Many people dread cleaning the oven. If your oven is coated in grease or baked on food, the task can seem daunting. However, it is actually fairly simple to do and does not take much time at all to complete, especially when you know the tricks we share below. Some of the tips below are even from renowned cleaning sensation @LittleMissMops known from Instagram and Youtube who is a professional cleaner in the United Kingdom and regularly cleans some truly gruesome ovens for her job.
There are a few things to consider before you start cleaning your oven, as they will affect the process that will be required to clean it. These things are as follows:
- Does the oven have an automatic cleaning feature?
- Is the oven an electric range or a gas range?
- Which parts of the oven are removable?
Cleaning the Racks and Range
Cleaning the Racks
- Remove the oven racks and place them in a sink full of warm, soapy water. If the sink is not large enough for this and no storage tub is availale to use, they often will fit in a bathtub or if necessary, a trash bag can be improvised with (though it’s best to keep the bag in the shower or outside for easy drainage of the water).
- Add some liquid dish soap to the water to help loosen the grease.
- If there are any difficult to clean spots on the burners or racks, you can leave them to soak in the soapy water for about 20 minutes. That should loosen any stubborn baked-on food so that it can be scrubbed away. Little Miss Mops recommends that you be sure to finish cleaning the racks and remove them from the water before it fully cools as the loosened grease will harden up again in the cooler temperature.
If your oven has wire rack holders on the sides, you may be able to simply pop them out and clean them right along with the racks. Here is a video by Ms. Mops showing their removal.
Cleaning the Burners and Knobs
If
you have a traditional gas or propane stove:
Remove the burner covers and drip trays and place them in the sink full of warm water. You can use the water you used to clean the racks, or replace it if it has become too dirty or cool. Be sure to only use a non-scratch scrubber if scrubing is needed as the painted-on labels on the knob dials could scratch off and metal trays tend to scratch easily. Do not try to use a knife or sharp object to scrape them.
You may occasionally need to clean the surface burners. They are fairly easy to remove if your stovetop lifts up. You can clean them in the soapy water just as you did the burner covers. Use a brush or pin to clean the holes if necessary. Never place anything flammable inside them.
To dry the surface burners, they can be dried with a hair dryer on hot air or an easier method is to place them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. It is important that all of the water is removed from inside the tubes. Use an oven mitt or hot pad to remove them from the oven. Replace them when they are cool.
Keep in mind that you must be very careful with a gas stove that you do not accidentally turn on the gas! This recently happened to Little Miss Mops while she was cleaning an oven, so you know if it can happen to a pro, it can happen to anyone.
If you have an electric stove:
Please note: Before you begin cleaning the stovetop, make sure that it is completely cool in order to avoid burning yourself. Be sure that the burners are securely turned to the off position, as some cleaners may be flammable, and never leave bottles of cleaner or paper towels sitting on the stovetop.
Remove the reflector bowls and place them in the warm, soapy water in the sink in order to scrub them. Again, use caution, as the reflector bowls can scratch easily when you scrub them. After removing the reflector bowls, wipe the area around the heating coils, including underneath the ring. You do not need to clean the heating coils themselves.
If the knobs are removable, you can take them off, but do not place them in the soapy water. Wipe them with a cloth and use an all-purpose kitchen cleaner if necessary. Little Miss Mops recommends removing the knobs (“pop your knobs” as she likes to say) regularly (at least every few cleans) as grease and food debris can build up under the edges of the knobs to a shocking level.
Cleaning the Cooktop
We have created a full guide for How to Clean a Stovetop with recommendations for the various types: ceramic/glass or electric coil. There are also many problems that can affect stovetops which regular cleaning won’t remove, so if you’re having trouble, be sure to check these out or search the site for others that you may need:
- How to Clean Burnt Food from a Glass Stovetop
- How to Remove Burnt-On Grease from a Ceramic Stove
- How to Restore a Dulled Electric Smooth-Top Stove Top
Cleaning a Self-Cleaning Oven
The process you need to use to clean the oven depends on whether or not your oven is self-cleaning. For a self-cleaning oven, it is basically a two-step process.
- Lock the oven door and select the option for “clean.”
- Let the oven do its magic.
However, those are the steps for regularly using the self-cleaning cycle. If it has been a while since you last cleaned the oven, it’s a good idea to wipe out as much food, debris or grease as possible before starting the self-cleaning cycle to prevent a fire and also prevent the food from baking onto the floor of the oven. After the cleaning is complete, you may need to wipe out some ash that will be left from any debris that was not removed prior to cleaning.
Be sure to keep children and pets away from the oven during the cleaning cycle. It can get very hot and it may not smell too pleasant. You may want to stay away too. Also, it is not advised to use the self-cleaning feature if you have pet birds as the fumes could harm them.
Keep in mind also that not all oven racks are meant to stay in the oven during the self-cleaning process. Be sure to check the manual for your specific oven or if that is not available, inspect the racks for any rubber pieces, which would indicate that they cannot go through the high heat of the self-clean process. Even if the racks do not have rubber parts, they still may not be safe to keep in for the self-cleaning process; in particular, the metal could discolor. It’s always best to clean the racks by hand unless you’re sure it’s safe to keep them in. Also, be sure to remove any oven liners or tin foil that you have placed in the oven for protection.
Cleaning a Non-Self-Cleaning Oven
Cleaning with Oven Cleaner
Your oven still has a reliable cleaning mechanism; this would be you and a can of oven cleaner. Every oven cleaner is unique, and many are very caustic products, so be sure to fully read the label of your chosen product before you begin. In particular, be sure to follow all safety precautions for your oven cleaner, including ventillating the area before use and wearing gloves and protective clothing. When ready, continue with the steps below (or avoid using traditional oven cleaner altogether by skipping to the next section on Cleaning with Ammonia). If needed, the oven door can be removed for you to more easily reach the back of the oven. Removing the door is usually very easy. To do so, simply lift it off of its hinges at a slight angle.
- First, remove any loose crumbs from the oven using a cloth or paper towel. If you wipe the crumbs directly into a garbage can or dust pan, you will avoid unnecessary clean-up later.
- Next, spray the oven with oven cleaner and follow the directions on the can. You can ask an appliance store employee or call the company that manufactured your oven to find one that meets your needs and specifications. Use paper towels to scoop out the oven cleaner and gunk from the oven as using a cloth will require a lot of rinsing and likely stain the cloth.
Cleaning with Ammonia
If you don’t want to use oven cleaner, you can use ammonia. This also works well for cleaning the sides and roof of the oven. Wear rubber gloves to prevent a skin reaction and be sure to use ammonia only in a well-ventilated area. See Wikipedia for more ammonia safety information.
- Pour one cup of ammonia in a bowl and then place a rag or sponge in the bowl.
- Apply the ammonia to any rough spots on the bottom or sides of the oven if needed.
- Close the door to the oven and let it sit for about 30 minutes.
- When the 30 minutes is up, simply wipe out the rest of the oven with water. Make sure the ammonia is rinsed thoroughly, unless you’d like this aroma added to your food in the future.
Cleaning the Oven Door
The inside of the oven door can be cleaned the same way as the rest of the oven: by applying oven cleaner or ammonia and then scrubbing off the grease. However, there is another method that Little Miss Mops uses that works extremely well: a window scraper (also known as a razor blade). The stuck on grease and gunk and simply be scraped off the glass with a window scraper. You can see how easy this process is in the video below by Little Miss Mops. Never use the scraper on the inside (enamel) parts of the oven though; only on the glass.
If your oven has a door with double panes of glass that needs to be cleaned inside, use the guide How to Clean Inside Double Glass Oven Doors.
Cleaning the Outside of the Oven
Use an all-purpose kitchen cleaner and a rag or paper towel to wipe the rest of the surfaces of the oven clean. In order to avoid a streaky appearance, you should clean the window with a glass cleaner or a mixture of one part rubbing alcohol, one part white vinegar and two parts water. Just apply some of the cleaner to your rag or paper towel and that should take care of it.
Can Brillo or S.O.S pads be used in the oven?
No, steel wool pads should never be used in an oven as they can scratch the enamel. Use only non-scratching sponges or cloths when cleaning inside the oven, such as nylon scrubbers.
Prevent oven cleaning in the future
One way to avoid frequent oven cleanings is to prevent spills from happening. Use pans that are large enough to accommodate the food that’s in them. Also, clean up spills as they happen if they are on the stovetop. This is not recommended if they occur inside the hot oven of course. But try to wipe those up same day.
Oven liners can help with inner-oven spills, as can lining the oven with tin foil or placing a baking sheet on the bottom rack of the oven. However, do not ever place these items on the bottom of a newer oven; newer oven models have the heating element below the oven floor rather than inside the oven, which heats the oven floor up much higher than in older ovens and can cause the silicone oven liner to melt or tin foil to fuse to the oven bottom. Take it from the hundreds of comments on our post How to Remove Melted Aluminum Foil from the Oven; this is not something easy to fix!
Additional Tips
- If there are young children in your home and the knobs on the oven are within their reach, pop the knobs off and keep them near the stove in a bowl or other container that is out of reach for the children.
- Grease build up in or on the oven is a fire hazard; it can literally catch fire and spread to the rest of the kitchen or house from there. Be sure to clean the oven regularly to prevent this dangerous buildup.
- Ventillation is essential when cleaning an oven, so never take on the task at a time when ventillation will be unavailable (such as being unable to open a window during a snow or rain storm).
- Oven cleaner usually contains lye or other caustic cleaners; be careful where you set the can as if could drip onto the surface and damage it (particularly stone countertops or wood floors).
Sources
- In the Kitchen with Heloise by Heloise
- Green Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck
- Clean It Fast, Clean It Right by Jeff Bredenberg
- Home Comforts: The Art & Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson
- Carli Ann James, a professional cleaner known as @LittleMissMops on Instagram and YouTube
- Check out the awesome (really awesome!!!) video trailer for Miss Mop’s Youtube channel:
- Check out the awesome (really awesome!!!) video trailer for Miss Mop’s Youtube channel:
I have been cleaning my oven racks for years using this great tip: Take the racks outside and put them in a large plastic garbage bag. Spray oven cleaner inside the bag on the racks. Turn the bag over and coat the other side of the racks to make sure all the foam is on both sides of the racks. Tie the bag and leave it while your oven is being cleaned. Take out the racks and rinse them off under the hose. Baked on grease is all gone!
As well as the large trash bag tip (which is very good)…warm up the oven to about 200 degrees and turn it off. Now, place in an oven safe Pyrex bowl with a couple of cups of ammonia, and leave it overnight. You can leave it for a few hours instead, but, overnight is even better. Watch how the grease just wipes right off!! Heavily crusted spots may need a little help. 🙂
If you want to clean a broiler pan…use the trash bag tip. If you don’t want to use oven cleaner, then put a cup or two of ammonia in the broiler pan, put the top of the broiler pan back on and place it in the large trash bag, twist it closed and seal it with a twist tie, and let it stay for a few hours or overnight.
I have an electric stove with one of those seamless flat surfaces. I simply use dish soap and a few rags to clean off the top. It may take a few washings to get grease off, though. Make sure you don’t get everything too wet though, or water may drip down the sides into those impossibly small cracks.
I spilled pumpkin in my oven at Thanksgiving, and thought I cleaned it up sufficiently. However, over the past month, every time I use the oven, it seems to acquire more burns, and the smoke alarms keep going off. I tried Easy-Off last night and this morning, but it doesn’t seem to get all the crud off. It also affects my burners. The flames burn high and red, so I put my beans in my crock pot. Should propane stoves be cleaned differently from gas ovens? I never had a problem with natural gas.
I recently moved into a house that had been abandoned for two years. The oven works great, although it is an older model (possibly ’70s), but I am renting and even if I wanted to replace it, the kitchen size makes that impossible. My dilemma is that every time I use the oven, it has an awful smell – my brother has told me it was the coils because of non-usage. Is it possible to remove the smell safely? Should the coils be replaced? The smell is almost nauseating. I read and tried to “cook” vanilla, but it still smells! Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I would strongly encourage everyone to not use strong oven cleaners with their accompanying noxious chemical smell to clean out their ovens.
I would further encourage people to not use the self-cleaning feature on their ovens. It uses a lot of electricity, produces unpleasant, unhealthy fumes, and is simply not friend to the environment or the lungs of you, your family and pets.
Cleaning the oven is incredibly simple with one super ingredient: baking soda.
Just make a paste of baking soda by mixing the baking soda in a bowl with water, adding and mixing baking soda until you have a consistency similar to pancake batter. Then, simply pour some of the paste onto the bottom of the oven and let it sit for 30 minutes. Use a tough (but not too rough) scouring pad and a fair bit of elbow grease, and you should have the oven clean in no time. For the walls of the oven, simply mix a lighter baking soda consistency in a spray bottle. Spray the walls, wait 30 minutes and elbow grease away. For the oven racks, execute the same procedure as for the walls. If 30 minutes isn’t enough time to cut through the grease, simply add some more mixture and wait longer. Some people apply the baking soda mixture at night, go to sleep, and do the cleaning the following day. That’s probably only necessary if there are seriously hardened food particulates stuck inside the oven. In most cases, 30 minutes should be fine.
So, cleaning the oven can be super easy and super safe.
Forget the chemicals and the self-cleaner.
Your health and the environment will thank you.
Cheers.
For baked in grease (you know, the gunky-looking sticky stuff): spray some white vinegar onto the baking soda paste… wipes off with an ease I’d never seen… Works really well for your cooker hood and the glass pane on the oven. 🙂
I was just wanting to know how to clean the top surface wall of the oven. Do you know if there is a special product to help clean that top wall in the oven? I have no muscles to turn my wrist facing up. I am thinking of making a hanger type scrubber, but am scared to get a shock. Please help. So frustrated only on this part. As for the all the other walls of the oven, I have no problem cleaning them. Thanks.
Anita,
There are specialty oven brushes that usually have a bristle brush and a metal scraper. They often have a long handle so they can be used to clean a pizza oven. Here is an example. Since you might not need the extra long handle, you could try using a back scrubber for the bristle brush and back scratcher as a scraper. Another idea is to use a brush for cleaning snow off a car; those usually come with ice scrapers too, which might work. Or you could use a spackling knife as a scraper.
I like to leave some tin foil at the bottom to catch falling food/grease for easy cleanup later.
Michelle,
Although the foil idea may work for your current oven, I strongly suggest that you use caution if you visit a friend or relative, or buy a new oven, etc. Newer ovens are not made to work with foil. Read some of the comments on this post, How to Remove Melted Aluminum Foil from the Oven, and you will quickly see what I’m talking about.
I have a gas stove and am wondering if I can put the stovetop burners in the oven during the self clean process and get them clean?
I clean my oven with soap and SOS pads, but it’s still smoking. What should I do?
Myra,
This is the article that you need: My Newly Cleaned Oven is Smoking.
Further to the baking soda tip, if you smear a baking soda mixture over the inside of your oven, it prevents grease from sticking to it and can usually be wiped off.
When I got my new stove, I vowed to keep the oven clean. I wipe it out after every use practically. My oven is clean. However, does anyone know how I can restore the shine to the oven floor interior, which would aid in keeping it clean?
We have a Sears Elite propane range. The oven self clean works fine except for the inside door glass. There is no mention in the owner’s manual of how to clean this. Any suggestions?
Bill,
This is the article that you need: How to Clean Inside Double Glass Oven Doors.
I am not reading enough information to help me finish cleaning my PROPANE oven. In a very large cooking sheet with deeper sides than the typical cookie sheet, I was removing cooked bacon from the oven. The pan was not overloaded with too much bacon, but as always, there was lots of grease. With the help of my dog’s cold noise, the pan went flying and the bacon, pan & tons of grease landed upside down throughout the oven & looked like a crime scene. Grease ran right through the open slates that leads to the 400 degree flame. I turned my propane oven off immediately. I took most of today cleaning the oven and drawer, etc. I found I had to remove by drill the metal plates right down to the igniter. Grease was within 1/2″ from where the flame sets. I paper toweled the grease away, but that doesn’t clean it off the metal. How do I safely clean this metal portion surrounding the igniter area. Please HELP, people who are smarter than me.
Diane,
There are two things that would work: 1) Soaking up the grease with an absorbent, such as cornmeal, or 2) using a grease-fighting dish liquid like Dawn. To use the cornmeal, just sprinkle a generous amount (about 1/4″ thick) over the area and let it sit for about an hour, then sweep or vacuum it up. To use the dish liquid, just wash the parts with the soapy water, then once the grease is removed, wipe the area with a damp cloth to rinse off any soap residue.
Obviously the cornmeal would be difficult to use on a vertical surface, but you could try wrapping a vertical surface with plastic wrap and sprinkling the cornmeal into the plastic wrap; this will require two people: one to hold the base of the plastic wrap in place and press the plastic wrap up vertically as the cornmeal falls in place, and the second person to sprinkle the cornmeal. If that’s not an option, you can try using paper towels again, but let them act as an absorbent by taping them in place and leaving them there for about 30 minutes; use a small stack of them. It may take several applications with the absorbent to soak up all the remaining grease. Other absorbents that would work besides cornmeal are flour, wheat germ, sawdust, or baking soda.
Good luck!
My mother has breathing problems and can’t tolerate the smells of most oven cleaners, ammonia or vinegar. That being said, I still have a dirty oven and wonder if I can clean the entire interior and the glass with an SOS pad, a razor scrapper, and some hot water? Will this damage the oven’s enamel surfaces?
Any help would be great.
Tammy
Tammy,
The steel wool S.O.S pads could scratch the oven enamel, so it would be better to use one of the S.O.S non-scratch scrubbers.
Source: S.O.S – FAQS
Baking soda and water and make it a paste-like texture. Apply it to the whole oven, let it set for 10 mins and then use hot water and a grease-fighting dish soap (I prefer Dawn) and clean it while the baking soda is still on it and it will clean better than any product ever made!!
I did these similar steps, but sprayed a mixture of Dawn & vinegar on the baking soda, then cleaned the whole oven with a wet towel. Why is it smoking when I turn on the oven?
Sam,
It could be that some of the built-on grease in the oven was loosened and moved around, or that the cleaning prodicts were not fully rinsed off. If you don’t see any gunk or residue, particukarly on the heating element (or in a newer oven, on the oven floor), then just rinse out the oven again with a damp cloth or two. Be sure to rotate the clothto a clean area as the cleaner residue transfers to it. Good luck!
Source: How To Clean Stuff – My Newly Cleaned Oven is Smoking