Oven cleaning need not be especially arduous as you don’t need to perform each of the steps below in one go. Naturally, the more often you use an oven, the more often it must be cleaned. In this article about cleaning ovens, you also learn how to determine the optimal time for regular cleaning. For instance, right after the Holidays! Some people only use their oven once a month for baking, so that oven only needs to be cleaned once a year.
How often you deep clean your oven depends, of course, entirely on how often it is used. If you or your family enjoy cooking a lot, give your oven a deep clean every 3 months or so. If you rarely cook a big meal outside of a major holiday, then deep cleaning your oven twice a year is more than adequate.
Take into account that all food left behind will slowly carbonize and adversely affect the flavor of your favorite food. If you use your oven 3-4 times a week, clean it every Saturday or Monday or … With some of the tips outlined below you can create a cleaning regimen that works for you.
The cleaning agents used here are vinegar and lemon, both acids. When we say vinegar below we mean lemons too.
Light Clean:
- On a warm stove, apply a 1:5 mixture of vinegar and water. The vinegar is a weak acid so it does your work for you if you let it soak in. Apply with a spray bottle. Virtually all of the oven cleaners from the store is full of nasty stuff so definitely be super cautious with those poison bombs.
- After 30 minutes give it a thorough scrub and maybe dry it with a towel. Any vinegar left behind will simply add flavor to your tofu roast!
- Depending on what it is you cook, you might try spraying the solution on when you start your oven. Again, no harmful effects.
Heavy Clean:
- First step for all of this is to let it soak, let it soak, let it soak. Chemistry is your friend, it makes your bio-suit a bio-suit.
- For tools you can try heavy copper wool which is easy to wash and reusable. It’s really like sandpaper. It’s almost certainly in your grocery store. The steel wool like SOS pads is to fine to clean crude off the inside of your oven.
- Another heavy-duty tool is a paint scraper. Use that at the very beginning before you spray it because it’s easier to scrape dry stuff than soggy stuff.
- Only use explosives on super filthy stoves. And, use it with care! Not like last time.
“Make your own steam-cleaning oven. Fill an oven-proof pan halfway with 2/3 water and 1/3 white vinegar. Place it in the middle of the rack. Set your oven temperature somewhere between 300 and 350 degrees Fahrenheit. You want it hot enough to heat the water and create steam, but you don’t want it so hot that the water boils away too quickly. Leave your pan in the oven for about 30 minutes or until all the water evaporates, whichever comes first. When the oven cools, wipe it out with a damp sponge. Repeat if necessary.” -HD
Safety:
Lemons and vinegar are both perfectly edible.
Read the warning label on bleach or cleanser and you’ll be horrified!
If you start a kid on cleaning and mopping and stuff, make sure you make it perfectly clear what chemicals not to mix.
