Filthy oven

[churipu 4]

Hello everyone,

so we moved into our new apartment and everything came really clean, nice and almost brand new...but for the oven!

It has LOTS of old baked-on grease and dirt that looks/feels like black cement that just won't come off... it is one of those new self-cleaning ovens, so we tried to turn on the cleaning cycle and that produced so much smoke we had to stop it almost immediately and still it set off the smoke/fire alarm! We cannot even use the oven because it smokes everytime we basically try to cook something in it.

I researched the internet for something really good to clean this mess and I came across this Easy Off Fume Free safe oven cleaner that is supposed to be miraculous...I totally hate the conventional oven cleaners because to me it's like the smell of the chemicals never goes away, so those are not an option! I might give this new product a try although it is kinda pricy (30+$ average), but before doing that I thought I'd post here to see if any of you has some effective cleaning tips to solve my problems!

Thanks in advance!

[doodlebug 3]

buy a new one?

Seriously that is what I did when we bought our first home. The oven was just...well I had never seen anything like it in my life and same thing I couldn't clean it and it smoked wicked bad when I'd cook, so we just chucked it. Actually that started a whole 3 month gutting of the kitchen but that's another story.

Other than that can you kind of scrape off the grime as best you can with a knife or some sort of tool and then have it go through the self cleaning method?

[Nancy2015 2]

Easy Off is good, but I remember buying it for much less than $30 Seriously, it didn't stink, and all that grease was completely gone after I left it covered with Easy Off for a night. You should have seen our oven - it was covered wit a thick layer of grease, and we couldn't even use it any more, cause as soon as the temperature inside reached 400, the grease started to burn.

buy a new one?

They live in an apartment - buying is not an option.

[Ban Hammer 13,620]

it could be that your oven, which is a self cleaning, should not have oven cleaner used on it. and smoking is normal during the self cleaning as it is burning off everything.

[William33 110]

I would contact the property manager and insist that they get it clean for you.

If that does not work, then:

Take the racks and elements out of the oven. The elements are removable on most ovens.

Scrape the crud off the oven walls and bottom with a putty knife.

Then scrub with steel wool or preferably the larger stainless steel kind.

Then, you can reinstall all of the parts and run the self cleaning option without all the smoke.

[churipu 4]

Thanks for your replies guys!

I will try a couple different things this weekend and see how it goes...

[ace13 0]

Who's that beautiful baby

No advice on the oven...I have the same problem and have been avoiding it...I need to do something, too and my oven doesn't have self-clean. Good Luck!