How to Clean Your Oven Using Lemons

Beatrice stared at the oven. She was trying to regain her composure after her latest culinary attempt took a short trip to the rubbish bin. Jamie Oliver’s recipes look easier on TV.

As she was murmuring to herself, she reached for the oven cleaner. Again. There was only one problem – the bottle was as empty as an April fool’s promises.

She didn’t feel like dishing out another 10 quid (she’d been quickly going through kitchen cleaning products lately). So she decided to do the sensible thing and clean her oven with the leftover lemons (she wasn’t going to use them for the fish, anyway).

Oven cleaning using lemons is all the rage right now and it has been for a while. It’s cost-effective, it’s efficient, and it leaves a nice, fresh odour in your kitchen. The only problem is you need to do it right if you want it to work. So in this article, I’ll show you how.

Why is lemon a good oven cleaner?

Aside from giving you tons of energy when you drink it with water, lemon juice is a great, all-natural cleaning product. It contains citric acid, which is extremely effective at cutting through dirt.

Using the correct methods can allow you to clean your oven without buying expensive cleaning products. And that’s not all – using lemon to clean your oven will make the whole process easy and dare I say – enjoyable. 

How to turn lemon into the ultimate oven cleaner

Lemon is a great oven cleaner on its own, but it becomes even better when joined by a few friends.

Lemon and dish soap

Adding dish soap to your lemon cleaning mixture will give it more of a kick. This is especially useful for particularly caked-in grime.

Note: Some of the following procedures will require you to handle a hot pan. Make sure you know what you’re doing before you attempt any of this. You’re trying it at your own peril.

Here’s how to make the perfect mixture:

1. Squeeze a couple of lemons. 
2. Pour the lemon juice into a pan and add water. Depending on the severity of the oven you’ll be cleaning, you might want to make the solution more or less diluted. For tough situations, go for a 1:1 solution.
3. Bring the mixture to a boil and add a couple of spoons of dish soap.  
4. Carefully stir and take it off the heat. 
5. Let it cool off and pour it into a spray bottle. 
6. Spray the solution on the areas you want to clean and let it sit for a few minutes. Then wipe it off with a recycled paper towel or a microfibre towel so you don’t scratch your oven.

Lemon steam

Burnt remnants of dinners long past have the tendency of accumulating on the inside of your oven. These caked-in leftovers are notoriously difficult to clean.

Lucky for you, there’s an easy way to loosen them up a bit by using lemon juice again.

1. Squeeze a couple of lemons.
2. Pour the juice into an oven-ready container and add water.
3. Place the container in a pre-heated oven. It should be hot enough to bring the water to a boil.
4. Let the lemon steam loosen up all the dirt and grime.
5. Turn the oven off and allow it to cool off.
6. Once the oven has cooled off, proceed to clean it as normal. You can use a lemon/dish soap spray from the previous section.

Using lemons directly

Sometimes, you need a more concentrated dose of citric acid. In those cases, don’t dilute the lemon juice. Use it directly on the surfaces you want to clean.

Bear in mind that despite its bitter taste, lemon juice contains sugars, so the surfaces will be sticky. You’ll have to do another round of cleaning afterward. However, the concentrated dose of citric acid should help loosen up the grime on your oven.

Conclusion

You can use lemons to clean your oven and they work amazingly well. If you add a few more ingredients, you can ensure a spotless oven without breaking the bank. And, of course, if money is not an issue and you want your oven professionally cleaned, you can always give us a call. 

Author: Atanas Dzhingarov

Hi, I’m Atanas - brand consultant and writer. I’m helping Samyx Cleaning create the best cleaning company blog on the Internet. Join us on our journey and learn how to live a cleaner, healthier, happier life in the process.