You use them every day, often more than once, but how often do you think of cleaning your coffee maker and your oven? Think about it, these appliances see the most use in most kitchens, and they can be easily overlooked when it’s time to do deep cleaning. Cleaning your coffee maker and oven regularly is crucial to ensuring the longevity of your appliances, and you’ll be able to enjoy fresh meals and cups of java without any strange or unappetizing smells.
Method for Deep Cleaning a Coffee Maker
What kinds of grime might be lurking in your coffee pot? Yeast and mold can grow in the reservoir, making your coffee taste funky, and a 2011 NSF study found that coffee sediment can make your cup taste unpleasant. While low levels of yeast and mold aren't usually dangerous, they can trigger allergic reactions in certain people. Regular cleaning of the coffee machine will keep it free of bacteria and other pathogens. To clean a common drip coffee machine, please follow the instructions below.
Keep your machine clean to avoid any unpleasant surprises in your morning coffee. The first step is to ensure you’re washing the brew pot after every batch of coffee, and if you use a reusable filter, make sure to wash this too, not just rinse. Puracy's Natural Dish Soap is perfect for getting these sparking clean. To clean the machine itself, you’ll need either a specific coffee maker cleaner, or plain household white vinegar. Because every coffee machine is slightly different, it's important to verify the manufacturer's cleaning guidelines.
Clean the exterior of the machine and the warming plate with warm water and Multi-Surface Cleaner, as any coffee that has previously dripped there can cause smells or stains.
Use vinegar to decalcify the machine once a month. Minerals in hard water might accumulate in your coffee maker over time, slowing the dripping process and shifting the flavor of your coffee. Cleaning and de-calcifying the device will restore it to peak performance.
- Fill the reservoir to capacity using a 3-to-1 water to white vinegar mix.
- If the machine's basket is empty, add either a paper filter or your reusable filter.
- Run your coffee maker as usual (but without adding any coffee grounds).
- Empty the brew pot, then refill the reservoir with plain water, and run again to flush the vinegar from the system.
- Empty the brew pot and wash, then discard the paper filter or wash your reusable filter.
Carafes should be cleaned after each use, but if they start to look grimy even after washing, a solution of warm, sudsy water and uncooked rice can do the trick. Stir the concoction to break up any clumps, and use this sudsy rice slurry to scrub the inside of the pot. Rice is a safe abrasive for glass and steel, and helps to absorb the scale buildup. Scrub the inside of the carafe with a sponge and then thoroughly rinse it out before using.
Method for Deep Cleaning an Oven
Oven cleaning doesn't have to be an arduous mental or physical task if you have the proper information and a few simple items.
Is the inside of your oven crusty on the bottom? Is there a layer of grease or grime on the door? Does it smell “off” when you cook your meals, or is there smoke coming out of it? All of these are signs that it’s time to clean your oven. If you want to be proactive, you can clean your oven once a season so crumbs and drips get cleaned out regularly. If you cook often, you may need to clean it more often, like once a month.
Regularly cleaning your oven improves the quality of the food you cook in it, but it's not exactly a glamorous operation and is easy to put off because it's "out of sight, out of mind."
If your oven is only a little grimy, then the self-clean feature can be useful. A self-cleaning oven can reach temperatures of up to 550 degrees Fahrenheit and will lock itself when the button is pressed to prevent the door being opened during the cleaning process. This heat is useful for melting and removing grease and filth, and can turn any crumbs or spills to ash at the bottom. Be careful with this feature though, it can backfire and smoke up, and in extreme situations even spark a fire, if there is a lot of accumulation on the bottom.
When you’re ready to do a deep cleaning, here is what you need.
This method's widespread acceptance is at least in part due to the fact that it doesn't call for any synthetic substances, such as those found in commercial oven cleaners. You probably already have all the ingredients for this easy oven scrub on hand:
- Half a cup of liquid dishwashing detergent like our Natural Dish Soap
- One and a half cups of baking soda
- Just a quarter cup's worth of white vinegar
- Grab a bowl for mixing and an abrasive sponge for cleaning the mixture out of your oven as well
Plan to do this on an evening when you’re done cooking for the day, and when you won’t have to cook in the morning. Combine all the ingredients. Even though the baking soda and vinegar will foam at first, you should continue to stir the mixture until it becomes a smooth paste.
Then, using the sponge, spread the paste all over the oven's interior, including the door. Make sure the paste is evenly distributed, and then let it rest in the oven overnight.
The following day, wipe away the paste with the abrasive side of your sponge along with the nasty grease and grime that had been loosened up overnight.
Once you've removed all the accumulated grime and spills from the oven's interior, you can give it a final rinsing with water and admire the sparkling clean results.
