I love cooking and hate cleaning, two attitudes that naturally clash in the kitchen. To work around my aversion to cleaning, I’m a fan of any shortcut that means less time getting face to face with my own mess.
Having a cleaner is a far off dream, so until then, prevention is better than cure. I am guilty of procrastinating oven cleaning until I move house, using a box of scarily powerful Oven Pride in a last minute bid to claw back as much of my deposit as possible. Naturally, avoiding the problem only makes it worse, so when I last moved, my goal was to work with – not against – my laziness.
Enter oven liners. This product, which I have only begun using this year, sits at the bottom of your oven and catches food and drips so they don’t become baked-on stains.
I was sceptical about putting anything in the oven that wasn’t food or a baking dish – wouldn’t it burn, smoke or smell?
The specific one I have been using – Toastabags Oven Liner Heavy Duty which is £3.69 from Sainsbury’s or £1.99 at Home Bargains – is listed as gas and electric oven safe, dishwasher safe, reusable, and suitable for oven temperatures up to 260C. All I had to do was trim it to size.
Full disclosure: I have not cleaned my oven in the six months since I placed the liner there. Whenever putting food in and out of the oven, I’m guilty of not trying to look too closely, so it was with a fair bit of trepidation that I peeked at the damage I had wrought in half a year.
Fortunately, what I found wasn’t the move out nightmare of flats past. The liner doesn’t cover the full width of my oven, which left sections on the sides exposed and vulnerable to stains, which is what had clearly happened on the bottom left of the oven.
For what it’s worth, in six months, the door of the oven had a coating of crumbs, whilst the oven walls, unprotected from grime, were stained and sticky.
Obviously, I’m late to this simple £2 product but it worked as advertised. It reduced the need to clean the base of my oven – or most of it – for months, but I think it’s time for a deep clean before Christmas.
