A well used oven is a treasured resource with the convenience and versatility it brings to your cooking. Baking, broasting, broiling, roasting or toasting, your oven can accommodate a wide variety of your favorite recipes. Delicious homemade cooking doesn’t come without a price, since your oven can become greasy, and because the inside of your oven isn’t likely something you clean as part of your daily routine, it can tend to build up. Heat from subsequent use enhances the problem, making it stick firmly to the surrounding oven walls. The design of the oven means cleaning isn’t easy, even when you’re using convenient store bought oven cleaning products.
Fortunately, using a simple straightforward approach is readily available: steaming your oven with vinegar. This oven cleaning option is eco-friendly and requires little energy from you or your local power company, since it’s more energy efficient than a self-cleaning oven, without complex instructions to follow from harsh cleaning products.
Steps for Cleaning Your Oven with Vinegar
Prepare Oven for Cleaning
Remove all debris and crumbs from your oven. Anything left behind will burn the next time the oven turns on. Remove the racks as well at this time; your oven racks will be cleaned separately so there’s no reason to heat them unnecessarily. Removing them also creates an open and unobstructed space in your oven for cleaning.
Heat a Water and Vinegar Mix
Find a large oven-safe pot and fill it halfway with water. Then, add half of a cup of vinegar to it. The oven-safe pot or plate you choose to use should be large, but not too deep, probably more like the depth of a deep frying pan, to aid in optimum steaming. Warm oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing the water to boil and begin to steam.
The Steam Does it’s Job
Allow the steam to accumulate until it encapsulates the whole oven, then turn off your oven but don’t open your oven door, allow the steaming to continue for about 30 minutes. This wait provides the vinegar ample time to seep through the residue in the oven’s walls and loosen them up.
Remove Steam Source
After 30 mins, the temperature will cool down enough to allow you to safely remove the pot or pan you used from the oven. Even then, maintain a safe distance from the steam when opening your oven door, and use mitts to safely remove the steam source. Be ready with your cleaning supplies to wipe up oven walls before residue dries up again.
Wipe Down Your Oven Walls
Add more cleaning power by using a mixture of water and vinegar in a spray bottle and apply to your oven walls. Wipe them clean using a microfiber cloth. If you need more scrubbing power in areas, dip a few towels in undiluted vinegar and rub spots gently.
Completely wipe all sections of each wall clean, which the vinegar makes easy to.
Allow Oven to Dry
The best part of using vinegar is that it doesn’t require rinsing. Allow it to air dry completely. The vinegar smell needn’t be a concern since it dissipates quickly. This oven cleaning approach has antimicrobial properties, improving your oven’s hygiene.
Conclusion
All you need are these simple steps and readily available ingredients to get your oven sparkling clean with little hassle. Steam does most of the work for you, and in the meantime, you can do other important things. If this is extra or still too much work for you, your oven is quite dirty, so you doubt the vinegar steaming will work, a professional house cleaning service is your best solution. Whatever housekeeping needs you have for your home or vacation rental in Melbourne and surrounding areas, eMaids is your trusted source of service. A trained and efficient team delivers modern cleaning with a personal touch to your oven and all your select cleaning needs. Start your quote now!
