Smoking Oven? Here’s What You Can Do

The last thing you want when you’ve got guests over for dinner is smoke coming out of your oven. Aside from the embarrassment it can cause, smoke isn’t exactly a flavour you want accompanying every meal you serve.
There are a number of reasons why you might have smoke coming out of your oven, so if your gas or electric oven is smoking right now and you’re trying to figure out what’s going on, read on to find out what it could be.

Causes of a Smoking Oven

Leftover cleaning products

Residue from leftover cleaning products are often the culprit if you have tried to clean your oven with chemical cleaning products such as caustic foaming sprays. will inevitably leave residue that will burn up when the oven is on and create smoke that isn’t just unpleasant but also filled with chemicals that you probably don’t want to be breathing in in excess.Even more worrying if these chemicals are sprayed over the element or fan they can cause irreversible damage leading to costly repairs.

Broken heating element

A broken heating element or an element that’s just about to fail can also cause smoke in your oven. Whether it’s the grill or a main electric heating element, a large build-up of excess heat can short your oven and produce smoke. You can test whether this is the case by turning your oven off and back on again and then waiting for 15-20 minutes to see if the heating element (grill or main) glows red.

If it doesn’t and you’ve confirmed that your heating element is broken, it’s time for you to book an oven repair or order a replacement part to be fitted.

Food remains

Most of us probably have experience with an oven smoking due to leftover food remains from a previous meal. This can either be chunks of food or drops of liquid that have fallen or overflowed while being cooked and burned up on the hot floor of the oven, or it can be an accumulation of months or years of cooking grease on the inside of the oven beginning to smoke as it’s heated to a high temperature.

The appliance is especially likely to smoke if you haven’t used the grill in your oven for a while.

While food and cooking liquid are a non-issue – simply clean the oven once it’s cool – a build-up of grease can potentially cause a fire so make sure to take action immediately if your oven is smoking due to grease build-up.