This Is the Worst Way You Can Clean Your Oven, According to an Appliance Pro

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I know how it is: You have family coming for Thanksgiving and because you know other people will be using your oven as they’re broiling sweet potato casserole marshmallows or warming the pecan pie, you suddenly realize how dirty it is. The thinking goes something like: Might as well clean it now, so I’m not embarrassed by the dirty oven and it’s all clean and ready for the biggest cooking event of the year — right? Plus, isn’t the self-cleaning feature supposed to get your oven sparkling with the push of a button? Wrong.

The self-cleaning cycle works by heating your oven’s interior to extremely hot temperatures, essentially incinerating the mess inside. This intense heat can actually damage controls in your unit — and if you’re cooking or hosting, this is the worst time for your oven to go on the fritz. In other words, using the self-cleaning function runs the risk of temporarily or permanently frying your oven. The Thanksgiving crunch is no time to test this out, especially since parts and repairs can be expensive and hard-to-get.

The self-cleaning function pulls a ton of power, which means you could trip your breaker or blow a fuse. No one has time for that around the holidays! But even worse, the power failure could cause your oven door to get stuck locked. Definitely bad timing for this to happen.

Of course, you want your home to be at its best when entertaining guests. While your oven can break completely, even if the self-cleaning feature works for you, it will likely fill your home with smoke and burnt smells, which is inhospitable to say the least. Again, not something you want to be dealing with when you’re about to welcome loved ones!

Wanting your oven to be clean for the big day is totally valid; just do it in a way that doesn’t risk a bigger problem. Ideally, you’d try to clean your oven a week or two before Thanksgiving preparations begin, but life happens. If you haven’t yet, don’t panic — there are, in fact, easy ways to clean your oven before the big day.

If you need to clean your oven quickly, or it’s been a long time since you’ve cleaned it, you may want to opt for the heavy-duty chemicals that come with Easy Off, which essentially melts the gunk off your oven’s interior fast. (Whatever you do, though, don’t use Heavy Duty Easy Off if you have an enamel-coated oven interior — I almost ruined my oven by doing this!).