Oven Mate Cleaning Gel

My oven had not been cleaned for 5 years, it stunk, it was filthy, the door was so brown you couldn't see a thing through it, it was vile, I couldn't even use it without opening all the windows as the room was filled with smoke!

I was going to pay £45 for a professional to come in when I saw the reviews for Oven Mate Cleaning Gel. I thought I may as well try it, I didn't even consider the Mr Muscles and these oven bags and what not as in my experience they take about 24 hours to work and require a LOT of scrubbing and hard work, and that was on a fairly clean oven!

I received this mail order on a Saturday morning as I was waiting for my friend to come and pick me up to go on a weekend away, I couldn't contain my excitement (I know!) and decided to try it even though I only had about 2 hrs spare. Anyway, turns out that's all I needed! Paint it on ( it says to paint it as thick as the stuff you are trying to remove), waited about an hour and wiped off! It is very gunky, I used 2 rolls of kitchen roll to clear the grease and then washed clean after. But I didn't get any on the floor or anywhere, no mess, no smell either. I now have a shiny new oven... you could literally lick it. I am so pleased I keep opening the oven and having a look and have already recommended to everyone I know who have had the same results.

So if you are wondering whether or not to buy this then GO AND BUY IT NOW!!! Do not listen to these people calling it a waste of money, I have no idea how this did not work for them, if it cleaned my oven, it will clean anyone's oven!

Oven Mate is so easy to use and it has no nasty caustic smell. I have used it to clean my oven, oven racks, the base of stainless steel pans and frying pan. I have also cleaned stubborn baked on grease from glass baking dishes and my enamel roasting tin.

Put on your rubber gloves, paint on the gel with the brush provided and leave it to work - simple. I usually leave it on for a couple of hours then just wash off with clear water - job done.

I moved house recently and inherited a disgusting grill pan that was black with baked on grease and looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years. I applied Oven Mate and left it on overnight and the majority of the caked on fat washed off leaving only one area in the base that needed to be treated a second time. I now have a grill pan that looks like new.

Brilliant product! well worth the money.

I was in Lakeland buying some replacement filters for my compost crock when the Oven Mate Ultimate Oven Cleaning Kit caught my eye. At over £8 it wasn't particularly cheap compared to Mr Muscle, for example, but I was seduced by the blurb on the box promising no scrubbing; simply paint on, leave and wipe off. I have a disability which means I get tired very quickly so I'm a complete sucker for any cleaning product which promises me I won't have to kill myself to achieve a reasonably clean house. Since my oven was well overdue for a clean, I bought the Oven Mate.

The kit consists of a plastic bottle of clear gel, a brush and some gloves and the idea is to paint the gel onto the affected areas with the brush and leave from anything to three minutes to three hours, depending on when it begins to turn brown. I spent a tedious 20 minutes applying the gel to the oven floor, the grill floor, the inside oven window and the hob. Since the oven floor was the most grubby, I decided to leave it for the full three hours. The instructions are that once the solution has turned brown, you should wipe it off with a dry cloth and hey presto, nice shiny oven. Er, no actually. I left the lightly stained hob for about an hour, went to wipe it off and found that most of the grease stayed put, with very little coming off on the cloth, ditto the grill floor and the oven window. Seeing little point in reapplying or mucking up another clean cloth, I sprayed Cif on them, left on for ten minutes then wiped off - job done.

The oven floor I may as well not have bothered with. By the time I came to wipe off the brown gunge after three hours, I realised by the first wipe that this stuff was hopeless and that I may as well have just done it the old-fashioned way with detergent, hot water, a scourer and elbow grease. This method, however, was precisely what I wished to avoid having to do which is why I bought the kit in the first place!

Hours later, cross, tired and thoroughly fed-up I now have a much more presentable oven, but it certainly isn't in any way due to this useless product. I do wish these companies wouldn't make promises they can't deliver, the blurb on the box saying that it can deal with the toughest and most burnt-on of stains when clearly it can't. Yes, the oven was grotty, but it was by no means filthy and should have posed no problem for this comparitively expensive cleaner. I'm very surprised and disappointed actually, this is the first Lakeland product I haven't liked. A big thumbs-down all round, I'm afraid.