My wife has always insisted that dishes be clean (as in washed with soap and water) before putting them in the dishwasher and that the dishwasher just sterilizes the dishes. In her defense, she grew up in a house with rock hard water and it wasn’t much good for cleaning. Now, we have a water softener and a newer dishwasher. I put some somewhat dirty dishes in it last night and they seemed to come out clean. I’m wondering how far I can push the envelope. I’m also curious as to what other Doper’s habits are.
I voted rinsed off, but it’s really a combo of scraped into trash/rinsed off depending on when I’m going to run the dishes. If I’m running the dishwasher right away, it’s mostly just scraping off. If it may be a while until a run, I will rinse more thoroughly.
Part of it is I don’t use many dishes, because I don’t like food or to cook. So I don’t want moldy stinky dishes sitting for a few days.
I just remove the bones and other big items. I did get the type of dishwasher that grinds the food particles as it pumps the washing water, which what it grinds up is used as part of the washing cycle to aid getting the dishes clean.
I like to do direct to dishwasher, dishes don’t touch the sink at all, easy to do if one lives alone, but doesn’t work well with a family as one does not always know if the dishes are clean or dirty with two people running it. Another thing about direct to dishwasher is that if something doesn’t get all clean, that’s when it goes to the sink. That happened more often with my older dishwasher, but it’s still a lot less hand washing that way they using the sink before to preclean everything.
Also a lot depends on one’s dishwasher, and one has to dial in how to make it work it’s best with the detergent it does best with and perhaps needing to up the hot water somehow.
I make the water in the sink quite hot and get all the foostuffs off of the plate, but I don’t use the detergent scrubber wand thingy on them. They’ve come out fine from the dishwasher 99% of the time, and we have a (presumably) shitty apartment dishwasher.
The dishwasher typically has an impeller, which kind of is like a little, lightweight garbage disposal. It grinds up any food so that it can all be pumped out the drain. The more food and gunk you leave on your dishes, the harder the impeller will have to work and the gunkier the drain will be. It’s typically not a big deal, but if you put things like caked on lasagna pans in the washer, all the residue could foul things up eventually. Most modern dishwashers can handle pretty gunky dishes, but you may be sacrificing some of its lifespan if you go overboard. You also have to be more careful about how you load the dishes to ensure that the jets will be able to reach more of the surface of the dirty dishes. Also, the dishwasher circulates the water in the wash cycles, so dirtier water is being sprayed around all the dishes.
Most modern dishwashers do a pretty good job with very dirty dishes, but the tradeoff is that there might be more issues down the line and you might have to deal with dishes sometimes having food left behind.
According to a lot of fairly reputable sites (i.e. not dishwasher manufacturer sites), including Consumer Reports and Good Housekeeping, scraping the big chunks off is all that’s necessary with modern dishwashers. Apparently the detergents work best with some level of food residue, and more importantly, most modern dishwashers have soil sensors that determine how dirty the dishes are, and adjust the cycle parameters to best clean them. Rinsing gives that sensor incorrect information, and your dishes may not get as clean.
So I scrape, but don’t rinse, unless that’s the only way I can get the big chunks off easily.
My dishes tend to pile up for a few days, so I soak them in a sink full of hot water before they go in the dishwasher. It’s a GE Nautilus portable- the kind you roll over to the sink and hook onto the faucet. It’s 15 years old and still works great. When needed, I use it as a temporary kitchen island, then roll it back out of the way.
I have an indoor grill that I use for cooking steaks and chicken breasts.
The grill is Teflon coated. But if you’re basting with a marinade, stuff tends to get stuck on the grill and you’re left trying to scrub the stuff off while NOT scraping off the Teflon.
One day I got so frustrated, I just said “Fuck it, let’s see how clean the dishwasher can get it”
I was very surprised when the thing came out clean. It had a couple of problem spots, but for the most part, it came out clean.
So in this case, elbow grease vs washing machine, the washing machine won.
Wait - are you my husband posting here without my knowledge??? No, wait, our pre-cleaner is Higgs, no matter how many times I ask him not to.
I rinse because I don’t want any solid matter clogging the dishwasher. If the dishes have been sitting out, I’ll use a scrubby to break up any stuck-on food bits. But some things go right it, and if I don’t have a full load, I’ll just run a rinse cycle.
I don’t have a dishwasher but I do the dishes at my parents’ house all the time and I voted for “Rinsed.” They can’t tell me what their dishwasher’s manual recommends so I just rinse the dishes to be safe. It takes care of the “scraping off of large chunks” part too.
I definitely don’t rinse as thoroughly as my parents do. When I open their dishwasher I can never tell if the dishes inside have been through a cycle yet or not.
I voted “rinsed”, but really it depends on how dirty they are to begin with. If I ate something with a lot of sauce or something like that, like say spaghetti, I will rinse off the excess sauce from the plate. If I just had a sandwich I don’t bother.
My folks do too but once my nieces got to be old enough to stand, the validity of the magnet’s assertions went out the window. Maybe when they’re teenagers and stop feeling the need to mess with everything in their sights I’ll be able to trust it once more
