When asking about removing grease I am asking about removing a LOT of grease. Like you just cooked four steaks and some bacon and they spattered grease all over your stove.
What is an efficient way to clean that mess up? Techniques and products.
I have cleaned up such messes before but it seems to take the better part of a roll of paper towels and half a bottle of cleaner. Maybe more.
Detergent like dish soap makes a soupy mess.
All doable, I get a clean stove in the end but it takes a lot of time and work.
Moved from The Café to IMHO. Cleaning isn’t really cooking. So this is a better place for it.
Grab an old rag and use a little dish detergent and hot water to remove grease from your stove. A rag is far better than a sponge for this job. I like Palmolive or Dawn.
The degreasers tend to be far more expensive and far more harsh to work with.
Go to Home Depot and get a jug of “Krud Kutter”. It’s an awesome grease cleaner that we learned about from the man who cleaned and then painted our greasy kitchen cabinets. It’s cheap and it has no smell at all.
I wipe away as much moveable liquid grease as possible with paper towels, so that as little as possible grease doesn’t mix with the cleaner to come later and form the soupy slurry you mention. Once most of the grease is gone, then I come at it with pure, undiluted Krud Kutter and a couple of cleaning rags (old hand towels, because they’re a bit scrubbier than smoother rags). If the grease is really cooked on, let a little pure Krud Kutter sit on it and soak for awhile.
And for really carbonized grease that’s almost like laquer, after it has soaked in Krud Kutter for fifteen minutes or so, go after it with a straight-edged razor blade. It’ll shave off nicely.
I second the motion on using Krud Kutter. It removed baked on grease from under cabinets next to the stove when we moved into the house. It was nasty! Took it right off with very little “elbow grease.”
Spray cleaner, basically diluted dish soap would work here. Soak it heavy, then rub it with a brush if anything is baked on. Yes, it makes a soupy mess. Then you wipe up the soupy mess with a few terrycloth rags. Rags get a rinse, then go in the wash, and Robert’s your uncle.
If there’s actually a layer of grease then use a paint scraper to remove most of it first; that should remove 95% of the problem. I have a flat top electric stove, so it’s easy for me to pour a cup or two of hot soapy water on top and let it soak and lift to grease. Use a dish cloth like a mop and repeat 2-3 times rinsing the cloth each time. Then finish off with a couple paper towels. For a more textured non-flat surface that won’t work so well…
Yeah, I am thinking the OP is talking about a very thick layer of relatively fresh grease. When that happens I wipe it off with paper towels if I’m feeling rich, or a rag to be thrown away (not laundered) otherwise. Just keep rubbing till it’s mostly gone – no point trying to dissolve it with any kind of product. Then, when you’ve rubbed most of it away, Dawn and a dish sponge.
My technique takes little effort and I wind up with a stove that is shiny and clean. I use a random spray cleaner and a dishcloth. Then later, when my gf notices the stove, she uses some process that takes awhile but works wonders. I don’t know, nor do I want to know, the specifics.
Krud Kutter is not scent-free. I used a ton of it while cleaning up cabinets before painting them in November, and it definitely has a smell if you’re up close and personal with it, inches from your nose. I just sniffed the bottle still in the kitchen and I guess the thing I could most closely compare the smell to is celery.
And I agree with mmmiiikkkeee that the first step if you have an actual appreciable layer is to remove it. Before using a scrapper that might scratch the paint, though, see how much you can wipe off with dry paper towels. It might take off more of it than you’d predict.
One thing I would add, is that I have found it best to do a couple of passes. The first pass with a dishrag, a little soap, and hot water, or if you are so inclined - those Clorox wipe things. That gets the visible splatter and crumblies. Then move on to spray cleaner and paper towel.
If you try to go from gross to sparkling in one pass, it won’t really work.
If you’re asking about a stove with a glass top be VEEERY careful. A lot of cleaners have abrasives that will ruin the top, same for scrubbers, scrapers, etc.
My GE glass top stove recommends Cerama Brite cleanser. A special yellow-colored scrubbing pad that isn’t has harsh as other pads. And for the ultimate in baked on grease, a fresh single edged-razor blade. Hardware stores sell Cooktop Cleaning Kits with these items all in one package.
Time for a mini rant - who ever thought that glass would make a good stovetop material? It seems to be the most fragile, hardest to clean, easiest to scratch/pit. And then very expensive to replace. According to the instructions that came with my stove - well there is no RECOMMENDED cookware but lots of cookware that is NOT RECOMMENDED. I’m ready to go back to the type of electric stove with the spiral coils on top - but they’re usually the bottom-end of the line. No features like spill-proof ovens.
I thought I would love the glass top! It was horrible. Not recommended to use a cast iron pan. That Ceramic cleaner didn’t do squat on the rings that form around the burners. Gas cooking is so much better, and it has plenty of “catch space” for overboils and spills.
I’ve found that in 50 years of cleaning the damn house there are very few things that can’t be cleaned just fine with dish soap, cotton rags, and hot water. The other things can be addressed with a dab of Citrisolve and/or a micro-sponge.
The best was the OLD Formula 409 cleaner. Some government agency must have had an issue with whatever was in it because now it doesn’t clean worth a damn.
I now use Purple Power/Super Clean on my greasy stovetop and inside the microwave. Spray, let it sit for a few minutes and wipe off.