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Let's admit it. Nobody is a fan of cleaning the oven. It's tiresome, unpleasant, and requires a lot of scrubbing. So it's no surprise that the prospect of discovering a simple solution to do this work appeals to many people. It is crucial to remember that cleaning the oven is required since burnt food particles in the oven might add a burnt flavour to anything you're cooking, besides reducing the life of your oven. A dirty oven, on the other hand, is inefficient and unsightly.
When you cook food in the oven, fat particles and carbonised food particles are spread throughout the oven. This material attaches to the oven walls and the glass window, and when heated, it solidifies into a plastic-like substance that defies scrubbing. This repeats frequently, with layer upon layer of baked-on grease accumulating until you can no longer see through the oven window.
To prevent this accumulation, experts recommend cleaning your oven every three to six months. But first, we must remove the gunk that has been collected since the last time you cleaned it, whenever that was. Let's look at some of the most widely recommended oven cleaning procedures.
Self-Clean Function
The self-cleaning mechanism of the oven is probably the best way to accomplish this. The self-clean cycle involves sealing the oven and heating it to temperatures ranging from 700 to 900 degrees Fahrenheit, effectively incinerating the baked-on grease and converting it to ash that can be easily wiped away with a moist cloth. It takes several hours, during which you cannot use your oven, and it produces a lot of heat and possibly some smoke. Open your windows and turn on your vent hood.
Store-Bought Oven Cleaner
Caustic lye, or sodium hydroxide, is an alkaline ingredient in store-bought oven cleaners like Easy-Off. You may recall from high school chemistry that alkalis dissolve oils and fats whereas acids do not. Oven cleanser contains a variety of solvents and surfactants, but it's the sodium hydroxide that does the main work of softening that solidified, plastic-like grease.
And it works fantastically well. Many cooks, in fact, use Easy-Off to remove the seasoning from an old cast iron pan before reseasoning it. A store-bought oven cleaner is incredibly effective if you truly want your oven to be sparkling clean. Just make sure to properly follow the usage instructions.
Natural Oven Cleaners
What about the numerous suggestions for using so-called "natural" cleaners instead of store-bought oven cleaners? These methods often use baking soda, vinegar, and/or lemons, and they work because these compounds are chemicals in and of themselves. Baking soda is made up of a substance known as sodium hydrogen carbonate. Vinegar is an acetic acid solution, whereas lemons contain citric and malic acids. However, because acids do not dissolve oils or fats, vinegar and lemon will have no effect on the baked-on grease in your oven.
