Too mild for a pit, too mundane for IMHO, possibly no factual answer so not going to GQ…
I just cleaned the electric stove’s drip pans and am once again baffled as to why they are chrome-plated.
They look lovely when brand now. Three uses and there’s crud that cannot be scrubbed off no matter how hard you try - I think mostly it’s that the chrome has been eaten away and it’s actually rust.
Whatever the cause, they look vile after 2 months of use.
I looked in vain for stainless steel drip pans and apparently they Do Not Exist. The only non-chrome ones I’ve seen are some kind of black enamel - which blows my theory that someone thinks that chrome functions better (reflects heat upward better). Except that function is lost as soon as they start looking rusted, amirite?
Longing for the day when this cooktop gives up the ghost and I can get an induction range. It’s 20 years old and going strong though, dadgummit :D.
Now that’s curious. I just searched for Stainless Steel Drip pans, and none of the sites listed actually had them. I wonder if the price would just be too high. The ‘Chrome’ pans only cost around $15 for a full set. Which is why they don’t last, for that price they must be made of pretty low grade metal with a thin plating.
Probably due to cost. Most things I looked at said it is for reflecting heat upwards. (Black enamel will do this pretty well too). They make foil inserts you can put on them, or use tinfoil as well.
I would suggest Firefox, but it’s pretty difficult to hold a pan over the fox once you set it ablaze. Turns out strapping the pan on before lighting the fox doesn’t work too well either. You have to wait fro the firemen to leave before you can pick through the burned out hulk of your neighbor’s house in order to find your supper. And it’s invariably overdone.
Back in college when I had an electric range with drip pans, we’d put them in the self-cleaning oven on the clean setting. That normally would get the gunk off of them. Or as mentioned above, they’re only $15 for a set. Just replace them.
I bleedin’ hate drip pans. Yeah, sometimes food spills. If I don’t clean the drip pan immediately, it will get burnt on. And eventually they rust out. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could just go down the hardware store for replacements, but I have a Kenmore range that uses pans that are slightly different from standard so I have to get them from Sears. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except the local Sears store closed a few years ago. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except the next nearest one, 47 miles away, closed. So I have to order them from Sears Parts Service. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except with shipping a set of four drip pans costs like $38.