For those who do not have a self-cleaning oven or who do not want to run the self-cleaning cycle, there is another way to easily clean your oven. Years ago I did not have a self-cleaning oven. I moved a lot and sometimes the oven in the home I moved into was nasty. Through it all – oven after oven – I used this recipe and was able to get the ovens cleaned with very little elbow grease. You need three ingredients for this – and I bet you already have them in your kitchen.
Ingredients:
Baking soda
Water
A squirt or two of liquid detergent
Directions:
Begin by spraying the water generously over the bottom and sides of the oven. You can leave the oven racks in the oven if you wish and spray them down too.
Then cover the grime with enough baking soda so that the surface is totally white. This is the hardest part in my opinion. Getting the baking soda everywhere you want it is tricky but it can be done.
Spray some more water over the top of the baking soda. You want it damp but not so wet that the baking soda and water drip off the walls and ceiling of the oven.
Close the oven door and let the mixture set overnight. There is no time limit here so if you work and are gone all day, you can do it that night – or even a day or two later. Just do not use your oven until you complete the cleaning.
The next day – or when you get back to the task of cleaning your oven, you are going to find that you can easily wipe up the grease because the grime will have loosened and will come off with the baking soda. It is a good idea to have a small trash can or other item near the oven so you have a place to put the baking soda you remove from the oven.
If you decided to use this method to clean the oven racks as well, remove those and put them in the bathtub or take them outside so you can just spray them off with hot water.
When you have cleaned up the worst of the mess, dab a bit of liquid detergent or soap on a sponge, and wash the remaining residue from the oven. There won’t be much there – and for the most part it is just a white film left from the baking soda.
If this recipe doesn’t work for you it is probably because you didn’t use enough baking soda or water. The best thing to do is start over and use more water and more baking soda.
The way this works is the baking soda will absorbs the grease and come morning all you will be wiping off is the baking soda which will be dry and powdery.
