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.
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.
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.
🧽 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.
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.
⏳ 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.
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.
🧽 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.
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.
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.
I can’t believe I didn’t think of baking soda!! Thanks so much 🙂 🙂
🙂
I use this method to clean the inside of the oven, but for some reason I never thought to use it on the drip pans! Thank you for knocking some sense in to me!
Oh! Nice! Another method for me to try out for myself. I had tried out four different methods and none really made the drip pans come out sparkling – http://www.whatsupfagans.com/2014/03/how-to-clean-stove-drip-pans-pinterest-experiment/ though this one is different! Thank you!
I read your post and LOVED how detailed it was!
I use Barkeepers Friend (the powdered version) even on my stainless steel pans. It works wonderful and never scratches
Daniel
You could also try with vinegar and baking soda – the effect is remarkable.
This worked great! Thanks for the tip!
Well, starting this afternoon, I’ll be using the method that you described and also using it for the few spots on the inside of the oven. I was never satisfied with how the dishwasher didn’t work even though I’d scrubbed them as thoroughly as possible before putting them in the dishwasher. I didn’t try oven cleaner on the drip pans because they seemed like the kind of metal that the oven cleaner warned you not to use it on – I’ll want to kick myself if I find out that I could have actually used that oven cleaner on the drip pans at the same time I was cleaning the oven! Ha ha! However, I haven’t used the typical oven cleaner for years and years because it seems so lethal and I’ve been battling health problems for decades. Now, for the past 9 years, the service dog that I have is allergic to the world and can be very sensitive to some odors, chemicals, and a lot of environmental factors so I’m very careful what I expose her to. She is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier (commonly called pit bull) Phoebe, she takes care of me 24/7 by herself, is my best friend and I trust her with my very life so it’s very important that I do whatever I can to create a safe and comfortable environment for her, also. Most recently, I’d been cleaning such messes with a mix of vinegar and baking soda and I’ve been rather pleased with those results. For just the last couple of weeks, I’ve been incorporating hydrogen peroxide into my cleaning routines (especially laundry, soaking kitchen scrubbers, combs, hair brushes & toothbrushes). I really like the fresh smell and brightness of my laundry and I do like the way that it cleans, but I don’t know that I’d be comfortable using it if I still had kids in the home – or even other people who don’t listen well. As it is, I only have a personal care giver who comes in and helps me with housekeeping, laundry, some shopping, some cooking, etc. or more correctly, does those things while I get the extra sleep that I need, & she’s so very careful and conscientious that even though she could always have an accident, that would be no different than what could happen to me! Thanks for providing such a great site for us to use!
Magic Erasers do wonders on ovens. I haven’t tried on drip pans though.
Love the eraser pads for many different cleaning tasks, but learned the hard way their not so “magical” on anything that’s highly polished or glossy! I was amazed at how quick they cleaned the soap scum from my circa 1970 cave-like fiberglass tub-shower until I noticed the haze it left behind. They are way more abrasive than they look…
I actually do use oven cleaner on mine, just not indoors. Take them outside, and place one in a plastic grocery bag,and layer them spraying each one well as you stack inside the bag. Then just tie bag closed and about an hour later just rinse the grime away,, no scrubbing needed! Works great on porcelain as well as chrome, which most are. The only metal you have to be careful with really is aluminum. If it stays on too long it can discolor or pit. But I even used it on aluminum bake-ware for 5-10 minutes with great results, they were pretty much a lost cause to start with anyway, so why not!
If you wanna stick with something a little less lethal though, try a combo paste of baking soda and automatic dish detergent, bagged up overnight, then run through the pots and pans dishwasher cycle. Another method that works really well is a long soak in Simple green… I had a house fire several years ago and it was the only thing I found that would remove the smoky burnt grunge, it dissolved it almost instantly!
And a great tip for those with glass cook tops, I recently discovered a way to get mine looking the best it has in quite awhile just by using window cleaner and newspaper, Just as you do with windows (nothing works better than newspaper) . And although I know many people swear by vinegar, but I’ve never been a fan due to the smell, and the fact I’ve seen it ruin the finish on a friends granite counters! So if you want really good window cleaner dirt cheap, you can get a gallon of the Zep ammonia-free concentrate at H-depot for about 10 bucks, makes 32 GALLONS!, and works great in your home as well as in your cars windshield washer!
To Anonymous above, try Bon Ami. It’s a powder like Ajax, but is made to prevent scratching. I haven’t tried it on metal, but it’s great on my ceramic dishes – 40 years old and look (almost) like new.
I use Bar Keepers Friend for cleaning pots and pans with burned on areas. If it is light then one application will work but if it is heavy it might require more than one aplication. Where it is very heavy I work on it for a while then finish washing it and next time i wash it I work on it some more. It isn’t perfect but it does a good job. It is a powder like Ajax (is Ajax still around?), and they also have a liquid bottle like 409.
Nice!! Great tips! I love that! Cheers!!
I line them with foil and just replace the foil.
Exactly.
My mother always did this, and I did too.. Until I realized that part of the gunk I was trying to get off the drip pan while replacing the aluminum foil was the melted aluminum foil. It can trap heat, your temperature readings won’t be accurate (what the dial equates) and it could potentially burn your elements out faster. It’s highly recommended against.
Soft scrub works well to
I have a sealed top gas stove with unsightly brown “cooking stains”. Not food stains, just cooking stains. I wonder if this would help those? If I use a scouring pad/scrubber it will scratch the paint finish.
Try laying a softener sheet on the spot with a very hot wet washcloth to soak for a while. Then it should come clean.I clean bAked on pans that way when needed. It WORKS!
I used to just leave them until they where really bad (and had to use oven cleaner on them…) but now I find that I can be super lazy, whenever I use the stove (I love my crock pot…) I just put them in the dishwasher. Takes no time and my stove always looks clean…
That is such a fantastic idea, Ricki!
Do you put them in the top rack or in the bottom rack? I’ve been tempted to put them in the dishwasher too, but I am not sure where… I have black burner pans. Thanks!
I’m always amazed at what simple products that we have in the kitchen or at home can do. Most of the time we run out and buy something when all we have to do is reach for those good old-fashioned products like baking soda, etc. can do. This looks fabulous. My drip pans definitely need cleaning.
The good old-fashioned products always seem to do better than the newest, snazziest cleaner on the market, in my opinion.
Ok. This is amazing and I’m probably do this first thing in the morning. How incredible! The stove and I sometimes get mad at each other and go days without speaking because I get so mad it him- er, it for getting so dirty and gross all the time.
Haha the stove can be so frustrating sometimes. I feel like I’m wiping it down at least three or four times per day.
Jazmin you are tooo funny. I feel the exact same way but have never put it in these terms. I’ve learn TWO things today.
The power of baking soda never ceases to amaze me. Thanks for showing how to make it all paste-y!!
Any time, Trisha 🙂
I use baking soda so much that I recently bought it in bulk. Feed soda from a farm supply or mill is the same thing as baking soda but it’s animal feed grade. It’s perfect for cleaning. It was about $12 for 50 pounds!
Thank you for teaching me this.Just moved,all I ever used was a gas stove!Hate the build-up these pans gather.Trying this,this. Weekend…How long do you let the baking soda paste(in plastic bags)sit…before scrubbing down?Let ya know the results
Hithere! So glad you are going to try it! It is best to make the paste and leave overnight. If it is really bad, you may have to do it a couple times!! Let me know how it works! 🙂 Ginny