Top tips for easy-clean cookers

The kitchen may be the heart of the home, but your cooker is the soul, providing warmth and hearty food for the family. But, like many regularly used items, they are taken for granted and not tended to very often , but a little TLC  can ensure that keeping them in tip-top condition doesn’t become a chore.

Ovens get dirty with food spills as well as vaporised liquids and fats that over time can become burnt on and hard to remove, unless they’re cleaned after every use, which just isn’t practical in a bustling family home.

Cooker hobs, irrespective of whether they use gas or electric as the source of energy, get dirty; pans boil over, foods get spilled and burnt on. Wiping or clearing spills as they happen can make a difference to how easy surfaces are to clean – but sometimes family life gets in the way and we forget. Unfortunately, it’s increasingly difficult to remove residues once they’ve  been left and- a much more time-consuming job than just a simple wipe.

The big four areas of your cooker to clean: –

• The hob
• The oven
• Shelving racks
• Oven door

The hob – probably the most used and – depending on the type of hob – the most difficult. With gas, the pan supports and gas caps can be soaked in the sink with soda crystals to loosen dried on food.  Ceramic and induction hobs can be wiped clean or abraded with a pad.

The oven – there are varying methods from the self-cleaning function, which essentially ‘burns off the dirt’ – but it’s smelly and you should always read the manufacturer’s instructions first. Secondly, you can try using a bowl of lemon water placed in the oven for an hour at 250^o F, turn off the oven and leave for a further hour and then wipe away dirt – using a scouring pad on stubborn residues.

Ovens can be kept a little cleaner with oven liners or the use of roasting bags – single use plastic items.

Shelving racks – depending on the size of your sink can mean a trek to the bathroom in order to lay them flat in a bath and cover with hot water and soda crystals, leaving then to soak until the dirt lifts off or is easy to remove.

Cleaning your oven door can be scary, but baking soda can help with loosening the dried-on grime.

In short, cleaning your cooker requires time, caustic cleaners and lots and lots of elbow grease!

How to make your cooker ‘easy-clean’.

There is a way to ensure that dried and burnt-on food doesn’t stick and is always easier to wipe off as if it’s just happened.

Dura – a nano-ceramic cooker treatment, when applied to stainless steel, glass, ceramic hobs or coated metals, inside ovens, prevents food spills and splatters from becoming welded to the surface, ensuring that they are removed with ease.

Even cheese baked on to ceramic hobs is no match for Dura, saving you time and effort, and reducing the need for harsh abrasive cleaners that tend to  be kept for periodic use  in your cleaning cupboard.