Keeping Burner Pans Clean the Easy Way

Although more and more people are getting fancy cooktops and stoves, there are still a lot of us with good old stoves that have drip pans under the burners.Heres a little tip to keep them from becoming permanently covered with burned, boiled-over crud.

In the first picture, you can see how much blackened, yukky stuff has collected in one of my burner pans. Now take a look at the second picture. Thats how much of that mess came off after swishing it through hot dishwater and wiping with a dishcloth.Not a scrubby, just a dishcloth!

Next, I went straight for a steel wool pad for a couple of minutes to finish the job.The next picture is the result of that short process. Now, you may note that there are still a couple of black spots, but hey, this is a 38-year-old stove.Its allowed to have a couple of character flaws!

So how do I work the magic that allows for this easy cleanup? Its so simple that its embarrassing. The secret is silicone spray.

Grab a spray can ofsilicone waterproofing.Do this next step outside! Even though it is winter the pan and the spray are warm, so it will work fine outside. This only takes about 3 seconds. Give the burner pan a light coating of silicone dont glob it on. Then set the burner pan somewhere to dry. Dont use the burner with wet silicone on it.

If you spray too much silicone on, it will still work fine, but it may dry with some white spots. Im not enough of a neat freak that the white spots bother me, and its certainly better than the black and gooey messes that we ignore when they are so hard to clean.

Next time you need to wash the drip pan, yours will come clean as easily as mine did!