How to Easily Clean Oven Racks with Aluminum Foil

Cooking is a passionate hobby. Whenever someone from the Fantastic Team grabs a pan the kitchen becomes a mess, and a delicious one, mind you!

But you can imagine just how much burnt food develops and how tough it is to successfully clean the oven later. Luckily we don’t cook daily in the office, but it’s a completely different story with the ovens at home.

So, how can you clean your dirty, burnt-food-covered oven grill racks? Easy! There are no expensive chemical cleaners involved, just a bit of warm water, baking soda and a ball of aluminium foil.

Necessary tools for cleaning oven shelves

Before you remove your oven racks first you’ll need to prepare. Here’s what you’ll need:

How to easily clean the oven racks

There is an easy and fairly quick way to free your oven racks from rust and burnt-on grease. The best part is that you can do it naturally, even without the use of harsh chemical products.

One of the most famous ways to shine your oven racks is to soak them in different types of solutions. Since they could be large, most people prefer to use the bathtub. If you don’t like the idea, though, you can still do this even without a bathtub. Just use the sink or a large enough container, as in this case, you will probably have to clean the oven racks one half at a time.

In addition to explaining all the steps to getting the wire racks clean again, we will also throw in an extra oven rack cleaning hack to get that perfect finish!

Step 1: Fill the large bowl (sink or bathtub) with warm water

Make sure the water is steaming and too warm to handle. At this point, you won’t do anything with it.

Step 2: Pour dish soap

Depending on where you are cleaning the oven racks, you’ll have to adjust the quantity of dishwashing liquid. Use a smaller amount of it in the sink or bowl to avoid creating too much foam.

Step 3: Submerge the dirty oven racks in the water

Be careful not to hurt yourself, first test the water on your skin. Leave the greasy racks to soak for a minimum of 15 minutes. The warm water will loosen the accumulated dirt, so you will have less scrubbing to do later.

Step 4: Form a ball with the aluminium foil

And now, for that extra oven rack cleaning hack we mentioned before. Cut a small piece of aluminium foil and turn it into a ball. All of us have one rolling somewhere in our kitchen cabinets. If that’s not the case, then do a quick run to the store as they are cheap and can be found in each food shop near you.

Step 5: Wet the foil ball and pour baking soda on it

Take each oven rack out of the water. By now the water should still be fairly warm, but comfortable to handle. Wet the aluminium foil ball, too. Thanks to the moisture, the baking soda will stick to the ball better.

Then, start scrubbing each oven rack. Because there is still dirt left on the racks, make sure you frequently change the aluminium foil ball and add fresh baking soda.

Depending on the state of your oven racks, the amount of scrubbing and elbow grease will vary. Continue cleaning until the oven rack is restored as close to its original state as possible.