The list of cleaning tasks in a kitchen seems never-ending, and cleaning and replacing stove drip pans is one of those tasks that isn't exactly the most fun when it comes to home improvement. You might even be tempted to replace your style A or style B stainless steel drip pans with shiny new ones, but you can also DIY your current ones back to cleanliness. Here are a few tips to clean and replace stove drip pans that might make the chore a little more bearable for you.
What is a Stove Drip Pan?
Stove drip pans are the pans underneath the heating element on your stove, whether it's an electric range or gas range cooktop.
Stove burner drip pans can get messy after you cook a lot of meals on the kitchen appliance, and drip pan bowls really do need to be scrubbed occasionally or replaced entirely every now and then.
How Do You Clean Stove Top Drip Bowls?
Most guides to cleaning electric stove or gas burner drip bowls have you use dishwasher liquid or liquid dish soap, a bowl, sink, or bucket, a plastic scouring pad or pastry brush, a sponge, a rag, dishcloth, or microfiber cloth, and gloves. Some call for white vinegar or baking soda to clean the appliance parts on your electric range drip pan or gas burners.
The AARP guide to cleaning stove drip pans is one of the most simple we've found. It has you take off the bowls from your gas or electric stove burner, put the drip pans in the sink in hot water, and let them soak for 10 minutes. Then you "...pour in distilled white vinegar to cover the baked-on food and grease." They should sit like that for about half an hour.
Next, you sprinkle baking soda on top of the vinegar and rub it into any caked-on bits on your chrome drip pans or porcelain drip pans, whatever they happen to be. It might take some scrubbing, but after several minutes, your stove drip pans should look cleaner.
Rinse and repeat until you're satisfied, then rinse and towel dry the drip pan set, and you're good to go.
How Do You Replace Them?
Drip pans are not hard to replace. Like most cookware, you can find non-stick varieties in your local stores or on Amazon in brands like Amana, Crosley, Whirlpool, and Maytag among others. You simply remove the old chrome drip bowl, then replace with whatever style and brand you like.
For instance, Range Kleen has heavy-duty chrome drip pans. Hotpoint has drip pan trim rings and drip bowls. Frigidaire has a black porcelain drip pan set, and Kenmore has several different kinds, including a popular double drip pan. If you check for special offers at stores near you, you can probably get store pickup or delivery for replacements pretty easily.
You can get GE's popular WB31M20 black drip bowls on Amazon, or the WB31T10010 genuine GE Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) part from the online retailer, too.
Your toaster, fridge, and kitchen trashcan likely need to be cleaned and replaced every now and again, and stove drip pans are no different.
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