Make Your Oven Shine

After a few months of festivities and plenty of food, your kitchen – and especially your oven – might be looking worse for wear. Perhaps the pecan pie was a bit too full at Thanksgiving or the figgy pudding tried to escape the pan at Christmas, but now is the time to start fresh. Luckily, this tried-and-true cleaning hack will chip away caked-on oven grime with minimal hassle.

Getting Warmed Up

The beauty of this trick is that it doesn’t require too many materials and most of the ingredients can be found around the house. You’ll need:

• Aluminum foil
• Dishwasher tablets
• A bathtub with hot water
• About two hours… or more, if you can wait

Now You’re Cooking

Begin by collecting all the removable parts of the oven, which includes the racks and trays. Get a nice, steamy bath going as you wrap each piece individually in aluminum foil and submerge the pieces in the hot water. If they won’t stay under water on their own, you’ll need to place some weight on top.

Once the items are fully submerged in the water, drop a dishwasher tablet on top of each rack and let the tablet do the rest! While the bathtub is full of racks, consider running the self-clean feature on your oven to knock out any residue remaining inside. The run time will be about two hours, so they should finish up together.

Set it and Forget it

After two hours, years of grease and grime will fall away. If some stubborn mess remains, it shouldn’t take more than a quick wipe to bring back that brand-new shine as the aluminum foil reacts to the disintegrating tablet, practically melting off that post-Christmas dinner mess. To maximize results, let the concoction soak a little longer.

Bring on the Valentine’s Day cookies and corned beef and cabbage of St. Patrick’s Day – with this simple cleaning trick and minimal effort, your oven will shine without scrubbing. Check out more tips for creating a "home clean home."