Colloidal synthesis method such as oleylamine (OAm)-stabilized process is of great interest for obtaining uniform and highly dispersed platinum nanoparticle catalysts, yet the ligand may unavoidably inhibit their electro-catalytic performance. Thus, fully removing these ligands is critical to activate catalyst surface. Previous research of OAm removal process pointed that thermal annealing was the most effective way in comparison with other methods such as chemical washing, UV–Ozone irradiation and cyclic voltammetry sweeping, but generally resulting in undesired growth of platinum nanoparticle. Few studies concerning a more efficient ligand removal process have been published yet. In this work we proposed a platinum in-situ catalytic OAm combustion strategy to elucidate the removal mechanism of OAm ligands in thermal process and the key experimental parameters were also optimized. In addition, heat flow signal based on differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurement as a sensitive indicator, is suggested to reveal the ligand removal efficiency, which is much more reliable than the traditional spectroscopy. In comparison with commercial Pt/C sample, such a surface clean Pt/C electrocatalyst has shown an enhanced specific activity for oxygen reduction reaction. Our removal strategy and the evaluation method are highly instructive to efficient removal of different organic ligands.