Yesterday evening, as I had almost finished unloading the dishwasher, I noticed something weird that was wedged between two plates. On closer inspection, yep, it turned out that it was the detergent tablet. It was almost perfectly intact, hardly dissolved at all. Basically, it means that the dishes were washed with clear, warm water (50-55°C / 125 °F). It bothers me for two reasons.
1 - As I said above, I was nearly done unloading it which means that I had put dishes, glasses and cutlery of questionable cleanliness back in the cupboards on top of other (really clean) stuff.
2 - Among the things I had washed was a plate and metal tongs which contained raw sausage juice. We put the sausages in the plate to thaw in the fridge (not on the countertop, of course) the night before. So, it sat there for almost 24 hours before it went in the dishwasher.
What would you do?
As far as I’m concerned, it’s answer 2 but I’m curious.
Yep, just run it again. My dishwasher has a sticky latch and occasionally doesn’t release the tablet until midway through the cycle. As far as mechanical problems go, it’s really no big deal.
You have to do the following for that. First of all make sure dishes are not the sprayer arms of your dishwasher. Turn your dishwasher on at night when no other water is being used. That way you will know it’s getting enough water pressure. Run the hot water at the kitchen sink for a few minutes before you start the dishwasher. You will get the best results if the water is above 120 degrees F
You didn’t notice anything was dirty. Sounds like you looked at stuff in the cabinets and couldn’t tell one batch from another. I wouldn’t care. They all got rinsed and dried off. I’d just put everything away. Just because it got a layer of soap sprayed on and off doesn’t make it clean, either. If all the food bits have been removed and a hot rinse happened, they’re clean.
Yeah, I did check as I always do and everything looked perfectly clean but visible dirt is only one thing. The really nasty critters that you don’t see with the naked eye is another.
And everything was not fully dried. As usual, the plastic stuff (lunch boxes, cups) were still dripping wet.
joyrohan. Thanks for your advice. I checked that there wasn’t anything in the way of the sprayer arms. It was OK although I noticed that they barely cleared one particularly large plate (1 cm space perhaps).
I’d probably have just pressed the “light wash” button on my dishwasher and run it again with the soap door open, just to remove any grease that might be left, and avail myself of whatever sanitizing abilities the detergent tablet has.
actually, there’s nothing about the soap that kills the critters. It just helps them to rinse away more thoroughly. Really good dishwasher detergents also include enzymes which help to break down any remaining oil or protein scum, which can protect the critters and keep them from rinsing away. It’s the dry cycle (or sanitizing rinse if your dishwasher does that) which kills the bugs.
I said number one, but I wouldn’t be worried about the cabinets. I’d just re-wash everything that was in there, plus the things I stacked them directly on top of.