Home Remedies to Clean Your Oven

Ah, cleaning the oven – everyone’s favourite job! We’re being sarcastic, of course – no one, certainly no one we’ve ever met, likes having to clean out their oven cavities. It’s a hot, dirty & sweaty work made worse often by the need to use some pretty strong and smelly chemicals! But there are home remedies to clean your oven that are chemical-free and that’s what we are here to discuss today.

Just about everyone with a kitchen loves having a clean oven, however, it’s actually getting in there and getting it clean that’s the deal breaker.

What’s more, there are plenty of cleaning products out there. Not only is it really hard to know what to look for in the best cleaners off the shelves, they often come crammed with chemicals. For example, you only need to take a quick look at the back of a bottle of oven cleaner to see how much nasty stuff is inside. There are some oven cleaners which you need to wear heavy-duty gloves for just to avoid the burns!

That – and the fact that having to clean your oven is often such a faff – is why so many people look into home remedies instead. You might already be aware of a trick or two you can do with baking soda and vinegar, for example. However, there are more than a few DIY projects you can put together to help make oven cleaning less of a farce. It probably won’t hurt to keep some baking soda on one side, though!

In this guide, we’ll look at a few home remedies which are likely to get your cavity walls looking great again – without the need for all that elbow grease and chemical cleaning fuss. Time to grab the baking soda, load up on the vinegar, and to take a look at what other fed up oven owners are doing to get fuss-free cleaning underway.

What is the Easiest Way to Clean Your Oven?

There are a few schools of thought out there on how to clean the oven the easiest. Many people will tell you that just investing in a simple chemical spray is easy enough to get things shining and shimmering again.

However, many people swear by DIY remedies. For example, baking soda and vinegar – we keep saying it – is really easy to make, paste on and leave to fizz. It’s also one of the cheapest clean-the-oven fixes you’ll be able to make.

If you don’t fancy using any kind of paste, probably the easiest way to get your oven is to invest in a self cleaning system – it’s true! A self cleaning oven will heat up to a specifically high temperature so that it can burn off grease and food which is likely sticking to the inside of your cavities. One it’s cooled down and it’s safe enough for you to open your oven door again, you’ll simply be able to give it a quick wipe over. All the nastiness will come right off!

However, keep in mind that investing in a self cleaning oven is going to mean additional expense. If you’re not already thinking about switching out for a new oven or upgrading, you’re then it’s hardly going to be worth shelling out! Home made remedies for oven cleaning, with soda paste or otherwise, are always going to be financially preferable.

Oven racks are a little bit different – we’re going to focus on the main cavities in this guide.

How to Clean Your Oven Without Chemicals

It’s perfectly easy for you to clean your oven without the need of chemicals. The only reason these chemicals are in place is so that they can burn through all the grime and food residue which have built up over the past few weeks and months (or however long it is since you last gave the cavities a good clean).

The fact is, there are plenty of different, natural resources you can invest in which will burn through just as well, but without the fear that you’re going to be doing harm to the environment, and certainly without the fear that you’re going to be giving yourself skin lesions and burns in the meantime!

Therefore, we’ve put together a few recipes – of sorts – for you to take to your own oven when it’s in need of a real deep clean. Your oven might need a little bit of TLC and a bit of the old elbow grease here and there, but instead of risking your health and the ecosystem with dodgy chemicals, it’s high time you looked at one or two natural ways to get that oven clean.

It’s tempting to clean an oven with sprays. However, did you know that it’s actually a lot easier – and often a lot cheaper – to make your own concoctions? Once you know what to add, you’re going to find cleaning out those cavities an absolute breeze.

Pros to Cleaning Your Oven Without Chemicals

• No harmful chemicals such as sodium hydroxide or butoxydiglycol.
• Natural ingredients are non caustic/corrosive
• Kinder to the environment
• No nasty chemical smells in your kitchen that could contaminate foods.
• No damage to eyes and skin.

Natural Oven Cleaning Tips

So – enough preamble – let’s actually take a look at a few oven cleaning mixtures that you can make from home, and which will likely work just as well as – if not better than – those store-bought chemicals you’d normally rely on for ease.

DIY Oven Cleaner: Baking Soda

Of course – the classic oven cleaner home remedy – involves baking soda paste that you can make with just a few ingredients. The process of applying said paste to your oven, too, is actually a lot easier than you might imagine, too.

For this process, you’re going to need white vinegar, baking soda, warm water, a cloth, a spatula that’s unlikely to scratch your oven (preferably plastic), a bowl, an empty spray bottle with and – naturally – a good pair of rubber gloves.

1. Naturally, the first thing you should do with all of these home remedies is to make sure your oven is clear.
2. Then, you’re going to need to make that fabled baking soda paste. To do this, you should carefully layer in warm water into the baking soda until things start to paste together. There’s no exact science for this, so keep mixing until it feels thick enough to use!
   Then, you’re going to need to spread the paste. It doesn’t matter where you spread the paste inside the oven – if there are ground-on bits of food which need taking up, then you’re going to need to layer it on pretty thick. Just make sure that everything’s covered – it might be best to get your oven racks out beforehand, however!
3. Once everything is covered in a nice baking soda paste, you’re going to need to leave it to work its magic. We’d probably advise leaving it overnight. This should give it plenty of time to sink in and apply itself to any really grimy and nasty bits.
4. When it’s time to take to the oven again – try and get back to it within 12 hours or so – wipe it down with a warm cloth, damp with water. Not able to get much up and moving? Fill your spray bottle with the vinegar, and spray it directly onto the inner cavities. This should, with a bit of luck, make things easier to wipe down.
5. Wipe it all out, topping up with liquid wherever you need to, and leave your cavities to dry. That’s it – a clean oven with none of the chemicals!

DIY Oven Cleaning: Lemon Juice

If you don’t like the idea of getting in deep and dirty with baking soda, the lemon juice method might work better for you. In fact, many people swear by it! What makes cleaning with lemon juice just as effective as baking soda in some ways is that the acidic nature of the fruit will help to break down all the nasty bits.

For this, you’re simply going to need two lemons, an oven safe dish, an oven safe scouring pad, and some water. It really is one of the simplest oven cleaner solutions around!

1. Make sure to fill the dish you’ve decided to use with water – about a quarter of the way up should be fine, but you can use more if you feel you need to.
2. Then, cut your lemons in half and place them in the oven dish. You’re then going to need to transfer the dish, with lemons, into the oven – at last!
3. Unlike the baking soda oven clean method, you’re going to need to actually turn the oven on. So, be sure to shut the oven door and power it up to a low heat. You should only really need about 30 minutes for this, but a little bit longer will be fine if you really need to clean deep.
4. Then, be sure to switch your oven off, take the dish out and let everything cool down. Then, take your scourer and start wiping out! Once done, leave to dry.

Other Ways to Get Your Oven Clean

Other home remedies, generally, revolve around a base of either the baking soda method or the lemon juice method listed above. For example, some will advise that you add rubbing alcohol to the mix, while others will suggest hydrogen peroxide.

However, we’d generally advise that you go with as natural a solution as possible, at least to begin with. Get those oven racks out and see what works best for you, but do always make sure you have gloves on before you go in deep!

Which is the Best Natural Oven Cleaner?

The consensus is clear in that baking soda really makes a difference. But what is the best way to use baking soda as part of an oven cleaner? From your oven door right into the deep crevices of your main cavity, baking soda and water is always likely to be a winning combination. Simple, straightforward and positively miraculous, simply let a little bit of baking soda to work its magic in your oven overnight, and you’ll be able to wipe all the grime away come the morning.

If all else fails – take your baking soda with a bit of vinegar and see how you get on – it’s all the same principle when it comes to oven cleaning! Get those oven racks out of the way and start making a safe and shiny difference.