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)
posted originally from: TheKitchn
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I just use baking soda and water--no salt. Sprinkle the baking soda over the mess and then sprinkle water over that (pre-mixing a paste makes sense for the sides, of course). Let sit overnight.
Yes, it does take some effort to wipe everything out the next day. But not that much (it really is just wiping).
The Mr. Clean magic erasers work really well at scrubbing off all sorts of weird grimy gunk. Paired with a solution of water and Dr. Bronner's soap, and a little elbow grease, and your oven door should look much better. It's how I cleaned our range hood after moving in.
I once learned how to clean an oven and I think it might have been the baking soda paste but I don't remember, I do know where I learned it. A great show on BBC America, How Clean Is Your House? I love that show and those two women have GREAT tips, I believe they have books with tips, something to check out next time at the library. I have a horrible spattered and nasty toaster oven that needs cleaning, I think I will try the baking soda paste on it.
Is Bon Ami too much like the baking soda salt combo? I find that it's finer and scrubs a bit more thoroughly than baking soda. I'd sprinkle a bit of Bon Ami onto the surface of the oven and go at it with a scrubby sponge. I might dip the scrubby sponge in really hot water and then squeeze it out first so that it's nice and hot and then scrub like crazy. I haven't tried this on baked-on oven gunk. But I have found it to be successful with baked-on gunk on casserole dishes.
Vinegar is good for cutting through grease. Try putting a baking pan with vinegar and water in there and heating it up for a while, the steam should help.
Try baking soda and vinegar. I had some baked on gunk arround the burners of my stove. Nothing cut through it. As a last resort I sprinkled baking soda on the gunk and waited a while. Scrubbed. Wasn't working. Then I poured vinegar straight from the bottle on the baking soda encrusted gunk. It bubbled and I was able to wipe every thing clean.
I was sold on the cleaning with vinegar thing after that.
If that doesn't work try Ecostore cream cleaner and some elbow grease. That worked on the door of my toaster oven.
I sprinkle the baking soda down on the surface to be cleaned, then spray with vinegar or a vinegar/water combo from a water bottle until it is moist enough to scrub. It seems to be a bit less messy than when I tried to mix a paste and then apply it. I am going to try to add salt to the baking powder next time.
Whoa. Maybe it's possible to use too much of that baking soda, you know? Sometimes a little goes a long way.
I use baking soda and a squirt of Ecover dish soap on a wet sponge to handle grease that is still a little wet (i.e., drippings on roasting pans, spaghetti sauce film on tupperware or dishes, etc.). Works like a charm. Stuff always comes out squeaky clean.
For cooked-on, crusty grease, I use Barkeeper's Friend. It's made with oxalic acid (found in rhubarb, sorrel, spinach, etc.), and it's recommended for all kinds of cookware surfaces. I sprinkle some on a wet sponge, rub down, let sit, scrub a bit, then wipe off. It's absolutely brilliant for exactly the kind of cleaning you're trying to do.