Keep your oven clean and ‘grease-free’ with simple £4 item

A woman has shared a clever but simple hack to easily keep your oven clean.

When it comes to cleaning the kitchen, the oven is often one of the more difficult tasks due to its size and the amount of grease that can build up inside. The oven is an appliance that is usually frequently used for cooking and re-heating food so it’s bound to get dirty.

Cleaning the oven regularly will help you avoid being left with a build-up of grease and food spills and splatters to tackle. Many people take out the oven shelf racks to clean them one by one but a mum from the Midlands has found a way to help stop these racks getting dirty in the first place.

In a kitchen cleaning video on TikTok, the mum, known as Neal, shared that she uses oven liners. These are mats that are placed near the bottom of an oven to catch any food and grease and can be easily washed in the sink.

They are quick to remove and clean and Neal said: “They catch all the food and grease so it saves me so much time because I don’t need to spend ages deep cleaning my oven. Pop it in the sink and just clean it like you would all your other dishes.”

In the TikTok video, Neal can be seen cleaning her oven liner in the sink with water, washing up liquid and a sponge. However, she urged viewers to do their “own research before buying” and make sure they buy the “right one” for their oven.

Oven mats or liners are usually made of food-grade silicone, which is non-stick and heat-tolerant, according to Oven Clean. It adds that non-stick liners are “very effective” and the maximum temperature varies by manufacturer, but they are “usually safe up to 260C.”

Oven Clean advises to make sure you buy an oven mat and not a silicone baking mat. These are mats that are designed to be used at the bottom of cake tins in place of greaseproof paper and are “not heavy duty enough to catch drips in hot ovens.”

The oven cleaning resource explains how to use oven liners: “Some liners may be placed on the base of the oven unless your model has a heating element at the bottom, which may melt the liner. In that case, place the oven mat on the lower shelf at least one inch from the bottom. Ensure that no air vents are covered.”

Oven Clean warns that one of the biggest problems with oven liners is them melting and sticking to the bottom of the oven. It elaborates: “This happens when the oven’s heating element is underneath the oven floor.

“These ovens heat up from below and this high, direct heat is too much for oven mats to stand.” The oven cleaning service states that before you use an oven mat, it’s important to “always check the manual to ensure your oven doesn’t have a hidden bottom heating element” and it is “very difficult and potentially expensive to remove a liner that has stuck to your oven base.”

One TikTok user who was impressed by the oven liners Neal used in her post commented: “Wow!! Those oven liners look like a game changer!!” Another asked Neal where she got the liners from and she replied: “Amazon, B&M, Home Bargains, supermarkets, TikTok shop.”

An oven liner will set you back around £4 in most stores, with Amazon currently selling a large heavy duty teflon oven liner for £3.99.