Clean Your Glass Cooktop So It Shines Like New With This Grease-Cutting Solution

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Anyone who owns a stove with a glass cooktop knows how difficult they can be to keep clean. Cooking spills can easily burn onto the smooth top, leaving you with crusty residue that can be really tricky to clean well. Even standard grease flecks will create stubborn stains that ruin the shine of the cooktop. Thankfully, there is an excellent, grease-cutting solution you can use to clean your glass cooktop, leaving it shining like new.

While it might seem simple enough, concentrated dish soap is going to be your best bet at making sure the grease is lifted from your stovetop. For a smooth glass cooktop, we'd recommend something like Dawn Platinum or Powerwash, which are stronger, more concentrated versions of standard Dawn dish soap. This is not the be-all-end-all brand to choose, but it is a proven grease fighter and will work well in this application.

To clean your glass cooktop, first make sure all the burners are off and cold. Either spray or lather on some dish soap and gently work it with a soft abrasive sponge until you've covered the whole cooktop. Next, take a damp microfiber cloth to remove the grease-laden soap. Finally, use a dry microfiber cloth to dry off the cooktop and give it a good shine. If you keep with this daily, you can maintain that like-new shine on your glass stovetop.

The reason dish soap works so well at removing grease from your glass cooktop is the two-ended surfactant molecules active in the soap. The head loves water, while the tail loves oil. They will surround the grease molecules and pull them away from the surface, suspending them in the water until they are rinsed away. Thanks to this process, there are many different ways you can use dish soap for odd jobs around the house.

If you're fresh out of dish soap but still need to get the grease off of your glass cooktop, a concoction of common household items like vinegar, lemon juice, and salt will have that glass looking really shiny. You can even utilize both the dish soap and DIY mix as a duo. Start with the dish soap for the grease, and use the other for the more caked-on stuff.

One thing you absolutely need to make certain of is that you are using the right kind of abrasive. A standard dish sponge with the abrasive back is actually too rough for this kind of work. Instead, use something tough but strong like a classic dual-sided Scrub Mommy. Definitely stay away from steel wool, as that will certainly cause micro scratches that will make it all the more difficult to clean grease off the cooktop.