So, I've been doing a lot of canning. And when I can I'm a bit messy at times. Seriously, I think it is impossible to avoid it! When I had a big overflow of tomato juice and sauce I knew that I would be left with a big mess to clean up. There was a huge amount of burned on gunk left on my stovetop when I was able to take the kettle off the burner. Not very fun. I wish I had taken a picture of how bad it was, but I think you'll get the idea.
Thank goodness I remembered that it can be easier to remove than just scrubbing till my arms want to fall off. All it takes is some baking soda and some patience.
First I VERY liberally sprinkled baking soda over the entire mess. I dumped quite a bit over the area since it was a pretty thick mess. I sprinkled a little bit of water on it and just let it sit for a while. I think I did some dishes and kind of forgot about it for at least 10-20 minutes.
The next step was wiping it off. In the picture you can see that part of it has wiped off fairly well. I kept washing out my dish cloth and rewiping it, but not really scrubbing too hard. Some parts just wiped right off, some parts were still a big, black, yucky mess.
I just dumped a bunch more baking soda over the parts that didn't clean up, sprinkled a bit more water and continued on my way with the rest of the dishes.
When I was done with my other clean up I just came back and wiped it down again. Most of it came right off by then. There was a chunk that seemed determined to stay on there, but with a little elbow grease it finally gave up. I didn't worry too much about total perfection (I rarely do) because I knew I'd be canning the next day and probably have a similar mess to deal with!
Luckily, it wasn't so bad the next day. If it had been I would have just reached for the baking soda again! Such an easy way to make quick work of canning messes. For more great Kitchen Tips visit Tammy's Recipes.
Heather
Nice work! I have to admit what you're describing here is one of the reasons I sold my ceramic flat top stove and put in my MIL's old regular burner one. I boil EVERYTHING over. :>)
ReplyDeleteGreat idea! I just cleaned my stove earlier this week. It was getting so bad -- eeek!
ReplyDeleteGreat idea -when i canned this last summer I made a big mess too even with my old burner stove this would have worked.
ReplyDeletevickie
Making kitchen cleans is so headache full for women.After making cook always the vegetable burnt and it spoils the vessel or kitchen.In this way you have to use cleaner for this and by this way you remove the burnt tomato sauce from the vessel.
ReplyDeleter4i