Woman shares her incredible (cheap) hack to speed-clean oven racks
A woman has shared a genius hack to quickly clean dirty oven racks, using frozen washing up liquid cubes.
Cleaning your oven racks is one of those jobs that often slips down the must-do list, because endless scrubbing to remove burnt, ground-on grimness is no one's idea of fun.
But turns out we might have been using the wrong method to remove the burnt-on food this entire time.
TikTok user 'Tanya Home Inspo' has posted a very clever cleaning hack to the video sharing platform, which involves ditching the scourer or scrubbing brush and instead using cubes of frozen washing up liquid.
In the demonstration video, the user is seen putting washing up liquid in an ice cube tray to freeze it.
Once it’s solid, the cubes are used to rub the racks and remove the burnt-on food, with Tanya pointing out that it "just slides off".
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It works because as the liquid melts, you’ll get a mushy texture that can be spread over the metal to cut through the grease, before thoroughly rinsing.
At the end of the clip the sparkling racks are revealed, without a grease patch in sight.
Since sharing the effective hack, impressed users have flooded the comments with praise.
"OMG this is brilliant," one user wrote.
"I'm going to do this right now," another promised.
"Definitely going to try this," yet another user vowed.
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What the experts say
So should we all be freezing our washing up liquid before attempting to clean our ovens?
Nigel Bearman, managing director of cleaning company Daily Poppins says using washing up liquid is a great method of breaking down grease and making it easier to clean off oven racks.
"By freezing washing up liquid, like in the TikTok video, it gives you a quick and easy way to handle the detergent on wire racks, which are often difficult to deal with."
Bearman says the same effect can be achieved with dishwasher tablets, as they contain powerful grease-fighting chemicals.
"Some may also find soaking the racks in a combination of baking soda, washing up liquid and water can effectively break down grease and reduce the amount of scrubbing you have to do when cleaning."
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The effects of washing up liquid alone will depend on how burnt-on the grease is to your racks and will take more effort to remove if you haven’t washed your oven racks in a while.
"In this case, it may take more washing up liquid in frozen form than it would when cleaning with a scourer," adds Bearman.
"If you’re on a budget or you know your oven racks haven’t been cleaned in a long time, you may want to consider cleaning them with one or two dishwasher tablets or using a scourer".
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It's worth pointing out that if you are going to give the hack a try you should be sure to wear rubber gloves to avoid any irritation and make sure to rinse the rack properly in clean water, so any residue is removed.
You should also keep the frozen washing up cubes out of reach of children and labelled in the freezer - unless you fancy some pretty funky-tasting ice cubes in your next cold drink.
