Tips & hacks to make oven cleaning easy

With the festive season now over, the chances are that your oven has seen some serious use recently with the Christmas turkey and roasted vegetables likely to have made your appliance a little grimier than usual.  A dirty oven can absorb heat and makes it less efficient which ultimately affects the quality of your cooking.  It’s usually recommended that ovens are cleaned every three to six months, or more often as needed, so we have helped put together a little guide to helping to make yours spotless once again.

The easy solution would be to have an oven with a Pyrolytic self-clean function which helps to remove stubborn oven grease with minimal effort.  This works as the oven temperature rises to 500°C heat which breaks down the grime and makes it as easy as wiping the debris left behind with just a damp cloth or wet sponge when it has sufficiently cooled. For safety, the door locks throughout the entire Pyrolytic cleaning process as such high temperatures are reached. It couldn’t be easier to make your oven looking spotless and almost as good as new with virtually no hassle!  Hisense offer this technology across our cooking range which can be viewed here.

Where this isn’t an option however, we’ve come up with some options which could still help alleviate the rigors of relying on good old elbow grease: –

• - Start by using a vacuum cleaner. Why spend time tirelessly wiping out little pieces of burnt food – simply turn on your vacuum cleaner and quickly and easily remove any unwanted debris build up before the real clean starts. Goes without saying, make sure your oven is not warm or has cooled down fully.
• - Clean the shelves by soaking them. The trickiest part of this tip is the time taken to get the shelves clean, but it really is an effortless way to get them shiny and new looking.  Start by laying down some old towels in your bath to prevent the shelves from potentially scratching the tub, gently placing the shelves on top and filling the bath with hot water until the racks are sufficiently immersed with water.  Next, add a couple dishwasher tablets!  We use dishwasher tablets regularly to clean a lot of our pots and pans, and they work just as effectively on oven shelves.  The shelves should ideally be left for at least four or five hours, so you might want to consider leaving them overnight.  Once fully soaked for the required time, it really should be quite easy to wipe off any stains which should now be quite soft (although you might need to use a non-abrasive sponge or brush with some cleaner for any remaining tough spots).  Give them a final rinse, dry completely, and set aside until you’ve finished cleaning the rest of the oven.
• - Make your own cleaner. This is a great hack for removing unwanted and stubborn stains which comes with the added benefit of saving you time and money!  Add white vinegar to baking soda which will create a natural cleaning paste (no need to use any harsh chemicals) and rub inside the oven.  Leave it for a good half hour to sink in, and then simply wipe away the dirt and residue quickly and easily.
• Use an old toothbrush. Believe it or not, an old toothbrush can be an invaluable oven cleaning tool for those occasions where you need to clean those hard to reach areas and helps you to get right in to the corners of the oven.
• - Focus on the oven door. Oven doors can over time become a little unsightly if grease is allowed to build up. Ideally, you would like the door or interior glass to be removable so that it too can be soaked in the bath with hot water and dishwasher tablets.  It’s likely though that the door will require more work to get clean, and we recommend trying to use a glass scraper which is ideal for helping to remove tough stains.
• - Use a lemon and water mix. By now your oven should be starting to glisten and look like it did when you first bought it. Before you start putting all the shelves back in to the oven, we would recommend giving the interior one final rub down with a fresh lemon and water mix.  Not only is this eco-friendly, but it will help to give the oven one final clean, picking up any left-over dirt or baking soda residue, and leaving your oven with a clean citrus fresh fragrance.