There are several ways to clean your oven depending on the amount of built up grease and burnt on carbon. You may have also a build up of grease on the window of your oven which you may find difficult to remove yourself. Also racks and trays can be difficult to clean if they are black.
Method 1: General Maintenance Cleaning of Oven
Say you have just had your oven professionally cleaned by an oven cleaning company such as ourselves, OvenGleam, or your oven is new and you want to keep it clean. 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.
Method 2: Attempting a Deep Clean Yourself using a Shop bought Caustic Cleaner
Buy a caustic oven cleaning product in the shop; examples are: Oven Pride Oven Cleaner (you find the review of the video interesting: TV's Worst Adverts) , Mr Muscle Oven Cleaner, Oven Mate Oven Cleaner from Lakeland. PLEASE follow the instructions and in addition I would really recommend that you wear some eye protection which is advised on the products in small writing but not generally in the instructions but in the Health and Safety Guide. The Homepride video suggest that it is so easy to use but you need to read every word on the bottle and box carefully. The best way to clean your racks yourself is as in Method 1 above. If you use the Homepride product and the bag to clean your racks and there is a hole in your bag you can do a lot of damage to yourself and kitchen. Make sure your pets are not in the same room and also if you are pregnant I would think about another method to get your oven cleaned see Method 3 and 4. If you get any of the cleaning product on yourself put lots of water on it immediately. Also some of the products suggest that you can leave the cleaning product in the oven overnight. I would suggest you don't do this as this will damage the enamel of the oven. In all the product I like the best out of these is the lakeland one because it is applied with a brush which is in the box.
Method 3: Use a non caustic cleaner
An example of this is Astonish Oven Cleaner which is the product I would recommend as its the one we use ourselves! Follow the instructions. You may have problems with it though if the grease is very thick in your oven – there is a knack to it all! Just call us out as per Method 4
Method 4: Book An Oven Cleaning Professional To Do it For You
Give us a ring now 0800 45 82 357 and book your oven into be cleaned! We don't use caustic in the home, and we clean up after ourselves and leave your oven looking like new all sparkling and gleaming.
We have noticed that sometimes the inside glass on the doors of certain makes of oven comes away from its fixings. That is the glass either comes off a bit and rattles when you open and close the door or the glass comes out completely. Sometimes the glass falls out when we clean it but not often as we look out for the problem now and can clean around it. In the five years that we have been operating we have cleaned in the region of 6,000 ovens and we have done this fix about 5 times. So not a common problem. If your oven is in warranty or you have taken out an extended warranty don't touch the oven and call them out.
So the method of fixing an oven door when its glass has either fallen out or become loose. (please note this is for glass that was originally fixed in place with sealant at the factory and doesn't apply to doors that use screws or other fixings to keep the inner glass in place).
1. Take the door off and then take it apart – it should break into two parts. You will have to remove a few screws to do this. Beware it the oven is a Zanussi, AEG or Electrolux as the lugs maybe plastic and you will have to be very careful – see my earlier posting on 'Lugs'.
2. Remove the glass (if it has not already fallen off) and clean it until it is spotless.
3. Clean the door so that the place where the glass will fix back into, that is the groove where the glass will sit, is perfectly clean and the enamel is shiny.
3. Take some silicone sealant (we use grey sealant that looks good when it sets) and put it around the groove in the door. Put the piece of clean glass and put it in position on the sealant and in its groove.
4. Put to one side and take a large book such as a phone directory or other heavy object and put onto the glass so that it is pushing the door down onto the sealant. Leave it like this for 24 hours for the sealant to set.
5. Clean off the excess sealant and then put the door back together and refit.
If the glass has just started to come off, so there is just a small bit coming away, you may find that putting some super glue on the glass and pressing it back together will to the job.
