When we tell people how dirty our oven is after roasting a chicken, they are incredulous. No one believes that, after roasting a Zuni-style chicken (meaning that chicken is bone dry, with no added fat) or some skin-on breasts, our oven is covered in greasy brown splatters. Trust us, we have cooked a lot of chickens, and we're almost certain we're doing it correctly. We always get the same result.
But rather than wallow in feelings of inadequacy about our dirty oven, we're determined to find an easy way to clean it. We tried the self-cleaning feature, which you can read about here. Now we're trying that age-old trick of baking soda paste. To be honest, we always read "Just baking soda and salt!" and think, "Yeah, right."
Do we sound too negative? Sorry. It's just that we love roasting chickens, and when we face an oven that looks like this...
...we start to think that it's a lot of work to clean up after a Zuni bird.
When we posted this tip for using ammonia, people balked. Too toxic, too smelly. Reader LoriSF recommended 1/4 cup of baking soda with 2 tablespoons of salt, plus enough hot water to make a paste. We made a bit more, using the same ratio. Here's ours:
We smeared our paste on the door, on the floor of the oven, and as much as we could on the sides.
Now. Maybe we put it on too thick. Maybe we left it too long. (LoriSF said five minutes, but we've read everything from minutes to overnight. We went with an hour.) And when we started wiping it off, this is what happened:
We cannot stress enough how much of a MESS we made. The baking soda paste had hardened, so instead of wiping our oven clean, we were scrubbing down thick, crusty gunk that got everywhere. Down into every nook and cranny. Behold:
We got out our vacuum cleaner to try to pick up some of us. One should never have to use one's vacuum to clean the oven. But, did it work? Well, somewhat. This is the end result:
Not bad, but it took a lot of scrubbing. And it was definitely not worth the mess we made. We simply can't imagine doing this once a week after we roast chicken. Then we remembered another reader recommendation, for Ecover's Cream Scrub. Apparently it's great for getting sinks and tubs shiny and, we were hoping, for working miracles on ovens. Plan B! So we squirted some on a sponge and went to work on some spots that were still covered in splatters.
We didn't really get great results with the Ecover, either. The baked-on splatters stayed put, although the Ecover was much, much easier to use. We're now thinking we might warm up the oven in an attempt to soften the gunk and start over with Ecover.
But we're convinced that the only way to get grease off an oven is with steel wool. However, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Is the only way to remove this stuff to tackle it immediately after the chicken comes out of the oven? Because, frankly, we don't see how another day or two makes a difference, but maybe that's our mistake. Are we just hoping for too-perfect results?
We hope these adventures are helpful for the rest of you. If you've got another tip, we'll be happy to be the guinea pigs.
Related: Survey: How Do You Clean Your Oven?
(Images: Elizabeth Passarella)
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I admit that I never really clean my oven. I rent, and I move once a year, and I don't think I get it dirty enough for anyone to notice in that time. But, I swear by the baking soda method to clean any tough to clean spots. I've used it to scrub what looked like years of burnt on crud from around my burners, I've shined up old bathroom sinks, everything. I admit that it can make a bit of a pasty mess at first, and you have to be willing to add some elbow grease, but it really gets everything off. I don't do the paste, salt or soaking things though. I just sprinkle it directly on, and go at it with a wet scouring cloth, adding water or baking soda as necessary. Then scoop up as much of the crumbly bits as possible, and wipe down with a clean wet cloth.
For grease-related stains, I swear by this: http://www.drugstore.com/qxp150280_333181_sespider/bi_o_kleen/soy_solvent_cleaner_and_degreaser_citrus.htm
It takes off kitchen grease and grime like nobody's business. I used it on the backsplash in my former apartment which had 10 years of gunk build up.
I bought a wonderful, new self-cleaning oven that didn't quite look all that clean after the four hours was up. The glass door looked like yours does. So I called the manufacturer. They suggested I use basic glass cleaner and Scotch Brite All Purpose NEVER SCRATCH wool soap pads. Worked like a charm. The oven door looks great all the time and I am a messy baker / roaster person. I don't mind cleaning the oven now because it stays looking brand new.
i've been cleaning for a sick friend and using her products (although in my own home i'm an ecover - non-smelly product kind of girl) and she had SOS pads with some sort of blue gunk in them. (yellow box) i swear she had never cleaned her oven in 5 years and almost everything came up with whatever chemicals were in that and water. i just scrubbed and everything came up. i had used the self cleaning feature first and that didn't work so well so i used her SOS pads - wearing gloves of course!
it wasn't perfect - maybe for perfect you should use the spray oven cleaner and then turn the self cleaner on. but it smells terrible unless there is a new product on the market ... i never clean my own oven. it's not that bad since i don't cook splattery - meat type things.
Maybe when you cook a bird you should just protect your oven walls?
I don't know exactly how you would go about doing this... maybe extra wide heavy duty aluminum foil?
The bottom and sides would probably be pretty easy to line with foil. Gravity would hold down the bottom piece, and maybe the trays would keep the ones on the sides secure? The back wall might be tough, but an extra long piece that you wrap around the door and hold in place with magnet on the outside of the oven might work.
It's certainly worth trying if you're having to clean your oven that often.
Extra bonus - no nasty cleaners, just pop your dirty aluminum in the recycling bin when its too dirty to reuse.
I have the exact same problem from roasting chickens. I just accepted my oven would be dirty most of the time, and then, occasionally, when it gets to be more than I can handle, I break out the paste and the no-scratch scrubby back of a sponge. It takes a LOT of scrubbing, and it comes out looking sort of okay.
What if you got the oven kind of warm, and then smeared on some ever-so-slightly diluted dishwashing soap, and let it sit for 10 minutes or so, and then got down to scrubbing.
I used plain dish soap and a scraper to clean 40 years of grease from behind the stove in a rental unit, and it worked really well.
You know with every crazy kitchen gadgets on the market they also need one to tackle this problem too. Maybe an oven size metal frame with removable silicone sheet sides you can place the item you're roasting inside, to contain the mess. Then just remove the pieces from the frame and place in the dishwasher. Even heat safe electrostatic sheets that adhere to oven surfaces would help, maybe disposable. I'm surprised there aren't more options for this problem on the market.
Any inventors out there?
I've used baking soda and vinegar before. My oven turned out pretty clean! I just sprayed on some water and then sprinkled the whole oven (well what I could reach) with baking soda and let it sit for 30 mins. Then I sprayed it with vinegar and starting wiping up grease and grim from my roasted chicken! Didn't smell horrific either =)
Now that the oven is fairly clean, I'd just regularly start using the self-cleaning function. It won't smoke as badly & if you go the full 4 1/2 hours you'll be a-ok. I don't roast that much, but I make dinner every night and I'm good with running the self-cleaning function about once a month. You'll probably want to go every two weeks or so. I really think it'll be your best bet. Just don't let it get too dirty to begin with.
My mother-in-law has a relatively new gas oven with a self-cleaning feature. The instructions tell you to remove pet birds from the kitchen lest the fumes kill them!
Use Barkeeper's Friend; I use it for any cleaning task from shining my All-Clad to scrubbing the cooktop range. My mom uses it to wipe down the stainless steel fridge door.
I've used baking soda and it wasn't that messy.
Cookwarejunkie - that's genius!
I use baking soda with a tiny bit of dishwashing detergent. I don't let it sit, though, just rub in circles (gently, not scrubbing). It works fine for me.
I have a self cleaning oven and it generally works well, but, it misses some spots so for those I liberally paint on Dawn dishwashing liquid - let that sit overnight - and then scrape it off with a plastic kitchen scraper (doesn't scratch). The degreaser in the dishwashing liquid works like a charm and there's no big mess for me to clean up. Needless to say... I tend only to go to those lengths when very picky company is coming to visit (like my elderly aunt who'll even wipe her fingers along a bath tub to see if there's a soap ring).
So when an oven gets dirty, do people just move out? That sounds so odd.
Ovens get dirty, fact o'life. I'd rather have roast chicken and an over to clean up, than no chicken and a sparkling clean over.
I also swear by Dirteze, which is probably too chemically for most people, but it works very fast.
I'm wondering if you could put the bird in a pre-heated French oven, similar to the no-knead bread method of preheating the cast-iron to create an oven within an oven. Then you would have something much easier to clean.
Did you re-wet the baking soda? It seems like the method is similar to a face mask in which the first application absorbs and then you re-wet to exfoliate.
Thanks, suez. I'll try that on my oven door.
Honestly, I clean with baking soda ALL the time - it is perfect for so many things. And looking at this, I don't see the benefit of letting it sit. I would think it would work better to make a paste and "scrub" with that, but not let it sit and harden. Usually a big benefit to cleaning with baking soda (mixed with salt or alone) is that it is abrasive enough to remove spots & stains but not so abrasive that it will scratch the surface you are cleaning. So, I don't see where sitting for some time plays into that.
I would try scrubbing in the future without letting it sit. If the paste doesn't seem to be effective on grease spots, try some vinegar as well as that may dissolve some of the grease (similar to glass cleaner).
Ummm, what's wrong with E-Z Off? It's made from Sodium Hydroxide or lye. Sodium Hydroxide gets used for all kinds of things, from making pretzels to making soap. It works, it's simple. What's the problem?
Cookiegenius -- I saw that kind of product at the local hardware chain (Canadian Tire). It's a black fibreglass sheet that sits at the bottom of the oven to catch splats. But something for the top and sides too would be brilliant.
I cleaned my oven last week with a combination of the ammonia-in-a-bowl-overnight method and the baking soda paste method. It did a bang-up job, though the ammonia fumes were rather intense.
I do what my mum always did: Smear the whole oven interior with soft soap (the real, natural kind. I can't name a brand, sorry I'm not from the US *lol* It's made from natural oils (e.g. hemp or pine) and is either yellow or green), set the oven to a 100 Celsius (whatever F equivalent that is), leave for 10-15 minutes then wipe it down with water. You have to get to know your oven for the exact time, and tougher dirt can require a little thicker layer of soap and longer time. =)
I cleaned my oven last week. The ammonia method did not work at all. I ended up using the fume-free version of Easy-Off, which still required quite a bit of elbow grease, but it did work. Since the pilot light keeps the oven warm all of the time, there is one spot right above the pilot that just never gets clean. I have never bothered cleaning the roof of the oven, and it's bad. My approach there is simply to avoid looking at it.
I've never bothered to clean my oven - I've moved every year out of the past 5, and it never seemed like a big enough thing to bother with - but I use baking soda as my regular cleaner for almost everything. I find that scrubbing my stove with a paste made of baking soda, salt, and water (but not letting it sit) works really well.
Since moving into our house with a fan-assisted oven this happens to us all the time - I can remember my Mum cleaning the oven in our childhood home about once every 5 years - it jsut didn't seem to get splattered like this - but with the oven I have now I get this all the time and it drives me mad - I have resorted to covering anything I cook in the oven with foil to stop the splatters - otherwise I'd be cleaning it every time I used the oven - nightmare!
Have you tried using Bar Keeper's Friend for the hard baked-on spots?
I'm not the person to turn to for oven cleaning advice (I jsut try to ignore it until it becomes a possible combustion danger), but Bar Keeper's Friend is an all-around gentle effective scrub. I would warm up the oven a little first, and maybe go with the liquid version of BKF.
This is reminding me I should do something about ours...
I don't know what you guys call it over there, but, I use this stuff that i clean my stainless steal frying pan with, its this power stuff that you put on it and then scrub with a damp cloth.. using it on stainless steal makes the cloth go black but on the glass it just removed the gunk, it also works well on the racks and everything else too, bit more difficult in the actual oven though, especially the back wall.
Am I the only one that thinks the 'before' picture looks like a clean oven?
Yeah, that's exactly what my oven looks like when I'm cleaning it. You do have to rewet it though, and it'll get all those last gumgies dissolved off. I guess I've just never been turned off by all the baking soda... I just lump it down the garbage disposal, where it also helps clear the drain. And I don't really care if some gets in the cracks... it helps prevent other gumgies from forming. I just keep wiping it off.
Then again, I also don't use (or therefore clean) my oven as often. I also don't worry terribly if my oven is dirty... still, I do wonder if there's a way to protect your oven from the chicken.
Incidentally, ammonia's not the most terrible thing for the environment. I just find it irritating to the sinuses... if it works for you, no problem.
I used a can of Sprite once, with amazing success.
(Made me think twice about drinking the stuff.)
I just cleaned my oven over the weekend. We have a self cleaning oven, but I had never used it before because it takes over 4 hours and last time I started it, my wife complained about the smell and I had to turn it off. So on Saturday, while she was at work, I let it do it's job. Wow, when I opened the oven, I was surprised to find small piles of gray ash where there had once been piles of baked on food. All I had to do was wipe out the dust.
Now for the brown stuff on the glass, I just used some degreaser and scrubbed with a sponge. I didn't get it all off, but it looks a lot better. I actually had to take my whole door apart too because once we had a spill that dripped down through the vent holes in the top of the door and got everywhere inside of the door.
As for the self-cleaning feature, a recent story in the Washington Post Home (or maybe Food?) section suggests using it sparingly, because the extreme incinerating heat of the self-cleaning cycle shortens the life of the oven (a problem that owners, rather than renters, probably take more to heart).
Also, in the summertime, heating up the house with the self-cleaning cycle seems like it would be a real waste! So I encourage you to keep hunting for a good solution that doesn't involve the self-cleaning cycle.
You could try using a paste of Borax and palmolive oxyclean. It is an excellent degreaser and have used it to get off years of gunk from my oven in a rental apt.
What about an orange cleaner product? I've used them to get bicycle grease off stuff and to clean engine parts of my scooter before.
I'm with the "why let it sit?" camp. Why not just use your paste as you would the Ecover scrub (which I also have and also don't find very useful). There's also Bon Ami...
I too read the exact same post about the baking soda and salt trick. We just bought a house and the oven needs a very good cleaning, so I had high hopes. It just made a mess for me too and I think the reason it "works" for LoriSF is it sounds like she cleans fairly regularly, and when all is said and done it's the elbow grease that really does the trick.
That said, my latest "find" for cleaning a very dirty kitchen is using non-phosphate dishwashing detergent. I don't even own a dishwasher yet, but I've been very happy using it on my recently acquired very dirty (original from 1962) kitchen - along with a teflon scrubber. Not as green as I had hoped to be able to achieve, but at least it works. Just be sure to wear gloves as you're not supposed to get it on your skin.
Just wiped up the soda-salt paste residue. (Thanks for the tip. I made sure I wiped away from the nooks and crevices.) Gave a quickie scrub with the steel wool and a few drops of water. Wiped clean with a paper towel.
AMAZING! Billy May ought to be pitching this stuff. Oh, right, there's no huge profit margin on baking soda and salt.
I wish I'd taken pictures. I didn't know the inside of my oven door light blue. Honest, I thought it was black.
I'll second the baking soda/vinegar combo.
I tackled our stovetop and oven a few months ago - none of the previous tenants in at least 50 years had any idea that these things are supposed to be cleaned every once in a while.
I spritzed the inside with water, smeared it with baking soda, left that about half an hour... then spritzed it all down with vinegar until it was bubbly and sizzling. Picked up just about everything!
It's tedious work, and I recommend having towels or something on the ground to catch all the crud that drips off because it can get pretty messy.
But I can say that this method cut through everything like a "real" stove or oven cleaner - just it cost less money (already had the main ingredients lying around) and it was much better for my lungs :)