, something drips onto the bottom of the oven. You forget about it or don’t notice until the next time you preheat. You’re going about your meal prep when, suddenly — smoke! This can be annoying at best and an emergency at worst, but it is a very preventable situation. You need to clean your oven.
When to clean your oven
Not only should you be wiping up your oven after each messy use, but you also need to clean your oven thoroughly every three to six months. If you rarely cook with your oven, you may be able to get away with a once a year spring clean, but some even say that you should clean the oven once a month, especially if you use the oven frequently. Proper and frequent oven cleaning helps your oven operate more efficiently. Leftover food particles in the oven can also make your food taste funny. To get the best bang for your buck out of your oven, treat it nicely and clean it once in a while.
Once a week, make sure you wipe down the door to the oven. This gets rid of grease and food splatter that can build up inside the oven.
How do you know you need to do the full clean? You can usually tell visually. If there is visible food debris stuck to the inside of your oven, it’s time. Can you smell anything amiss? If you start your oven and smell the last thing you cooked or, worse, a mix of everything you cooked this week, it’s time to clean the oven. Perhaps obviously, if there’s any smoke when you preheat the oven, you need to clean it right away.
First steps to a clean oven
Your oven might have a “self-clean” function but beware: this is really only meant to be used on slightly dirty ovens. If you’ve neglected your oven cleaning for a while or know it’s quite dirty, don’t start with the self-clean. It works by heating your oven up to a high temperature and can cause smoke or even fire if you have a lot of grease or food stuck to the insides of the oven.
A good first step to help break up some of the crusty bits is to take an oven-safe bowl and fill it with water. Turn the oven on high and let the bowl steam up for 20 minutes. If you’re old-fashioned, you can use some baking soda and vinegar on the inside and scrub off any built up junk. However, often you’ll need some products to help you get the inside of the oven truly spotless.
What to use to clean your oven
In addition to a strong oven cleaner, you also need heavy-duty cleaning gloves and safety glasses. Make sure you have a drop cloth, newspapers, or paper towels on the floor outside the oven to catch anything that might drip out. You also need cloths or rags for cleaning the inside and a scouring pumice or a microfiber sponge.
Scrubbing your oven clean
You’re going to need to clean the oven racks separately in the sink with hot, soapy water. If they’re really gunky, though, you can spray them with the oven cleaner and let them sit in a plastic garbage bag, or take them outside and spray them with the oven cleaner before scrubbing. Then, while they dry, you can handle the inside of the oven. You can also set the racks aside and wash them while the oven cleaner is sitting.
Spray the entire inside of the oven except — and this is important — the heating elements. For an electric oven, you can spray under the heating elements. For a gas oven, just avoid that section. Close the oven. Follow the instructions on the label to know how long to leave the cleaner sitting in the oven. Usually, you’re going to need to leave it 20 to 30 minutes.
Then, get scrubbing. Start with a damp rag and use the pumice or microfiber sponge for tougher bits. Make sure you get every nook and cranny. Also, you want to be sure you remove all the cleaner before you cook again.
Laura Wheatman Hill is a writer for BestReviews. BestReviews is a product review company with a singular mission: to help simplify your purchasing decisions and save you time and money.
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