Dear Home-Ec 101,
I’ve scoured your site and haven’t found a post about cleaning an oven.
Can you give me some pointers?
I am 30 years old and NEVER cleaned an oven a day in my life, and now I am nervous.
Signed,
It’s Gotten Smoky in Here
You don’t need to be nervous, You will be just fine. Just wear gloves and older clothes when you perform this chore.
Cleaning an oven takes energy, the food particles—polymerized grease splatters and baked-on spills are difficult to remove. The longer you go between cleanings, the more work that stuff is going to take to remove. Not only because it’s had time to really get backed on, but because each batch of food is adding its own layer.
If you think about it, cleaning your oven is sort of like an archaeological dig, on a micro-scale.
Look, over there, you can see drippings from Grandma’s apple pie at Easter of 2021, and look, under that, the Great Christmas Ham Glaze splash of 2020. We smelled that one for days.
We’ve talked about the different kinds of energy as it relates to laundry, the same principle applies here. Energy, for this purpose, comes in three forms: thermal (heat), chemical, and physical. Since your oven doesn’t have a self-cleaning option, you’re stuck with chemical and physical, more likely a combination of the two. In fact, even though I will describe how self-cleaning works, many appliance techs will recommend that you do not use the self-cleaning feature on your oven.
Self-cleaning ovens work by getting so hot they reduce food particles to ash that can be easily wiped away (after the unit has cooled completely, please!). If your oven racks are stainless steel, they must be removed prior to starting the cycle. The oven heats to about 880°F, which you’re right is not hot enough to melt stainless steel, but depending on how they were made, it might weaken the filler metal holding the rack together. You don’t want to set anything on the rack and have it fall apart, do you?
No, no you don’t.
Why do techs recommend against using the self-clean cycle in your oven? The high heat produced by the cycle tends to damage the thermostat and the heating coil.
If you’re going to run the self-clean cycle anyway, you’ll probably want to do it on a day you don’t mind having the windows open and running a fan. If there is a significant accumulation of stuff, scrape out what you can.
How to clean your oven, manually.
If heat energy isn’t an option, you’re stuck with chemical and physical energy.
You can certainly use a spray-on oven cleaner to do the job. Follow the instructions exactly as written on the label and do not use any other products until the oven cleaner has been completely removed.
Always use ammonia in a well-ventilated area and keep away from children.
To use ammonia to clean your oven, allow the oven to cool COMPLETELY, pour 1/2 cup of ammonia into a shallow glass or ceramic dish and place it on the bottom rack in the oven and close the door. Leave this overnight. The ammonia fumes will go to work on the burned on grease, reducing the amount of physical energy it will take to remove the residue.
In the morning, wear gloves and use a rag dampened with dish soap and water to wipe out any residue. If there is still significant residue on the glass, you’ll need to do a little more to finish the job. Give the oven a few more wipes with soap and water to remove any trace of ammonia. Remember kids, chemistry is fun, but unintended reactions are not.
After you are absolutely sure that the ammonia has been removed fully, you can switch to a cleaner like Bar Keeper’s Friend to work on the grease spatters on the glass.
If you have very young children at home and do not want to risk having ammonia or oven cleaner in the home you can certainly use only physical energy to clean your oven. Keep in mind, that you’ll be scrubbing for quite a while. You might want to break this chore into several sessions instead of one long scrub.
Wiping out the COOL oven with a damp rag after cooking items that spatter will allow you to go longer between deep cleanings.
Good luck!
Submit your questions to helpme@home-ec101.com.
Thank you Thank you for this post!! I really Appreciate it!!!
I’ll get on it this weekend 🙂
OMG, thanks for this post! We’ve lived in our house for 12 years. Guess how many times we’ve cleaned the oven. Go on, you’ll never guess. I think we’ve cleaned it….once. One. Time. O.O ::cringe:: We brush crumbs out of the bottom, but that doesn’t really count. The “slight” smell of the self-cleaning method made us recoil in horror. Anything, including ammonia, is better than that. 🙂
I think someone used an oven cleaner on my self-cleaning oven. I live in an apartment. I have
cleaned it through the regular electrical way and used this vinegar and baking soda. It still doesn’t
look clean as a film of gray..HELP!