I am familiar with the basics. You lock the oven latch and turn the thingee to “Clean.” The oven heats to a very high temperature that burns the stuff off the interior surfaces.
My wife is out of the house and so I am cleaning the place. I have the oven set to clean. Now how long (about) will it take to clean itself? What do I do when it is done?
Normally about 4 hours is the cycle time. After it’s done and cooled down, there should be some white powdery residue from the burned off bits and pieces left in your oven. Just wipe those out with a damp paper towel.
It sounds like it’s too late for you but the manual for my oven says to take out the stainless steel racks before starting the self-cleaning cycle as the extreme temperatures can discolor them.
Mine is a GE Profile (1995) and you can set the cleaning time from 2-4 hours. I suppose 4 would be an upper end for one where you can’t set the time.
Yes, everything will be turned to a fine white ash all the way to the walls. Takes about 11 days. Wipe with a damp paper towel afterwards.
It will cause some discoloration and also change the surface texture to make them a little harder to slide in and out. But it’s not a disaster if you leave them in. I’ve done it several times.
Yup. The manual for my oven recommends that if you choose to leave them in, you should rub them with vegetable oil afterward to make them slide more easily again.
Be aware that after the actual CLEANING is done by the oven, a safety feature keeps the oven door locked until it has cooled down. The cooling cycle takes longer than the cleaning does. And if you have high hopes of using the oven at a certain time, you are SOL until the oven reaches a “cooled down” temperature and the lock releases. You cannot circumvent this safety feature.
~VOW
On the other hand, this is a good way to clean your grill grates. And if there’s some cast iron you want to strip all the way down and start all over with.
I was trapped by this once : the cleaning cycle had been finished for an hour but the door was still locked, and we needed to put the turkey in there. My solution was to turn off the breaker at the fuse box. When power was restored, the oven unlocked the door.
(This anecdote describes circumvention of a safety feature. I’m not responsible for the cost of burned-down houses, or for replacement of dead parakeets.)
I remember seeing a blog or a website from a guy who was interested in making pizza in a really hot oven, so he hacked his oven to allow him to use it for baking during the self-cleaning cycle. So it is possible, but probably crazy dangerous.
And as for cleaning cast iron, someone was asking about that here a few weeks ago. One of the websites that comes up in a search about that says that some people who tried it ended up with a fire in the oven. (Presumably from the grease and other stuff on the cast iron.)
That’s a fantastic idea. Is there any way to do that without leaving the regular oven racks in? Can I just stack them on the floor of the oven between the heating element? Put something else on the oven floor then stack them? Or should I just keep the racks in?
Is there any way to use the self-cleaning cycle to heat them up for use later? Will they retain their heat though the cool-down cycle or will they prolong it enough to negate the effort?
In Girl Scouts they taught us to move any kitchen fires into the oven and shut it if at all possible. (i.e. if a greasy pot caught fire - pop it in there and shut it.) I can’t think of a safer place for a fire than inside a closed oven. Even safer than the open fireplace. . .