DIY Oven Cleaner Without Nasty Chemicals

When you need a good oven cleaner you don’t have to use harsh chemicals. I have learned that you can get great results by using every day kitchen items. 

I recently needed to clean a convection microwave oven that was well overdue for a good scrub. It was given to me by a friend who had been too lazy to clean it (thanks Paul!). Anyway the inside of the oven had well and truly seen better days.

I wanted to get it clean but I didn’t want to use a store bought oven cleaner because they usually contain lots of nasty chemicals. I was sure that someone would have already come up with a quick and easy DIY oven cleaner. So I went online and started having a look around for homemade oven cleaners and I was not disappointed.

What I found was that most homemade oven cleaner recipes called for the use of baking soda (bi-carb soda).

I have used baking soda to clean my bath and tiles in the past and again this wonder chemical was proving to be my likely saviour.

Many DIY oven cleaner recipes suggest making up a paste of baking soda and water and applying it to the oven and leaving it for several hours. But I wanted to get started immediately and I didn’t want to have to wait around for hours. So I kept looking for a DIY oven cleaner idea that would allow me to get stuck in right away.

One website suggested that the use of dry baking soda alone would be enough to clean an oven in no time at all.

I also found a website (now removed) that suggested using a mixture of baking soda, vinegar and detergent as a good oven cleaner. This website had a few oven cleaning suggestions including warming up your oven a bit to help with the cleaning process.

Armed with these ideas I headed to the kitchen to attack my “new” dirty oven and see if I could have success with a homemade oven cleaner. I warmed the oven up by setting it to 70 °C for 15 minutes and then got stuck in.

As the oven is also a microwave it has a turntable and that was very dirty with lots of baked on grime. I started off using just dry baking soda and a non-scratch cleaning pad and was pleasantly surprised that a large amount of grime was cleaning off.

However, there was some stubborn baked on grime that just wouldn’t budge!

DIY Oven Cleaner – Baking Soda and Dishwashing Detergent!

Next I put a squirt of dishwashing detergent onto the turntable, sprinkled over some more baking soda and had another try. Wow did that work – the detergent seemed to help break down the grease and the baking soda did the rest! With a bit of scrubbing the turntable came up really nice. I used the same combination on the inside of the oven, making up a paste of baking soda and detergent and using the cleaning pad to rub it over the insides of the oven.

I didn’t use any set amount; the formula was just:

• sprinkling of baking soda
• small squirt of dishwashing liquid (I used Palmolive)
• small amount of water (just enough to make a paste)

I just kept mixing a small amount of each of these together and rubbing the mixture over the oven interior. If it was a bit dry I added a little more water to help with spreading it over the dirty surfaces.

Once I had an area clean I then used a damp cloth to wipe it down and remove any baking soda/detergent residue.

The oven racks were also very dirty and had burnt on grease spots. I was able to get these into my sink so I soaked them in some hot water for a few minutes. I then used the same baking soda/detergent paste and my trusty cleaning pad to get them sparkly clean again!

It was amazing how clean the whole oven came up after just using plain baking soda and regular detergent. I won’t lie to you, some elbow grease was required to clean the oven but it wasn’t that hard considering how dirty it was to start with. There are still a few dirty spots on the oven but I think you’ll agree that compared to how it was before it looks a whole lot better now!

This DIY oven cleaner has been a great tip for me because I always have some baking soda and detergent on hand and it is also much cheaper than buying an oven cleaner! I’m sure that if you used this mixture to clean your oven on a regular basis it would probably be a very quick and easy job!