Cleaner’s $3 twist on popular hack transforms grease-covered oven without scrubbing

An oven covered in thick grease has been transformed without scrubbing, thanks to a cleaner’s clever twist on a popular hack.

Sara Allan, owner of Housekeeping Heroes, wanted to clean her client’s oven without products containing harsh fumes. Instead, she used the power of steam, but not with the usual sliced lemons in a tray of water, opting for the more effective alternative of citric acid.

The Sydney cleaner didn’t use lemons because she doesn’t carry them in her cleaning kit. She also knows citric acid in powder form, which you can find in supermarkets for as little as $3, is much more concentrated and therefore effective for cleaning.

“A lemon only sits at about 34 per cent acidity, where citric acid that we buy from the shops in the baking aisle is almost 75 per cent acidity,” she told nine.com.au.

Allan shared the entire process of the hack on TikTok, revealing just how well the citric acid steam method works. You can see from the footage that the grease wipes off using a dry cloth without any elbow grease.

To try using a citric acid steam yourself, simply add warm water to a baking tray followed by half a cup of citric acid and stir to dissolve the crystals. Pop the tray in an oven set at 200 degrees for 45 minutes.

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When the time is up Allan recommends leaving the door closed for 10 minutes to “let the steam do its thing”.

“Then in about 20 minutes or so it’s normally cool. I just leave the door open for about another 10 minutes, just to make sure 100 per cent that it’s cool enough to touch,” she told nine.com.au.

At that point, you can go in with a cloth to wipe off the grease from the oven door, and you’ll likely be just as stunned as Allan and her client.

“Look at how easy it is to wipe away that mess on the oven door as it just glides away effortlessly – even the customer was amazed,” she said in the video, which you can watch below.

After the door it’s time for the inside of the oven, which Allan just used a damp cloth on. However, there was some baked-on grease on the sides of the oven that needed a bit more agitation so she used soap pads to give them a light scrub.

A step you may want to add to your oven cleaning routine is one that Allan does every time she cleans the appliance, regardless of what she cleans it with.

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Before applying any cleaning product she takes out the racks and trays and then wipes over the inside of the oven with a damp cloth to remove as much debris as possible before going in with the cleaning product.

“It saves a lot of re-work at the end,” she said. 

“Then sometimes with different chemicals, too, depending on what the fat and the grease and the oil actually is, if you leave it in there, then do this process with an oven cleanser, it can actually embed it into the frames of the oven itself. That’s why I always just like to get the loose debris out first, so you’ve got more of a clean slate to work with than if you just leave it in there.”

For the steam hack you’ll need to put at least one rack back in to put the tray of water and citric acid on, but it’s a good idea to put all the racks back in as the steam will also make them easier to clean.

When Allan cleaned the racks from this oven she popped them in the sink and washed them with hot water. To remove more stubborn buildup, she used a soap pad.