Kitchen Cleaning

How to clean an oven

Find a caustic soda oven cleaner. You may have difficulty because it seems to us that many really useful products like drain cleaners are being taken off the UK market and one would imagine that oven claners will follow. Look around for one, because this is just about the only product which will clean a greasy oven. Otherwise it's a long involved process and more time spent cleaning, for you.

We can give you some general points:

• Ovens clean much easier if the oven is warmed up well before cleaning and the cleaning product of choice is worked into the grease (which is now soft) and left for a while.
• The grease forms a runny sloppy liquid which is wiped off well. Put the slop you've got on your cloth, into a bucket of hot water which has dish wash liquid in it. Keep doing this until you've taken all the grease off the oven.
• Rinse the oven with clean hot water which also has a splash of dish wash liquid in it.
• Clean all around the floor to remove the drips and clean the outside of the oven as well.
• For ovens with a clay, self-cleaning lining – don't clean these at all. The water will destroy the lining
• You can scrub at the grease with a scouring pad but be careful that the oven lining isn't damaged
• Cover your roasting tins with aluminium foil and then you won't grease up your oven in the first place.

 Caustic soda burns the skin (and should never be inhaled), so always wear gloves when using it - however it gives a good result and fast Never, ever use any caustic detergents in a spray can or bottle or anywhere where you are forced into inhaling its vapour at close range, or where it will get into your eyes. You have been warned. It burns because it reacts vigorously with the water and fats in your skin. That goes for your lungs as well.
(Caustic soda is one of the best cleaning agents out there, and is in constant and frequent use throughout the food and other industries. All it requires is a little common sense as to its use).
Steam can be used to clean a cooker but will need mopping up as fast as the water appears - this carries grease. Steam softens but doesn't remove the grease. Clean your cooker with washing-up solution in hot water after each use, not once a year. That way you can eliminate any use of caustic soda, if it worries you.
We have seen organic solvents used as alternative cooker cleaners, but cannot say whether they would be as good - as a cleaning business, we have never taken the solvent route to cleaning - we find water cleans anything well. Where there is food, keep to water.
Keep ammonia and bleach well away from cookers.

How to do the washing up of pots and pans by hand and by a dishwasher

• Scrape all the waste food off them and put them to soak in a bowl of hot water and dish wash liquid. Flour, batter, egg, milk all set in very hot water
• Go and have a cup of tea
• Now take a green scratchy pad and wipe over them, rinse under a running tap and put them to dry.
• Alternatively, clean them up and store them in the dishwasher. You should wash your pots and pans well before you load them in the dishwasher, since a dishwasher wash will not get rid of old dried – on food. The old food just gets recycled around all the other pots and pans, so you think the dishwasher hasn’t done it’s job properly when you pull out still dirty pots. In fact no dishwasher can handle solid wastes and to do so will make the dishwasher smell eventually as all the old food rots away.Use the dishwasher then on the fast wash cycle, so saving on electricity
• Dishwashers will damage china, some glass including pyrex will be marked and you should load the machine so that nothing moves. Dishwasher action is vigorous and plates banging against one another will chip. Non stick saucepans may also damage: in fact we don’t put saucepans in our dishwasher at all

Hygiene in the Kitchen

Where do we start? With the last stomach upset you had? Re-read the section on washing crockery first.
Keep your kitchen areas cleaned daily.
Keep cooked food well away from raw food, preferably a long way away, and their containers should have lids on.
Wash your hands before handling either, and also after you have used the toilet.
Get rid of the rubbish to the outside
Keep your wash cloths clean. Try boiling them or washing them in the washing machine and then drying in direct sunlight. It is not really necessary to use drying cloths, but if you still insist on them, treat them the same way.
Keep the cooking area clean, especially underfoot.
Keep the cooker hood extractor fan blades and housing cleaned, and clean the blinds well.
Get into the habit of washing surfaces after use and then rinsing off. This way you do not need to apply sanitisers - you'll just be permanently clean. Never ever replace cleaning with sanitising. The two are not mutually exclusive, so keep those sanitisers out of it.
Study your kitchen corners, especially where you keep, store or prepare food. Always keep the corners well cleaned out. Treat with a descaler if you have very hard water -scale builds up in corners.
Wash walls often.

Fridge Cleaning

Keep the fridge clean and washed out with detergent, rinse well and deodorise after washing with bicarbonate of soda in the final rinsing water, if needed. Pay particular attention to the rubber seals on the doors.
When you are cleaning out the insides of the fridge, don't forget to clean that patch of floor the fridge is usually standing on, and also the external casings of the fridge. Not just the door.
Keep stored food in containers, and keep these containers clean - inside and out. Do not store cooked food in contact with raw food. This is where most cross-contamination occurs.
Keep the fridge at the manufacturers recommended storage temperature

Mopping

Download our guide to a perfect mopping technique

Change your water very regularly
Rinse the floor after cleaning
Wash your mop in detergent solution, after use
Keep your mop as dry as you can.
All that black water over the floor, a smelly mop, all the puffing and panting that goes with throwing a heavy mop around, and those are the cleaning companies we have come across. Heaven only knows what the householders are like. And you complain that the floor looks dirty five minutes after?
Use a light cotton mop, so it is easy for you to handle, keep it clean and washed after use, and halve your mopping time by keeping the floor as dry as you can, by wringing it out properly. push your mop, don't drag it.
Now you know how to mop.
Just in case you are tempted by flat mops or mops made of any other material other than cotton, these can be expensive, are very heavy to use, and do not produce such a good effect. A cheap cotton mop is as good as anything else on the market.

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