The Smarter Way To Clean Your Oven Uses Paper Towels For Better Contact

The importance of keeping a clean oven cannot be overstated. Letting grease and food residue accumulate can lead to unwanted flavor transfers that ruin your meals and get worse from there: Uneven cooking and even the risk of fire. The oven can be one of the toughest things in the kitchen to clean, but there are ways to make this chore quicker, easier, and crucially, more effective. We rounded up 16 hacks for keeping your oven spotless, and one key takeaway is that you need to let the cleaner sit on your oven's surfaces for a while, and you can use simple paper towels to do this.

Your cleaner needs time on your oven's walls to actually get in there and cut through grease and build-up. Quick wipes can't achieve this. You'll first want to take out the racks in your oven, and then apply your cleaning solution to its walls; you can also use dish soap, just ensure whatever you use is non-toxic. Immediately, while the walls are still damp, line them with paper towels. Give them another spray of your cleaner to really lock them in. Leave them there for a couple of hours — go watch TV, you can claim you were "cleaning the oven" the entire time — then peel the paper towels off. Spot-wipe any residue you see left; it will come off easier as the cleaner's been soaking into it. Carefully check for any torn pieces of paper towel left, too, as these are flammable.

Of all the best oven-cleaning tips, this paper towel technique is a revelation. It makes sense that a cleaning solution, degreaser, or dish soap needs time to really soak into surfaces and build up. In fact, different kinds of products you might use to clean your oven require different amounts of time. Stronger chemicals may only need half an hour, though those may be exactly what you want to avoid using where you cook your food. Gels like soap can take around an hour, and natural solutions like a DIY baking soda and vinegar combination, while extremely effective, can take a couple of hours. When you seal whatever cleaning product you're using onto your oven's surfaces, it can soak into residue and break it down. 

You'll still need to scrub in places and actually wipe off that broken down residue, but everything will be a lot looser and easier to remove. As long as the oven walls and floor are still damp with cleaner, a ball of aluminum foil has the perfect amount of abrasiveness to scrub anything away. Remember that cleaning any spills in your oven as they happen with salt — also just the right level of abrasive — prevents extensive build-up and so makes your bigger cleans less daunting. Always allow your oven to cool before you clean, and wait 24 hours post-clean before you use your oven so no cleaning solution fumes make contact with your food.