It’s one of those household cleaning jobs you probably put off for far too long. Then one day, weeks later than you should, you open your oven door and it suddenly hits you: the oven is full of grease and grime and needs a deep clean.
Ovens get very dirty quite quickly, but thanks to their dark interiors, you might not notice straight away, especially as the grime builds up bit by bit over time.
Little food spills, spitting oil, condensation and various bits of grime and grease can quickly lead to baked-on stains, rusting racks and a foggy, opaque door that’s useless for actually looking through to check on your food. Not to mention, of course, the health issues that come with cooking in a grotty and germ-ridden appliance.
While supermarkets and home stores are both chock full of various expensive cleaning solutions for tackling dirty oven grease, including spill removers, germ killing sprays and other chemical based kitchen cleaners, they are all beaten by one thing – washing up liquid.
According to Oven Gleamers, experts in cleaning ovens, Fairy washing-up liquid is the most effective way to clean an oven, although other washing-up brands will almost certainly work just as well.
They said: “I would suggest using a microfibre cloth and Fairy Washing Up Solution – or any washing up liquid, but Fairy Washing Up Liquid tends to be best – to wipe out the inside of the oven on a regular basis (the cloth needs to be wet).
“Washing up solution works very well on pans and racks too; put them in a hot washing up water solution (again Fairy is best) and you leave them in for 30 minutes and then use a steel scourer to remove the grease, and then dry with a tea towel.
“The only problem you may have will be getting the racks or pans into your sink so you could buy oven rack soaking tray from Lakeland to get around this problem.”
They added that many caustic oven cleaners, like those which have you leave your trays and racks in a bag overnight, can cause damage to your oven if you don’t follow the instructions precisely, and can also be a risk to pets or pregnant women due to the strong chemicals within.
So the best cleaner really is just a simple bottle of washing-up liquid.