To THIS

Today we want to give a quick talk to help you with the holiday clean-up. We must admit we made a bit of a mess in the stove with all the holiday cooking. The term “holiday stove” comes to mind. You know how it is, sometimes, that pie just boils out of the pan and into the bottom of the stove, no matter what precautions you take. Then add the cheese from the hashbrown casserole and you have cement in the bottom of your stove.

If you have done almost any amount of cooking, holiday or otherwise, you know of what we speak. You know “holiday stove”.

“Holiday Stove”

For those of us that are environmentally friendly, it can be hard to balance getting it clean with being green. You want to get it clean and sanitized but at what cost to the health of your household?

You can do the scraping with all the elbow grease you can muster. You can put moist towels on the bottom of the stove and hope that will make it easier to wipe out. Or you can do the every popular, just ignore the mess and keep cooking, it is bound to “cook-off” at some point. Of course, though of us that have been cooking long enough, know it will not “cook-off” ever.

For those with a self-cleaning stove, that is one way to do it. But we have found that our self-cleaning stove puts off an odd, chemical smell and that can not be good for you or your house. We worry about the cleaning fumes hurting or killing the parrot and finches. Not to mention, it just smells bad.

So Grammy found a new way to try cleaning the bottom of the stove. We are not sure why we did not think of this before. Vinegar and baking soda do wonders for the stove. We use this combo to clean many other things around the farm, why should we not use it on the stove?

Grammy went to cleaning with the vinegar and baking soda plan.

You will need:
2 cups of baking soda
6 cups of vinegar

After you have finished your cooking for the day and the stove is cool, you can start the cleaning. It is very important that you not try this with a hot stove, the results are not good.

Grammy started with pouring the vinegar into the bottom of the stove first and then adding the baking soda. But it does not seem to matter which order you go in.

Spread the baking soda around the stove. Make sure to get on all the nasty spots.

With a silicone spatula, Grammy spread the baking soda around the stove bottom. She made sure to get the entire stove covered with baking soda and vinegar mix.

You can use more baking soda or vinegar, if needed, depending on how bad a mess you made in the stove.

Now sit back and watch the show. As expected the baking soda and vinegar reacted. It was less like a volcano and more like a foaming ocean wave. It was cool.

Grammy left the mix in the bottom of the stove for about 30 minutes. If needed, you can use the spatula to swish the mix around. The spatula is also good for light scraping while the mix is working.

When the mix has stopped bubbling and you have gotten all you are going to get from the baking soda and vinegar reaction, you can start clearing it out.

With a dishrag, Grammy soaked up the mix along with the debris that was loosened by the bubbling. This did take a bit to get all the liquid out of the stove bottom.

After all the liquid mess was sopped up, with a clean, dry dishrag, Grammy wiped the stove bottom out. She was sure to get up all the liquid and dry the stove bottom. It is also most important to get all the baking soda off the heating coils.

Do not leave any baking soda or debris on the heating coils or the coil may burn into with future use.

If one try did not do the job, you may want to do a second run and leave it in the stove bottom longer. Do not leave it overnight, the vinegar may rust the metal in the stove.

Separately, you can use the same process on the stove racks. It is best to do this outside as it does make a bit of a mess. When the bubbling is done, just rinse with the hose and set them aside to dry. You can put the clean racks back after all is said and done with the stove cleaning.

And there you have a nice clean stove with non-toxic, environmentally-minded cleaners and no bad chemical smell. The kids did not cough, the birds did not die.

We hope you have enjoyed this quick talk and we hope it helps make your Christmas holiday clean-up easier and faster. This can, of course, be used year-round to keep your stove clean, shiny, and sanitized.

Thank you for visiting and please come again for another edition of Out Standing in the Field.