Don't judge me. Please. I know it's disgusting, and I would never, EVER show my stove this dirty to anyone, unless, of course, it was for the sake of science.
I have tried everything to clean my stove. Steel wool, scouring powders, running it through the dishwasher on the sanitize setting, Magic Erasers and good, ol' fashioned elbow grease. Nothing seemed to get it completely clean and there was always grease lurking in the creases and crevices. It drove me crazy!
Then one day I came upon an interesting pin on Pinterest. (I am obsessed with Pinterest! But that's a post for another day.) The original pin, which can be found here, claimed that you can clean the grates and drip pans on your stove with ammonia, and nothing else. I was skeptical, but I figured I had already tried everything else I could think of, with less than fantastic results, so it was worth a try.
I had all the supplies needed on hand, and one sunny afternoon, I set out to see if it really worked or if it was all smoke and mirrors.
The pin claims that all the grease and grime is dissolved by the fumes of the ammonia. So I loaded my stove drip pans and grates into zip-top bags. I even threw those round burner-cover thingies in there for good measure.
I added approximately 1/4 cup (or maybe less) of ammonia to each bag, and zipped them closed. The idea is not to soak them in the ammonia, but to put enough in to produce fumes.
I placed the zip-top bags on a cookie sheet and placed them out in the sun to do their thing. They really need to be put outside, because the fumes, no matter how tightly they're sealed, are really strong. I mean headache strong. Do NOT attempt to keep them inside.
I let them sit overnight. By the next morning, I noticed one of my bags had burst open and all of the other bags had swelled from the fumes. I also noticed there was a good amount of sludge sitting at the bottom of each bag.
I opened all of the bags outside to keep the fumes from escaping into my kitchen, and then brought them inside. I removed everything from the bags into the kitchen sink and gave them a thorough rinse. I was completely shocked. They greasy film that had been coating everything for the last couple of years was gone and all the surfaces felt squeaky clean.
There were a couple of spots that required a quick scrubbing with a sponge, but for the most part, everything simply rinsed off. Are you kidding me?! How had I never heard of this before?? Why do they not teach this cleaning method in schools? This is the kind of thing people need to know in order to be successful at life. God bless the woman who figured this out. She should be a guru, because look at the finished result.
Look at it!! I can see my reflection for goodness sake.
After this discovery, I starting cleaning everything I could think of this way. The racks from my oven and toaster oven, my barbecue grill grates, even the inside of my oven. For the oven racks and barbecue grill grates, I used a heavy duty garbage bag and tied the top with the tightest knot I could manage and repeated the same process and rinsed it off with the hose. It worked just as well. For the oven, I placed a small bowl with about a cup of ammonia on the floor of the oven and the next morning, the grease had melted off the walls and door and pooled at the bottom of the oven. (If your planning on trying the oven method, open the windows or turn on the ventilation in your kitchen and make yourself scarce for a few hours. The smell is pretty strong.)
I wish I had pictures of the oven and barbecue grill grates because the transformation was mind-blowing. I wish I could put a keg of ammonia in the middle of my house and hose everything off after the fumes did their thing. That's how well this works. Pinterest saves the day! Although, it is worth mentioning, I believe this method is meant for metal objects and possibly glass. I also probably wouldn't use this on anything made of copper or coated with copper.
I wish I had pictures of the oven and barbecue grill grates because the transformation was mind-blowing. I wish I could put a keg of ammonia in the middle of my house and hose everything off after the fumes did their thing. That's how well this works. Pinterest saves the day! Although, it is worth mentioning, I believe this method is meant for metal objects and possibly glass. I also probably wouldn't use this on anything made of copper or coated with copper.
Speaking of Pinterest, you will notice I have finally added 'Pin It' buttons to this blog. So go ahead and pin to your heart's content! If you don't have Pinterest, go get an account. It's a fabulous way to waste an entire evening.
Disclaimer: If you become addicted to Pinterest, don't come crying back to me. Consider yourself warned.
Now go clean your stove and let me know how it turns out!
xoxo Kristen
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