The most important aspect of any kitchen tool is it’s ability to let us get our work done faster.
If you are making a salad for yourself then chopping everything up and using a hand grater for your carrots is a lot faster then pulling out the food processor and cleaning it afterwards. On the other hand if you are feeding a family of 6 a food processor may be the only thing between you and a mass overthrow of your home.
It seems that for every meal prep and cleanup time often takes twice the time that we have to enjoy eating what we have made. And after a long meal the last thing you want to do is spend an hour cleaning the oven.
Self cleaning ovens are a great way to reduce your cleanup time.
In our example we baked a large deep dish apple pie. And although we thought we used enough foil under the baking dish to catch any spills at the last few moments sugary liquid ran down onto the base of our oven. Normally this would mean breaking out the oven cleaner, applying a coating and letting it sit until we could wipe off the crusted on blackend sugar syrup but since we have a self cleaning oven most of the cleanup can be done with the press of a button.
Before you start the self clean you should remove as much of the loose material as you can. If you were cooking a casarole you wouldn’t want to leave a big pile of noodles in the bottom of the oven or it might get a little smokey during the cleaning process.
Set the control to self clean and the oven door should lock so you can’t open it until the job completes. A counter will give you an indication of how much time remains in the process.
Although you probably could set the oven to clean overnight like you might do for your dishwasher we don’t reccomend this for a few reasons.
First the oven will get very hot while it cleans so it is good to keep an eye on it as it works.
Second the process will cause some smells that you probably want to remove by opening a window or turing on a fan.
And the last reason is that not all cleanups require the same amount of time. In our case we have some sugar syrup that will only take about an hour to clean but other spills or sidewall stains may take longer. Watch the oven as it works and when you are happy you can cancel the self clean and save yourself some money on your electric bill.
After about an hour we could see through the glass door that the spill had been cleaned so we canceled the self clean. After doing so you will have to wait until the oven cools and unlocks the front door. We then let the oven cool until we could wipe down the inside with a soft cloth to remove the dust that is left behind.
If the racks in your oven are clean then you can remove them during the self clean process and this will get the shelf or rails clean and allow your racks to move more freely.
You will also notice that the area around the opening of the door will still have some stains that need to be hit with oven cleaner but for the most part after a quick wipe down with water and maybe a little soap the oven looks great.
So, if you have the choice between buying an oven with a Self Clean setting you can save a lot of time on your cleanup and reduce your use of caustic cleaners and get back to enjoying the food you make.
When you go to purchase your model of range or oven ask about self cleaning options and weigh the cost against the hassels of cleanup time. If $50 can give you back part of your life then its going to be worth the upgrade. This is not to say that only the most expensive models have self cleaning options but it may be a trade off you need to make when looking at gas vs electric across different manufacturers and models.
The YouRepair Store can ship you many large appliances at prices less then local retailers. Most local stores need to order it anyway so buy it from us and save some money. Checkout our large offering of different models and read up on different options.
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