Cleaning My Filthy Oven

My husband is wonderful, and I couldn't be luckier to have him.  He's a great cook, and to be honest, he does most of the cooking on weekends.  One Sunday afternoon, he grilled up some ribs and finished them up in the oven.  The sauce boiled over, as bar-b-q sauce tends to do.  He didn't notice it, didn't clean it up, and the next time I turned on the oven, I managed to create a burned charcoal mess.  Therefore the need to clean my oven.

I didn't want to use a heavy chemical cleanser or the self-cleaning option.  I've moved towards more natural cleansers in my home and frankly, the self-cleaning option really stinks up the house.  I found some instructions on Craptastical.com for cleaning an oven using clean ingredients.  The comments after the post were a bit different from what I've noticed in the past; some said this process worked great, others said it was a definite Pinterest fail.  I thought, why not.

The ingredients:
a few drops of Dawn dish detergent
4 Tbs of baking soda
5 Tbs of white vinegar
lime or lemon juice

The instructions:
mix together to form a paste
slather oven
let stand for a few hours
scrub off
wipe down

Now, I'm not one for using precise measurements. I admit, I eyeballed it.  My first mixture seemed a bit watery, so I added more baking soda to create more paste. I also didn't use lemon juice simply because I didn't have any.

I smeared the concoction all over my oven and the glass door.  I highly suggest that you coat the oven's interior first.  I didn't, and I ended up getting the paste all over my shirt.

(Look at all the grime that came loose! Yuck!)

I let it sit for about two hours, and then the scrubbing commenced.  The result?  Well, I have a clean oven, but it took a bit more elbow grease than I expected.  Smoky residue came off easily, and some baked on splatters came off with just a bit of scrubbing.  The base of my oven was a completely different story.

I ended up taking off the oven door and sliding the oven pan out, which really freaked out my son.  He thought I broke the oven.  With his help and some steel wool, we managed to remove most of the burnt-on honey bbq sauce.  At least it looks better.  I will use this oven cleaning technique again, but I won't have to worry about spilled, baked-on, burnt goop.  I'm buying a foil oven liner tomorrow.