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I'm married. I wash a lot of dishes. These days, the only time some does dishes for me is when I go camping with the Scouts and one of the boys does them.
I have heard that spraying the cooktop grates and placing in a plastic bag, leaving overnight (outdoors) will clean the gunk of the grates. I haven't tried it yet but I will.
Is lye safe to use on items you will cook with? Yes. You remove it in rinsing, and if you have ever eaten a bagel, part of the process of cooking them is a boil in a lye bath. The small amount that remains on a bagel is safe.
Also lutefisk. It is fish that has been cured with lye.
A trick I've seen online for this and for oven racks, is to throw them in the grass overnight. It sounds bananas, but people say it works a charm. (And doesn't involve lye.)
That's interesting, I wonder how it works.
People used to spread laundry out to dry on grass; the oxalic acid in clover (also called oxalis) helped bleach out stains.
Maybe this is the same, or tiny critters eat all the organics overnight.
I restored an old cast iron pan with oven cleaner. It had a really thick coating of built-up crud - I nearly tossed it. But it had sentimental value for my BF so I decided to give it a go. I sprayed it and placed in a black plastic bag for 24 hours, then rinsed. It actually took about 4 rounds (4 days) to get all the crud off. But once I got everything off, I re-seasoned it, and now it's like a new (well-seasoned) pan.
I just had to clean a porcelain bowl with some burned on food from the oven, that just wouldn't come clean with liquid dishsoap and a cookware-safe scrubby - even after 4-rounds of soaking and scrubbing - still lots of adhered carbonaceous sugar and fat.
Then I used some Easy-Off heavy duty oven cleaner on it in an empty sink and soaked that for 20 minutes, then scrubbed with the Easy-Off suds and a heavy duty scrubby sponge and it came out perfect. Probably I should have let it sit for 40 minutes, but it was easy enough anyway after 20 minutes and I was impatient to get my kitchen sink back;-).
Seems to me dumping a lye bath down your drain will kill your otherwise healthy septic. I don't use lye for anything that will go down our drains for that reason. I'm not a plumber, but I do know how to follow my plumber's guidance....
Easy Off would be the better bet, as the vast majority can be wiped off and discarded before rinsing. That's the method we used to clean up FIL's old camping cast iron. Set the cast iron on newspaper outside, covered with EO, covered with plastic trash bag. Let sit overnight, use newspaper and plastic bag to wipe off, rinse. Repeated twice to get it all off - they were seriously cruddy.
Seems to me dumping a lye bath down your drain will kill your otherwise healthy septic. I don't use lye for anything that will go down our drains for that reason. I'm not a plumber, but I do know how to follow my plumber's guidance....
Easy Off would be the better bet, as the vast majority can be wiped off and discarded before rinsing. That's the method we used to clean up FIL's old camping cast iron. Set the cast iron on newspaper outside, covered with EO, covered with plastic trash bag. Let sit overnight, use newspaper and plastic bag to wipe off, rinse. Repeated twice to get it all off - they were seriously cruddy.
Now we use them regularly in our kitchen.
Look on the bottle of lye, and you will see in big letters "drain cleaner" as the primary use. It will be neutralized by normal waste, and especially all the vinegar that people seem to be in love with these days...
3) Wipe off in morning; use steel wool to remove stubborn areas.
I use this method for the grates on my Maytag stove. I think I am going to try it on some cookie sheets that have become all discolored after minimal use. (They were speckled and pink - a 'special' item - never again).
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