Aggressive oven cleaner?

Yes clean the darn thing once a week and you won't have to look like MrMuscle.

Caustic soda from the chandlers or chemist.

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

We do clean it, M'Lord, but the foul blackness creeps in still.....

Ta

Try Oven Mate from Lakeland Plastics - about £8 for a bottle. It is a potassium hydroxide gel you paint on with the brush provided. Leave for a few hours until the burnt stuff has softened, then wipe off. Can be delivered by mail order. No nasty smells either (unlike Mr Muscle)

hth

Richard

Stop burning the sunday roast then. ;-)

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

Sodium hydroxide, obtainable as pellets from any hardware shop worth the mention. Even Do It All sell it, although at grossly inflated prices.

I'll do you the honour of assuming that you can read the side of the tin and can avoid the temptation to combine past glories with present habits so you won't be trying to make lutefisk.

Oh, I see someone else has told you.

The major headache is getting it to stay where you put it. I recommend taking most of the liners etc out of the oven and if possible soaking them in a bowl or if there's no alternative in a heavy gauge plastic bag.

Al alternative that works is steam cleaning, using a brush to massage detergent into the grease while heating up the foamy mess with a jet of steam. Needs equipment, works well, but can result in scalds and a flooded oven.

I tried simmering an oven filthed tray and cleaning it while boiling, but with little luck. A lot of scraping managed to get a fairly small percentage off, it was clearly not worth continuing. So I cant help but have reservations about steam cleaning. Might remove grease but the blackened stuck like enamel muck, I cant see how it would. I had already tried caustic on this, with no joy.

A dishwasher will remove some polymerised muck, but only some. Still its better than nothing, and effortless.

I have no solution.

NT

I tried simmering an oven filthed tray and cleaning it while boiling, but with little luck. A lot of scraping managed to get a fairly small percentage off, it was clearly not worth continuing. So I cant help but have reservations about steam cleaning. Might remove grease but the blackened stuck like enamel muck, I cant see how it would. I had already tried caustic on this, with no joy.

A dishwasher will remove some polymerised muck, but only some. Still its better than nothing, and effortless.

I have no solution. Other than to make paints out of burnt food.

NT

Hi Steve,

I asked a very similar question here a while ago...

At the risk of infringing copyright, here is what seems like an excellent solution, kindly posted by 'raden'. I have not tried it yet as we have a small kitchen and want to wait for better weather when there is more 'room to move'.

'Our commercial kitchens get a deep clean once a year by a professional cleaning company so they are literally like an operating theatre. Thins includes all the ovens, ducts etc.

They use a biodegrable cleaner called "citri-clean" you can buy it from most commercial suppliers. Its about £12 for 5l and is dilutable.

As the name suggests its citrus based and skin safe so little danger when using it.

Not kidding, it cleans *anything*. It will even stard to remove carbon deposits if left long enough!'

Good luck,

Keith

Steve Walker wrote:

Somebody here has mentioned that Cillit Bang stuff, but I can't believe it's would be any better than caustic soda for this job.

David

Hmm, been doing a spot of diversifying have we, Geoff?!

David

Has anyone discovered anywhere where this can be bought online? I'd like to give it a try but haven't yet discovered anywhere local to me that sells it to the public and I don't know anyone in the business that could get it for me.

I've always had sucess by putting racks in a plastic bin liner along with a small bowl of houshold amonia and leaving it overnight. Carbonised mank just washes of afterwards with the application of a pot scourer. You mank might be more ingrained though.

Andrew

Try a good sports shop. It's used for cleaning klister from cross-country ski.

Douglas de Lacey

Would DAKINE BASE CLEANER be the same thing? It's described as "Highly concentrated Citrus oils removes wax and dirt from your base prior to waxing"

It's expensive though - £7 for 4oz from Edge2Edge (which IS local to me).

I have only ever found that caustic of some sort, plus mechanical removal with wire wool/brush or emery actually ever removes carbonized gunk from anything

Of course this plays havoc with plated surfaces...hence my preference for un-treated cast iron of substantial thickness..

Or go the other route and line the oven with disposable tinfoil.

I do this with grill pans anyway - reflects some of the heat back to the meat undersides too.

Luckily we have an Aga oven which IS solid cast iron and a wire brush deals with the black remains of the potato that time forgot.

Sounds like it: it's sold under lots of names but I only get to use the Norwegian versions.

I recall it being expensive, certainly, but compared to the "about £12 for 5l and is dilutable" you quoted earlier, that *is* expensive! I'm afraid I have no idea how much you need for an oven: I've never skied on an oven:-/ (Or even used a hi-tech tea tray.)

Douglas de Lacey