Although it was first introduced in 1963, most people don’t know that they have a self-cleaning oven. It’s an extremely helpful feature that can be easily damaged if not recognised and not taken care of properly. But what is a self-cleaning oven? Let’s see.
Oven with regular enamel coating/lining.
What does self-cleaning mean?
The term “self-cleaning oven” usually refers to the catalytic and pyrolytic oven linings/cleaning methods.
It is a type of oven that uses high temperature to burn all the dirt off and turns them into ashes.
Often it has a special coating on the interior walls – usually on the back and on the sides.
How to know if you have a self-cleaning oven?
The best way to find out whether you have the life-saver oven or not, is to check its user guide. If you can’t find it, you can always look up online – simply search using the model number of your oven.
If you weren’t lucky with the user guides, then the other thing you can do is check your oven. Self-cleaning sides of the oven usually have a different colour and texture – see the examples below.
Back and sides of the oven is of a self-cleaning material
Back of the oven is of a self-cleaning material.
Self-cleaning program
How to use the self-clean mode?
There are 2 options you can choose from if you want to use the self-cleaning mode, depending on what type of coating your oven has.
- Catalytic coating: this type of coating absorbs food and grease and breaks them down. All of this broken-down food and grease is then simply burnt away during cooking. How to self-clean it? If you don’t run your oven very regularly over 200ºC, then you should heat your oven at 220ºC for thirty minutes or so every month, to ensure the food and grease are burnt away. Job done! Note: Do not spray any chemicals onto a catalytic coated surface and do not scrub it. These can damage the coating which then will lose its self-cleaning quality.
- Pyrolytic method: While catalytic method is an actual coating of the inside of the oven, pyrolytic method is a special program that you run on your oven. When you turn this program on, the oven runs to temperatures of over 400ºC. Once the pyrolytic cleaning program has finished – typically this program takes about two hours – the food is turned to ash, and you can simply brush it away.
Conclusion
It’s a good practice to check your oven’s user guide before starting to scrub it – you could save yourself from hours of cleaning and wasting your money on different oven cleaning products.
Additionally, it’s also handy to learn about the different types of oven linings before buying your next oven. In the end, who doesn’t want a self-cleaning oven?!
And, if you aren’t amongst those lucky people who have such a “fancy” oven: contact us now to have a sparkling, clean oven.
Credit to this website for the proper explanation.
