Every good housewife wishes order and cleanliness always reigned in her kitchen. Sometimes it’s not easy to maintain a proper environment. Cleaning and combating stubborn fat left over from several dinners requires a lot of time and effort. The hardest thing in the kitchen is to maintain the cleanliness of household appliances directly used for cooking. How to clean the oven at home - this article will tell.
Cleaning the oven is hard but necessary
When it comes to cleaning the kitchen, the most unpleasant duty for housewives is, perhaps, cleaning the oven. Firstly, washing the oven is at least inconvenient, due to its design features: it is deep and is often located low, and its surface is embossed. Secondly, the very nature of the pollution inside household appliances is such that it is not possible to clean them easily. Burnt fat, often old, is usually the most difficult to remove. In addition, if you do not remove it after each cooking, it begins to fade and smoke. Sooner or later, you have to tackle such a difficult task as cleaning the oven. First of all, the hostess raises the question of how to clean the oven quickly at home and what means to use for the best result. Are all the "miraculous" remedies that manufacturers praise so effective?
How to clean the oven?
It is clear that you can always use chemicals to wash any surfaces in the kitchen. You can apply them, including for ovens. But if you familiarize yourself with the composition of these funds, especially those that are designed to dissolve fat and soot, it becomes a little uneasy. These substances are simply toxic. Of course, you can use them only with rubber gloves, but this is not the main thing. Where is the guarantee that chemicals can be completely washed off after cleaning? And how dangerous are their pairs?
These questions make housewives look for other ways to clean the oven at home.
Comparison of gas and electric ovens
Cookers are of the same type (the hob and oven work on the same type of fuel) and combined. I would like to immediately find out the question of whether a gas or electric oven is better to clean? Indeed, today in the market of household appliances there is such a large selection of different models. Obviously, since open fires are used in gas ovens for cooking, and the supplied gas clearly contains various impurities and additives, which burn up soot, it will become much more polluted and it will be more difficult to clean it, respectively. In electrical appliances, the degree of contamination will most likely depend on the cooking method, i.e. whether various sleeves, foil or paper are used for baking. If used, then particles of products will not fall on its surface and will not burn, and the question of how to clean the oven in an electric stove will rarely arise. And that is a plus.
As for other operational characteristics, when choosing which oven, gas or electric, it is better to take into account that the first option is definitely more economical: gas is cheaper than electricity, and the appliances themselves, as a rule, have a more affordable price. But the electric device has much greater functionality, and the variety of assortment in this case is much higher. Yes, and such a criterion as the safety of electrical appliances in comparison with gas equipment makes consumers often choose this option.
Since it is gas ovens that are characterized by a high degree of contamination, the problem most often arises of how to clean the oven of a gas stove.
Methods for cleaning ovens at home
So, if we consider only harmless methods of how to clean the oven at home, excluding the use of hazardous chemicals, then we can distinguish the following options:
1. Use of a solution of citric or acetic acid. The solution is applied to the entire surface of the oven with a sponge, after 2-3 hours it is thoroughly washed off with water. This method perfectly removes not only traces of fat, but also the smell.
2. Cleaning the oven with soda with citric or acetic acid. It is better not to mix the ingredients, but treat the surface with vinegar first, and then pour soda on especially contaminated places. As a result, a chemical reaction with the release of hydrogen that is completely harmless to others, but fatal to fat, will begin. After an hour, it remains just to treat the surface first with a mild detergent, and then with clean water. Alternatively, as a cleaner, you can use a baking baking powder for dough - it just has soda and citric acid in it.
3. The use of ammonia can also often be found among tips for housewives on how to clean the oven from soot. This method is quite effective, but not quite comfortable, since the ammonia solution has a pungent odor. Not only gloves, but also a respirator will be required. After half an hour of exposure to liquid ammonia on the surface, the solution should be washed off with great care, and ventilate the oven.
4. Steaming. It is very convenient to use a steam generator for this purpose. But due to its absence, a container with water and detergent added to it is simply put in the oven, turned on at a mode of 100-150 degrees. After 30-40 minutes, the gas is turned off, the surface is slightly cooled and washed off easily, since under the influence of hot vapors of the detergent, all fat and all dirt lag behind the walls of the oven.
5. Salt or a mixture of salt with soda. The salt is poured into the oven, heated, after which it absorbs all the grease and dirt and becomes brown. After removing the spent salt, the surface is washed. You can also make a paste of soda, salt and water and grate the oven with it. It is better to leave this mixture for exposure longer, for example at night.
6. A mixture of laundry soap, table vinegar and baking soda will help answer the question of how to clean the oven in an electric stove and remove the most old stains of dirt and grease not only from the surface of the appliance, but also from the baking sheet and wire racks. It is enough to carefully rub them with this mixture and leave for a couple of hours.
All of the above methods can be applied comprehensively. For example, first treat the surface with vinegar, and then with soda or salt. To clean the oven glass, you can successfully apply the same baking soda, abundantly applying it with a damp sponge to the glass. After half an hour, the glass is washed.
Before applying this or that cleaning method, remove the grates and trays and clean the oven of dry debris.
When the oven is cleaned by itself
Leading manufacturers of household appliances are continuously improving their products. So a useful function appeared that allows you to reduce efforts for manual cleaning of such household appliances, or even completely abandon it - the function of self-cleaning the oven.
Pyrolytic method
So, the first option of automatic cleaning of grease and any contaminants greatly affects the cost of a household appliance in the direction of appreciation. It consists in the fact that the oven is heated to a temperature of about 500 degrees. At the same time, all contaminants burn up and turn into ashes, which, after self-cleaning, is easy to remove. It is clear that this function greatly complicates the design, because you will need refractory materials, additional insulation for the outer surface of the device, as well as the possibility of special removal and filtration of smoke that is formed as a result of combustion.
Catalytic method
Its essence is that the walls of the oven are covered with special enamel, which holds fats and breaks them down into water and carbon. The process occurs automatically during cooking. Manual cleaning in this case will still be needed, since the bottom of the oven is not coated with catalytic enamel. Another disadvantage of this method of self-cleaning is that this smart enamel will collapse within 4-5 years, and then the catalysis function will cease to function.
Conclusion
If it is not possible to purchase a household appliance with a self-cleaning function, it is advisable to regularly clean the oven, both electric and gas, using the above methods or modern household chemicals. Thus, difficult stains of burnt fat and soot can be avoided.