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Home » Tips

How to Clean Stove Drip Pans Naturally

Published: Nov 5, 2021 · Modified: Mar 10, 2023 by Ginny · This post may contain affiliate links.

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Cleaning drip pans is a dreaded task for most cooks. Learn our easy method for how to clean stove drip pans naturally without harsh chemicals. Your stove’s burner pans will be looking great in no time.

clean stove drip pan showing the end result of the natural cleaning process
Eliminate Harmful Chemicals and Clean Your Drip Pan Naturally
Contents hide
1 When Your Electric Stove Burners are a Hot Mess
2 Supplies to Clean Stove Drip Pans
3 👩‍🍳 Instructions
4 🧽 Making the Homemade Cleaning Paste
5 ⏳ Let the Stove Burners Soak
6 📍 While You Are At It – Clean Underneath the Stovetop
7 🧽 Finish Cleaning Your Drip Pans
8 FAQ
9 More Great Ideas for Cleaning

When Your Electric Stove Burners are a Hot Mess

This isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it method of cleaning your electric stove drip pans. It does require elbow grease. As you can see from the picture, I was working with some fairly messy stove burners. Roll your sleeves up and follow our step-by-step instructions for cleaning drip pans.

drip pans fresh off the stove and loaded with caked on overflow from pots and pans
“Well Used” Stove Drip Pan
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Supplies to Clean Stove Drip Pans

Baking Soda. This simple baking ingredient is one of the most powerful all-natural cleaning agents you will find. You can use it to make several different cleaning solutions for tasks just like this one.

Dish Soap. Gentle, basic dish soap is a wonderful cleaning solution for breaking up grease and loosening up gunk.

Scrubby Sponge. Or you can use a steel wool pad. I actually scrubbed with a crocheted dish scrubby. You will have way better results using the tough side of a regular dish sponge or maybe even steel wool.

Plastic Bags. I used old Ziplock bags, but you can use any kind of baggy or even plastic bags from the grocery store. Use what you have!

Optional Supplies for Messy Stovetop Burners

Vinegar. Sometimes a little extra oomph is needed for these hard-to-clean areas of our home. Vinegar works wonderfully as a pre-soak to clean stubborn messes. If our more mild and virtually smell-free method below doesn’t work, consider adding a vinegar soak to step two before moving on to the cleaning paste.

👩‍🍳 Instructions

Step One: Remove the burners themselves first. You may need to twist them out of the sockets. If you have different sizes of burners, make sure you pay attention to where each one belongs. Set these aside where they will not get wet.

Next, lift out those pesky 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! Use a stiff brush to loosen the gross stuff if needed.

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

If the stuff caked on your drip pans is almost, but not quite loose after you spray it down, you might soak it for ten minutes or so just to make more headway before moving on to the next step.

Strong spray of water in the sink is removing a lot of the burnt remnants
Strong Water Spray Will Remove and Loosen Burnt Remnants

🧽 Making the Homemade Cleaning Paste

Step Three: Combine dish soap and baking soda in a 1:1 ratio in a small bowl. Mix the ingredients for your homemade cleaning paste 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.

Dish Soap and baking soda combined into a blue bowl. The consistency is similar to frosting and this mixture makes a wonderful homemade cleaning solution.
Dish Soap and Baking Soda

Step Four: Apply the mixture to your drip pans. This is a great time to be generous. When I say generous, I mean slather it on. Don’t be shy about this.

Next, give it all a scrub down for a few seconds to loosen things up. Work the cleaning solution into all that grease really well.

I scrubbed for 30 seconds or so on the ones that were in especially bad shape. Don’t be afraid to use a stiff brush or scrubby sponge if you need to. And work those elbows.

Drip pans with the dish soap and baking soda mixture scrubbed into the mess.
Add a generous amount of the homemade cleaning paste to each burner and scrub it in.

⏳ Let the Stove Burners 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 soaking in the cleaning paste you made.

cleaning drip pans in ziplock bags soaking in the dish soap and baking soda paste to loosen the remaining gunk
Let the Burner Pans Soak in Ziplock Bags for at Least Four Hours

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 had used for freezing meals that would have been thrown out, so it made for an easy choice.

📍 While You Are At It – Clean Underneath the Stovetop

There’s no better time than now to lift up that “hood” and clean the area under your stovetop. You might have to fiddle with the release mechanism to figure out how to lift the stovetop up.

Sometimes they just lift straight up. Sometimes, the top might just be stuck from excess gunk so you have to pull hard or spray the crack with your favorite all-purpose cleaner and let it soak for a minute. Trust me, we’ve moved into more than one house where that was the case.

Sometimes, there is a release mechanism along the front lip of the stovetop, or along the edge of the part where the control panel is. Every brand is different so if you can’t figure it out a quick google search of your make and model instruction manual should help.

Most electric stovetops have some way to pull the cooktop up and get to the stuff that falls down in. Again, a little soap and water does the job just fine. No harsh chemicals are necessary.

How to clean drip pans naturally. Quick and easy method.
Don’t forget to clean under the stovetop while you are at it.

🧽 Finish Cleaning Your Drip Pans

Step Six: Once you’ve waited at least thirty minutes, remove the soaking drip pans from those bags and scrub away. I didn’t get a picture of this step, but here’s the result.

Clean drip pan after soaking and scrubbing.  Most of the dirt and dried on food has disappeared.
My electric stove drip pans look so much better now!

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, and I didn’t have to use Ammonia and kill brain cells to clean my burner pans and make a tremendous improvement.

If you’re looking for an easy and natural method for cleaning your drip pans, I highly recommend you give this a try.

FAQ

How do I remove my drip pans?

First, you need to remove the burners themselves, which is usually just a matter of pulling the connection loose or possibly twisting the connection and then pulling. Place these on the side. At this point, you should be able to just lift your drip pans right out.

Depending on your oven model you may need to lift the stovetop cover to remove the drip pans. This is usually done by simply lifting straight up on the edges of the cooktop.

Can I put my drip pans in the dishwasher?

Yes! If your metal drip pans are only lightly soiled, throwing them in the dishwasher is an easy way to give them a quick touch-up and remove any fresh grease.

Can I clean my drip pans with ammonia?

Yes. Yes, you can. But you may also burn your nose hairs off — it’s a pretty dangerous chemical. I prefer to get my home mostly clean without dangerous chemicals over having a sparkly “clean” home that’s been doused in dangerous chemicals. That’s why I came up with this more natural method for cleaning drip pans with just dish soap and baking soda.

More Great Ideas for Cleaning

Ditch Paper and Switch to Re-usable Cleaning Cloths

Snag our Free Cleaning Schedule Printable

Grab our Free Spring Cleaning Checklist.

Ginny
Ginny

Hi!

Ginny Collins is a passionate foodie and recipe creator of Savor and Savvy and Kitchenlaughter. Indoors she focuses on easy, quick recipes for busy families and kitchen basics. Outdoors, she focuses on backyard grilling and smoking to bring family and friends together. She is a lifelong learner who is always taking cooking classes on her travels overseas and stateside. Her work has been featured on MSN, Parade, Fox News, Yahoo, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and many local news outlets. She lives in Florida where you will find her outside on the water in her kayak, riding her bike on trails, and planning her next overseas adventure.

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How to Clean Stove Drip Pans Naturally
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About Ginny

Hi!

Ginny Collins is a passionate foodie and recipe creator of Savor and Savvy and Kitchenlaughter. Indoors she focuses on easy, quick recipes for busy families and kitchen basics. Outdoors, she focuses on backyard grilling and smoking to bring family and friends together. She is a lifelong learner who is always taking cooking classes on her travels overseas and stateside. Her work has been featured on MSN, Parade, Fox News, Yahoo, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and many local news outlets. She lives in Florida where you will find her outside on the water in her kayak, riding her bike on trails, and planning her next overseas adventure.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Debora says

    November 17, 2020 at 12:09 pm

    Thanks designed for sharing such a pleasant idea, post is pleasant,
    thats why i have read it completely

    Reply
    • Ginny says

      November 17, 2020 at 12:15 pm

      Thanks, Debora!

      Reply
  2. Maria Josephine says

    May 30, 2020 at 10:25 am

    Brighty Tips for clean drip pans naturally. Its a very and natural way Thanks for sharing this method with us. Please keep sharing.

    Reply
    • Ginny says

      June 04, 2020 at 3:19 pm

      Thanks so much!! Appreciate you stopping by!

      Reply
  3. Rachael says

    May 07, 2020 at 4:52 am

    I used to take them into the yard and wash them with a high-pressure water gun. Thanks for your articles, now I can easily clean them indoors.

    Reply
    • Ginny says

      May 07, 2020 at 5:14 pm

      No way! That is awesome! I should have done that! Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy! Ginny

      Reply
  4. Tabatha says

    May 03, 2020 at 9:08 pm

    Valuable info. Lucky me I found your website accidentally, and
    I am stunned why this twist of fate didn’t took place earlier!

    I bookmarked it.

    Reply
    • Ginny says

      May 06, 2020 at 7:45 am

      Thank you! Enjoy!!

      Reply
  5. Mop Center says

    February 12, 2020 at 10:45 am

    Kitchen surfaces are bound to get messy from meal prep, but arguably none more than your stovetop. Take a good look at the drip pans at each burner. Chances are they’re covered with spaghetti sauce, cooking oil, and scrambled eggs that sloshed out of the pan and hardened into a concrete-like coating. But don’t whip out the toxic chemicals just yet! Here’s how to clean stovetop drip pans with nothing more than household items and some elbow grease, allowing homeowners to achieve sparkling cooktops with minimal effort.

    Reply
    • Ginny says

      February 12, 2020 at 4:30 pm

      Oh thanks for the taking the time to comment! That means a lot to us when readers reach out!! Cheers! 🙂

      Reply
      • Evangeline Moore says

        September 03, 2021 at 12:27 am

        You have made the stove-cleaning task seem very easy if I need to do such a thing. I appreciate your positive tone and humility to help those of us who are just becoming familiar with the kitchen and its activities. I am 67 and a retired school counselor. Since retirement, I have become the caregiver for my Mom (who was a professional cafeteria cook at the high school in my hometown). Now that she has finally handed over the reins, I have just become “friends” with the kitchen. Therefore, because of the pandemic, I had lots of time to try new things and lots of time not to be overly bothered about what may not have worked out well. I created a 3×5 card box with my recipes so just in case I got a compliment or two, I could duplicate what I did without much trouble. I also wrote down what didn’t work so I could be ahead of the game! The style of your blog makes me feel as if I have a personal mentor giving me the hints I need to succeed. Thanks!!!

        Reply
        • Ginny says

          September 08, 2021 at 12:59 pm

          You are just too sweet!!! Thank you so much! If there is anything else we can do, we love suggestions for the blog! Feel free to let me know what you’d like to see in the future! 🙂 Ginny

          Reply
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Family Photo Hi! I'm Ginny and for over 30 years, I've been creating simple and easy recipes without sacrificing on taste for our family on the go. I can't wait to show you how to do the same for your family. Read More...

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