How to Easily Clean Stove Drip & Burner Pans Naturally

Learn just how easy it is to clean your stove drip and burner pans naturally, without having to use harsh (and expensive) chemicals.

Are you wondering how to clean stove drip pans without smelly chemicals that’ll burn your nose hairs off? I was too.

So, I decided it was time to use my go-to cleaning products in an attempt to tackle cleaning electric stove drip or burner pans on my well-loved (code for lots of boiled-over pots) stove.

As you can see in the after photo, the drip pans don’t look completely brilliant and perfect after cleaning.

I’m okay with the result. I wasn’t after perfection – I just wanted clean burner pans that didn’t involve giving myself a dizzying headache to achieve the end result.

I’m a bit of a worrier – so I know if I used anything stronger, I would’ve worried about being blown to pieces once I turned the stove on.

So, a good old fashioned scrub down with dish soap and baking soda was in order. I’m always surprised at how many household messes this simple combination can address.

👩‍🍳 Instructions

Now, this isn’t a set-it-and-forget it method of cleaning stove drip pans. You’re going to have to put some elbow grease into this. Not much. Just enough to get most of the gunk out.

Oh man was it dirty. I’m actually slightly embarrassed to show you this. But, I guess I’ll take one for the team just this once. Promise not to judge too harshly?

Here is the hot mess that resides beneath my burners. I’d love to say that I “let it get really bad for the purpose of this blog post” but I can’t. This is the real-life stove of someone that cooks virtually every meal at home.

🧹 Remove the Loose Dirt

Step One: Remove the burners, lift out the drip pans and shake them into the sink or into a garbage bag to get rid of any loose gunk. This is the easy part!

Step Two: Spray down the stove drip pans. You’ll be surprised at just how much gunk a strong steam of water can remove on its own. It helps if your faucet has a powerful spray so you can blast the gunk away.

🧽 Make a Scrubbing Paste

Step Three: Combine dish soap and baking soda in a 1:1 ratio in a small bowl. Mix together until it creates a frosting-like consistency with a slightly foamy texture. Here’s what you should see when you have everything all mixed up.

Step Four: Apply the mixture to your drip pans. This is a great time to be generous. When I say generous, I mean slathered. Don’t be shy about this. Then, give it a scrub down for a few seconds to loosen things up. I scrubbed for 30 seconds or so on the ones that were in especially bad shape.

⏳ Let Them Soak

Step Five: Transfer the drip pans to Ziploc bags so they’re out of the way and aren’t messing up your counters. Let them sit for an hour or more.

If you don’t want to waste the expensive Ziplock bags on this, just use the plastic bags from the grocery store. I had some Ziplocks I used from freezing meals that would have been thrown out, so it made for an easy choice.

📍 Clean Under the Hood

There’s no better time than now to lift up that “hood” and clean whatever this thing is called. Again, a little soap and water does the job just fine.

Step Six: Remove from bags and scrub away. I didn’t get a picture of this step, but here’s the result.

Note: I scrubbed with a crocheted dish scrubbie. You will have way better results using the tough side of a regular dish sponge.

I’m happy with the results. They aren’t in like-new condition but don’t you agree that the after looks much better than the before? Huge improvement in my eyes.

So, if you’re looking for an easy and natural method of learning how to clean clean your drip pans, I highly recommend you give this a try.