Finish Deep Cleaning Your Kitchen
If you’re taking baking courses online, you’ll need a nice clean oven to make the best pastries and cakes. In the first part of the “Deep Clean Your Kitchen” series, we covered easy methods of cleaning the kitchen, sink and dishwasher. This part will cover the more exciting appliances, the stove, fridge, microwave and coffee maker. When all of this is sparkling clean, you’ll be on top of your cooking and baking game.
Clean your stove:
Clean your stove on a day you plan eating out for dinner, because it needs to sit overnight to remove the food debris. Mix a box of baking soda and water and stir it until it becomes a paste. Cover openings with aluminum foil and spread the paste over the inside of the oven. If you have gas burners, remove them and stick each of them in a plastic bag with 1/4 cup of ammonia. It’s the fumes rather than the ammonia itself that cleans the burners, so a lot isn’t necessary. Let each of these sit overnight.
Take the burners out and let them soak in soapy water to get the ammonia smell off. Don’t use bleach because it’ll produce toxic fumes combined with the ammonia. Scrape the paste off of your oven with a small ice scraper and all of the grease will come off with it.
It’s important to only use water on electric burners, but you can use a mild cleaners on the reflector dishes.
Clean your fridge:
Empty your fridge and take the shelves and drawers out. Don’t use any soaps or detergents to clean them, because they can leave scents behind and make your food taste like soap. Baking soda and hot water will do the trick. Thoroughly dry the shelves and put them back on. Spot clean the rest of the fridge with your same baking soda and hot water mixture.
Clean your appliances:
Have you felt the grease inside of your microwave? Does it smell like the remnants of long-forgotten leftovers? Clean it by filling a mircowave-safe bowl with water and half of a lemon and nuke it for three minutes, and letting it sit inside for five. Anything sticky will come loose and you can wipe it up with a paper towel or sponge covered with dishwashing liquid.
To clean your coffee maker, just put a half vinegar/half water mixture through a brew cycle. The smell of the vinegar may linger, so just run water through the coffee maker a couple of times until you can’t smell it anymore.
