Are your failed recipes living on the bottom of your self-cleaning oven still after four months? One of the biggest issues that our clients have are that they’re afraid of cleaning their self-cleaning oven whoever invented the self-cleaning oven is secretly brilliant cleaning the oven is probably one of the most difficult cleaning tasks we have to face in the kitchen so the fact that we have an appliance that cleans itself is freaking awesome the problem is a lot of people are scared of how to do it because it gets really hot and it smells and smoke comes out so let me tell you the right way to clean it what I always recommend is to start with the manufacturer’s instructions.
Once you get yourself acquainted with these instructions you’ll be able to do this job and it won’t be so scary you don’t have the manual go on the Google now sometimes people say why can’t I just clean my oven by hand well if you wanted to do that you should have saved a thousand dollars and bought a non self-cleaning oven the reason we don’t want to clean a self-cleaning oven by hand is because there’s a coating called a pyrolytic coating on the inside of your self-cleaning oven that allows it to self clean it’ll actually remove that coating and that coating is a fortune so preserve it and do it properly now there’s nothing wrong with cleaning your self cleaning oven between self clean cycles so long as you’re using the proper tools so something like a soft cloth or the soft side of a sponge with a little bit of soap is no problem but something scratchy and abrasive like an abrasive cleanser steel wool pad or razor blade would actually ruin that pyrolytic coating so we don’t want to do that.
The first thing we’ll do is talk about some general you got to do this before you self clean the oven tips ventilate your space what you’ll do is turn on your overhead fan I’m not going to turn it on because mine sounds like a tornado you’re going to open your windows and if you have any pets especially birds you want to move them far away from the kitchen couple reasons why we want to do this first the pets if they inhale the smoke it can actually be really bad for them and in some cases birds have died from this the second reason we want to ventilate is because the smoke can linger in your house set off your smoke alarm and stick to your walls the next thing you want to do is remove everything you got to strip your oven naked now that includes the warming drawer your oven racks now some people say well why can’t you just leave them in the oven it’s a great question nothing terrible will happen to them but that shiny metallic coating will actually become dull and that will make it harder to pull the racks in and out those can easily be cleaned in a sink with a soft sponge a little bit of baking soda and some dishwashing liquid and if they’re really bad you can soak them in a bathtub.
The final precaution will want to take before setting our self-clean cycle is to remove any food that we possibly can from the bottom or the sides of the oven so you can either do this by hand or you can use a cleaning tool like this scraper and this is a non scratching scraper of course the reason we want to do that is because the food stuck at the bottom if it can be removed it should be removed it will make for an easier self-clean cycle so what happens during a soft clean cycle how does this oven magically clean itself well quite simply it heats up to nine hundred to a thousand degrees so obviously make sure you don’t touch it essentially what happens is anything inside the oven turns into a gray white – almost like what you would get at the end of a campfire or something when you’re finished you’ll take a damp cloth and you’ll just wipe it out top to bottom make sure you get the sides and keep rinsing and wringing out the cloth until the inside of the oven is clean then you put your clean racks back in and your oven is good to go how long will this whole process take about three to four hours so just be prepared a great feature that all self clean ovens come with is a self lock function the oven will lock and will not open again until the self clean function finishes this is for your own protection so don’t think that something really weird is happening to your oven if you hear a loud click and the door won’t open anymore your ovens doing the right thing upon completion of your self-clean cycle.
If you notice that the glass panel on the inside of your oven door is still dirty what you can do is sprinkle a little bit of baking soda and then spray some water on top of it to form a little bit of a paste let that baking soda sit if it’s really bad you can even let it sit overnight and then in the morning just take a soft cloth and wipe off the baking soda that paste should help remove any of the other build-up grease or grime that you’ll see on the oven door now be careful not to put too much water because if you’ll notice in the window where the self-clean oven is if water gets past that barrier you’ll see those forever drip marks.
If you liked this tip leave me a comment and let me know or if you have any cleaning questions, if you’re really interested in my cleaning tips on an ongoing basis subscribe to our blog and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin