How to clean your school cookers

It’s really important to clean your school cookers regularly. It ensures that your ovens are efficient, reliable and hygienic. Plus, it helps make the food taste good!

Here, we’ll take a closer look at how to clean your school cookers, and why it’s vital to have a regular maintenance schedule.

Why do you need to clean your school cookers?

We’ll admit it; at home, we ‘forget’ to clean our ovens regularly … it just seems like a lot of hassle and is often time-consuming.

However, schools must follow a much stricter maintenance routine to ensure that students are in a safe and hygienic environment. Here’s why you need to clean school cookers regularly:

1. It improves food hygiene

That build-up of crumbs, fat and sauce at the bottom of your oven? It’s a breeding ground for germs and bacteria.

While the oven’s heat gets rid of some of these germs, it doesn’t kill all of them. So, they can breed and be passed on every time you cook.

If you don’t clean your school cookers regularly, you will put yourself and your students at risk of infection which could potentially cause serious illness.

2. It’s less hazardous

You need to provide a safe environment for your students, no matter what. However, spilt food at the bottom of the oven can burn, produce smoke and even catch fire. You must clean your school cookers as regularly as possible to avoid this.

Also, the build-up at the oven’s base can give your food an unpleasant taste of smoke and charcoal. Get rid of it by implementing a strict maintenance routine!

3. Clean cookers are more efficient

The residue left in the oven can clog filters and mechanisms that affect your cooker’s performance.

This build-up can make your oven less efficient at reaching high temperatures and can even lead to the oven breaking completely. It’s best to avoid this occurring in the first place, if possible, as repairs and replacements can be very expensive.

How to clean your school cookers

To avoid all these problems, you should implement a regular maintenance routine and stick to it.

If you don’t, more build-up will accumulate which will lead to more work for you.

When to clean your school cookers

Little and often works best, so we’d probably suggest cleaning your school cookers at least once a month. It might also be worth wiping down the oven door once a week.

However, you might need to do it more regularly if you use your cookers a lot. The signs that show it’s time to clean your oven include:

• Grime on the window
• Visible discolouration on the inside
• Residue build up
• Smoke when you open the door

9 simple steps to a clean oven

You can use harsh chemicals or professional oven cleaners to clean your school cookers, but we’d suggest trying this natural method instead. It’s cheap and easy to follow.

1. Remove everything from the oven (racks, trays, thermometer etc.)
2. Put a bowl of water in the oven base and turn the temperature to ‘high’ for 20 minutes. This will loosen the dirt and grease, making your job much easier.
3. Make a baking soda paste while you wait. Mix 65g of baking soda with a few tablespoons of water. Adjust as required, until you have a spreadable paste.
4. Wait for the oven to cool down and spread the paste over the cooker’s inside surfaces. Wear gloves and avoid the heating elements. The baking soda will turn brown as you rub it in.
5. Leave this mix to work its magic for 12 hours. Don’t open the door until the time is up. You could wash your oven racks while you wait.
6. Wipe down the oven with a damp cloth to get rid of the dirt. You could use a plastic or silicone spatula to scrape off the really tough bits.
7. Spray a little vinegar wherever you see any baking soda residue; this will produce a gentle foam and get the last of the grime off
8. Repeat the previous two steps until all the baking powder is gone. Then give the oven another rub-down with water, to get the inside really shiny.
9. Replace your racks and start cooking again!

Get your students to help with this so they learn how to clean your school cookers (and their home ones) and appreciate the importance of food hygiene.

Need a new school cooker? Talk to our experts about your options today!