Why You Shouldn’t Use Your Oven’s Self-Clean Feature

OAKLAND — These days, most ovens come with a feature called “self-clean.” At first glance, this seems like a great feature—after all, if your oven cleans itself, that’s one less task you have to worry about. However, as convenient as it sounds, this feature can potentially cause serious problems.

When in self-clean mode, an oven will reach an extremely high temperature. In some instances, this extreme heat can actually cause the oven’s control board to overheat and burn out. Not surprisingly, this will cause the oven to shut off and become inoperable. What’s worse, since the oven door locks shut during self-clean (a protective measure to ensure no one opens it during cleaning), it’ll remain locked after the unit shuts down. At this point, the only way to open the door again is to pry it open.

While this scenario doesn’t happen all the time, it happens often enough to recommend against using the self-clean feature. A better choice is to clean your oven using a grease remover like EASY-OFF®. It may not be as convenient as self-cleaning, but at least you won’t run the risk of an expensive repair bill.