No matter how careful you’re with that shiny new cooktop, the day will come when a well-intentioned significant other, neighbor or relative will misjudge how long it takes to heat your chicken soup and also leave you a cooked-on mess in your pristine cooktop. Whether the cooktop is enameled steel or ceramic glass, then you must clean the surface with care to prevent scratches and discoloration.
First Aid
Dish soap works for daily cooktop cleaning, but spills and stains harden with repeated heating and cooling. Address boil-overs and seams whenever possible; wipe spills around the heat element with a damp rag. Enamel tops have been overshadowed by burner heads or links, or so the reflector pan and inherent surface will also need cleaning. Ceramic glass tops make cleanup simpler because of their flat surfaces, however scratch more easily than tooth. Baking soda and cream of tartar, found in several chemicals, work as cleaners for the enamel and glass when wet with water to produce a paste. Another frequent ingredient, whiting, or calcium carbonate, works well on tooth but may scratch glass.
Cleaning Compounds
Dry and fluid nonabrasive cleaners were developed to clean enameled appliances and fixtures and they eliminate grease and burned-on food well from steel-enamel stove tops. Though some of these cleaners work on ceramic, also, the safer choice for all these ultra-shiny surfaces is to pick either a proprietary cleaner created from the producer for its product or a cleaner marked for use on such surfaces. Ceramic glass cleaners often have a polish to maintain the surface glowing. Products containing silica sand — the raw material of glass — may scratch ceramic glass tops.
Scrubber
The way you employ cleaners can do as much harm to your surface as with the wrong cleaner. A nylon scrubber won’t harm an enamel surface however, used with a cleaning chemical like baking soda, may damage a glass top. For this reason, it is wiser to employ nonabrasive compounds with a soft fabric or natural sponge, certainly on ceramic glass surfaces. Further, ceramic glass tops may arrive with a razor blade. A sharp, fresh blade — or credit card — held at a minimal angle between 30 and 45 degrees can help lift cooked food. Nylon scrubbers and two-sided sponges with scrubber sides work well on enamel.
Soaking
Just as that frying pan lets go of cooked-on grease when it sits soaking to a warm selection, cooked-on food softens when soaked overnight with vinegar, an acid or household ammonia, an alkali. A soaked towel, covered with plastic wrap softens cooked-on messes on both types of shirt. A wash with a clean rag in the morning may clear away the mess. The Porcelain Institute recommends using fine steel wool tough stains on ceramic, but never use it in order to eliminate burns from ceramic glass — utilize a nylon scrubber or blade for removal of soaked food.