Cleaning a gas oven

[Jody]

My gas oven needs to be cleaned but since I've never had one before, I'm concerned about the flame. It does have an electric start.

[Cindy Hamilton]

Just use the self-cleaning cycle like everybody else does. If it doesn't have a self-cleaning feature, use Easy Off the way my mother did back in the Dark Ages.

Cindy Hamilton

[Charles Boyle]

Maybe you could shut the gas off to the oven?

[micky]

Just don't bump into the electric starter. You could bend an electrode if you hit it just right or hard enough.

And if the flame isn't coming out of every hole, use a tooth pick or even something bigger to clean each hole.

For the rest of it, you're on your own.

Oh, make sure you don't have a continuous cleaning oven. They can't be cleaned or you ruin them. There are not too many of them left, but I think they're great. If one is dirty, you just say, Not my fault, not allowed to clean them. And they're never perfectly clean but they never get very dirty either. You can google the model number to see if it is one, or they have a slightly fuzzy inside, so if you can find someplace that's mostly clean and can tell fuzzy from dirty, anmd fuzzy from smooth, you should be able to figure it out.

[Cindy Hamilton]

I don't see where this is any more people-friendly than commercial oven cleaner. Ammonia is nasty.

Cindy Hamilton

[rbowman]

Not quite as nasty as lye. Cleaning ovens isn't one of my high priority activities but I vaguely remember something about putting a lye and ammonia solution in a heat proof container, placing it in the oven, and turning it on for a while. The combination was related to the stuff Japanese suicides brew up but thankfully not as deadly.

[Cindy Hamilton]

Hence the popularity of the self-cleaning oven. I haven't manually cleaned an oven since 1989, when I moved out of my last rental.

Cindy Hamilton

[invalid unparseable]

Oven cleaner in the eye would probably lead to vision loss. It is nasty stuff.

[trader_4]

What are you planning on cleaning it with? Gasoline? Paint thinner? If it's oven cleaner or any typical water based kitchen cleaner, a pilot light is not an issue.

[trader_4]

And first it's probably a good idea to read the instructions for the actual oven. If it's not self-cleaning, EasyOff or similar should be fine. If it's self-cleaning, they typically tell you to use that, then just wipe up with a wet sponge or use something mild so as to no damage the surface that has a catalyst in it.

[trader_4]

When I said "they tell you to use that" above, I meant the self-clean process, not EasyOff.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I've not tried it yet in this house. Cleaning lady keeps it spotless every time she comes.

[rbowman]

I haven't manually cleaned an oven for longer than that. No, I don't have a self-cleaning oven either.

[devnull]