The Easiest Way to Clean Dirty Oven Racks

Photo: irkus (Shutterstock)

There are some zany hacks out there for cleaning your oven racks. For instance, a not-insignificant number of people swear by setting them in dewy grass overnight. But what else is there to do when you don’t want to awkwardly stick your body into the oven to scrub racks that are too large to fit in your sink or dishwasher? You need to think bigger—you need to broaden your idea of what a “dishwasher” is.

A dishwasher can be anything that washes a kitchen implement. And what do you have in your home designed for washing the big stuff? That’s right: abathtub.

How to clean oven racks in a bathtub

As you’ll see in the below TikTok from cleantok influencer Carolina McCauley, getting baked-on, stuck-on grime off your oven racks is as simple as taking them out of the kitchen and bringing them into the bathroom.

First, grab a dish detergent pod. Stop up your tub drain, toss the pod in, and fill the tub with warm water, the same as you would do with a bath bomb if you were getting in yourself. Then, carefully place the racks in the tub to give them the spa treatment. Leave them in for about three hours and let the detergent and water loosen up and wash away the dried-on food and burned grime. This is a case where warm water is really going to help you, so be sure to make it hot. (Bonus: Dish soap cleans tubs excellently, so this is a two-for-one deal.)

Other things to keep in mind

A few extra tips: First, if you have non-slip bath mats, make sure they’re in place to avoid scratches to the interior of your tub. Second, if there is a big piece of crust on the wires, pop it off manually before putting the rack in the tub, just so you don’t wash that down the drain. (It’s a good idea to only do this in tubs with drain grates, just in case.) Finally, after you drain the tub, use your shower head to give the rack a final rinse to remove any lingering detergent.

Let the rack dry in there and then put it back in the oven. You never even had to scrub it.