Intensive Stove Clean

1.5 hours credit

This shift is done weekly

Specialized training is available for this workshift. These instructions were written by Master Stove Cleaner Ben Graham

Try to do this workshift at a time when few people want to use the stove. (Perhaps Saturday or Sunday early morning, or later at night?)

• • Turn on the overhead light and the overhead fan for the stove.

  • Put on an apron, preferably one that is already dirty on the outside. Put surgical gloves on. Put yellow kitchen gloves on over the surgical gloves. This double gloving, while not recommended for sex, will better insulate you from heat and keep your hands cleaner. Use the same yellow kitchen gloves each time you do the shift, because they will get black and dirty.

  • Take all the random pots, pans, seasonings, and the like off the stove and put them away. Set the cast-iron pans off to the side.

  • There are three sections to the stove-top of the stove that is closest to the two-way sink. Pull them out one at a time, bring them to the two-way sink, and scrub/spray them clean with either an old sponge or steel-wool and some soap and water.

  • Use water and distilled vinegar on the flat stove top in order to get the black crud off. Use some sort of scraping tool to move the griddle debris into the drainage trough anterior to the griddle. Careful, some types of hot oil (especially from fish) react poorly with water and will pop and crackle, possible putting tiny droplets of hot oil on your skin. Repeat this lavage + scraping process as necessary. Don't do this too many times, as you can overflow the drainage trap and have oily water seep all over the floor.

  • Use wadded up paper towels to drive all water, grease, and debris down the grease trap. Empty the grease trap (to prevent grease fires) into the kitchen grease buckets under the food prep sink.

  • With sponge and all-purpose cleaner, clean the top ledge of the stove.

  • Remove the burners and the ashtrays from beneath the burners from the stove nearest the microwave. Bring them to the two-way sink. Remove the three top sections that serve as a base for the burners and bring them to the sink as well. Spray/scrub these parts until your are satisfied as to their cleanliness and replace them. Careful, sometimes they are hot. Try to grab each metal ashtray thing from the side farthest away from its pilot light. Burners that have been recently used also can burn you through your double set of gloves.

  • Clean all the surfaces you missed with a sponge and Basic-H. The plastic stove burner knobs can be pulled off if you want to clean behind them and around them more easily. The three vertical stove backs that face you slowly accumulate burned material. The best way to clean them is scrub them with the blue-handled metal thing + a soft mesh square + a griddle screen set-up.

  • Replace the aluminum foil that lines the insides of the three stoves and goes underneath the two burners if necessary.

  • Do any other spot cleaning you deem necessary.

  • Turn off the stove overhead light and fan.

  • Throw away the surgical gloves.

  • Take off and hang up your apron.

  • Go sign off.

  • Congratulations. You're done.