Oven Cleaning Tips: Get Ready for Holiday Entertaining

When it comes to oven cleaning tips, our experts have you covered with simple and effective ways to get your appliance sparkling. There are two main ways to get ready for that next holiday meal with these oven cleaning tips; if your appliance allows, you can opt for the automatic self-clean option. Alternatively, you can use the steam clean method, which you can perform with your oven’s built-in system, or easily create it yourself.

 

Some Do’s and Don’ts before you get started: 

Do wear old clothes. Whether you opt for the self-clean option or the steam-clean method, there will be scrubbing involved. Self-clean and steam clean make it easier to wipe away grime quickly, but they don’t do it for you. So, make sure to wear old or worn clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty. 

Don’t use chemicals. There are lots of oven-cleaning chemicals on the market, but our experts recommend that you don’t use them. Chemicals can wear down the porcelain enamel in the interior of your oven.

Do use vinegar. For particularly grimy ovens, try vinegar instead of a chemical cleaner. Vinegar will give you an extra punch of cleanliness without affecting the porcelain enamel the way a chemical cleaner would.   

 

The Self-Clean Method

Many ovens now allow you to utilize the self-clean option to loosen the buildup of the grime on your appliance. Self-clean reduces leftover food particles to fine ash, which you can then easily scrub away.

Steps: 

1. Remove the oven racks; keeping them inside your appliance as it cleans can cause dark patches and spots to appear on them. 
2. Place your oven on the self-clean setting.
3. Wait one and a half to three hours for food debris to be reduced to ash.
4. Start scrubbing with water and vinegar (if desired). Your oven has done most of the work for you by reducing all that food debris to ash, but you’ll still have to clean it out of the cavity.

 

The Steam Clean Method

Steam clean utilizes a lower temperature than self-clean in combination with water to help get your oven looking like new again. Due to that, you can utilize this method whether your oven has a steam clean setting or not. 

Steps:

1. If you have a steam clean oven, fill the provided basin within your appliance with water. If you don’t have this setting, fill a pan with water and place that inside your oven; once you turn the heat on, this will turn into the necessary steam. 
2. For a more intense clean, add vinegar to the water
3. Set your oven to steam clean mode, or to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. 
4. Wait 30 minutes.
5. Scrub loosened debris and clean inside the oven

 

We hope that these oven cleaning tips will help you get your appliance looking and working like new before the holiday season begins in earnest this year.  If you’d like to learn even more about what other functions your oven can perform, you can also check out our wall oven buying guide on the Abt website.