What are the best chemicals for breaking down shit that's stuck to dirty kitchen equipment? Dishwashing liquid is inferior. There must be better shit out there. I actually talked with my coworker a while ago about introducing acetone to the kitchen for cleaning certain shit. I fricking hate scrubbing shit for literal hours. I lift weights, and this is really fricking with my gains, since I end up staying sore in my right arm. I don't always have time to let shit soak in dishwashing liquid, and even then, it doesn't work all that great. It helps to make certain shit easier to scrub off with steel wool, but there's usually still some gunk that's really baked into the kitchen equipment. This is a major kitchen that serves between 150 to 300 people each day for at least two days out of the week. I don't have time to take things slow, because my boss and coworker would kill me.
steam
I've thought about using the machine to initially soften everything up, but this ancient hobart dishwasher (not the same one in OP) has a tendency of throwing up filth particles on the shit it cleans. The manual states to empty the water after every two hours of use, but this process takes a solid 20 minutes to first empty and then refill the water, and I'm on such a time crunch every day I have work, that I don't have time to do this every two hours. I could use the dishwasher to soften up shit, but if I tried running dish plates through it without refilling the water, they would end up with a few filth particles on them.
Are you a wagie complaining about having to spend more hours earning money? Because how I get my kitchens clean is to pay wagies.
> 20 minutes to empty and refill
How many fricking gallons does that thing hold?
Probably using something with an aerator… a water saving device for residential. Frick those things.
>using an aerator
>on an appliance feed
For
For what purpose?
Have you heard of a powerscrubber?
Holy shit. Thank you so much anon. Would this be the thing?
The real reason why I'm pissed is because scrubbing kitchen equipment for hours (150 to 300 people per day) is fricking with my gains. I can't recover properly, and I take the shit seriously. This is going to be a life saver for me, and it will also save me tons of time.
Depending on how it works out for you and the amount you need it, this might be one of those rare tasks that suit a pneumatic power system, using air motor tools powered by a compressor in another room.
although the idea of a pneumatic egg whisk would be pretty wild
Compressed air is glorious for power and blowing out shit. Kitchens are workshops for food and every shop should have air.
Easy off, or chemical bath, soak it over night, hit it with steel whool.... t. Weightlifting chef
>Easy off
I will be buying this too. Thank you, anon.
Although, I think something that works primarily to soften up the material would be ideal. It would need to penetrate the material and soften it up, since with plain old water, you can typically only soften up the most superficial layer over the time span of several minutes to a couple hours.
TSP/Tri Sodium Phosphate.
> TSP
No.
> Lye
Yes!
lye is sodium hydroxide. potassium is a level below it on the periodic table and thus more reactive. Its common name is potash, and the one time I bought some I had to show ID to get put on a federal list. It was shortly after 9/11 though.
Interesting
Lye was also banned for a while because apparently it was used in some process with making meth.
It’s a good indicator that if it’s banned, then it probably actually works.
> potassium hydroxide
Where do you even get something like that?
If you work in a kitchen, any of your regular suppliers for cleaning supplies, packaging or whatever will have in their inventory something resembling heavy-duty degreaser, for cleaning ovens, deep frying equipment and such. Most of them are simply a solution of potassium hydroxide, sometimes with foaming or gelling agents (makes it sticky so it has more time to act on the thing you want to clean instead of dripping off.) I'd guess these would also be enough to circumvent bans like
Straight solution is most useful though imo, and dirt cheap.
Quick googling tells me lye has historically been used to refer both to sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) or potassium hydoxide (caustic potash) so he's not wrong. Interesting.
Forgot to mention - where I live (Western Europe) there's no difficulty in finding potassium hydroxide online or in brick and mortar shops, either from lab chemical places, or craft soap makers (more common than you might think.)
>300 people everyday for two days
>waaaah it's too hard I get sore scrubbing dishes though I'm a dish scrubber
Get good, fricking homosexual. These are stupid rookie numbers.
Anyway, from a dish b***h to another: your machine takes 20 minutes to fill up because it has to heat up the water in the washing and rinsing tanks before it considers itself ready. Either hook it up to a hot water line, or heat up a big pot of water to fill it up with.
If there's crud in your water, taking out the filter to rinse it every two or three cycles (takes 5 seconds) helps with that.
t. has a Hobart too
If you really want something to soak caked or burnt grease with, potassium hydroxide can't be beat, it's one of the main ingredients in soap. A strong base, it dissolves greases. It's dirt cheap in big jugs, dilute it and put it in a spray bottle. It's the main ingredient in oven cleaners. Don't breathe it in.
As for scrubbing: fricking scrub, b***h.
>Either hook it up to a hot water line, or heat up a big pot of water to fill it up with.
The kitchen I work in is always running out of hot water, so the pot would need to be heated up, but wouldn't the water deposited from the heated pot be lacking any detergent?
>If there's crud in your water, taking out the filter to rinse it every two or three cycles (takes 5 seconds) helps with that.
I'm going to try running the filter through the machine after emptying it out and spraying it down next time. Thanks for this.
>potassium hydroxide can't be beat
Would this smell up the entire kitchen? Could I just leave equipment that needs to be cleaned filled up with water with this stuff in it? Thanks for letting me know about this. I think I'll buy some of those big jugs in bulk.
>detergent in the water
Depends on your machine. Some (older or cheaper) machines you have to add the detergent every x cycles. Some (newer or more expensive) machines pump a dose of detergent in from a hookup (to a jug or an internal holding tank) every cycle. Same goes for rinsing. It sounds like you don't know how your machine works and how to take care of it. Familiarize yourself with it, it's your number one tool.
>running the filter through the machine
No need to do that. Simply rinse it in the sink to take out the debris. NEVER run the machine with no filter anyway. Most won't even let you do that (Hall effect sensor to detect if the filter is removed, for example.) What you want is to prevent the crud that you just washed off the dishes from getting past the filter and into the washing tank, so if there's a lot of shit on the filter, rinsing it will take care of that.
Also, if your machine is new or expensive enough, you can look and see if you can program it so the rinsing cycle is longer. Rinsing takes its water from its own, separate tank, that is uncontaminated by washing water and food particles.
>would this smell up...?
It does have a smell but it's not a chemical stink. Run the hood and don't spray it mist-like and you'll be OK. It acts pretty fast. But remember, it's mostly for grease and burned stuff. It saponifies greasy compounds, it's not a magic "clean" or "stain remover" (these don't exist.) If you're simply dealing with too much food residue in the post and pans, there's no substitute for scrubbing with steel wool.
>Some (newer or more expensive) machines pump a dose of detergent in from a hookup (to a jug or an internal holding tank) every cycle.
The machine we have is from the 90s, and it has this feature.
Clean it daily and delime it weekly. Take the machine appart, get a long handle bristle brush and a bucket of dish soap and scrub the machine every day. Scrub all the parts and rinse everything off. Once a week run some delimer though the machine without any detergent for 20 minutes. Keep these habits and your dish machine will sparkle.
My guess is there is a filter missing. Someone removed it, and it was never put back.
Or above, where anon says it needs a good cleaning.
Muriatic acid
Careful with acetone and other solvents. They might dissolve or swell plastic/rubber pieces like gaskets and stuff.
Definitely stay away from acetone, dichloromethane/methylene chloride, chloroform, tetrahydrofuran, xylenes, toluene, etc. These are all fantastic solvents for most polymers and will therefore ruin plastics they come in contact with.
Ethanol, isopropyl alcohol, and hexanes are poor solvents for most polymers (watch out for polycarbonates though ) and therefore relatively safer to use.
Use in a well ventilated space
you need elbow grease
>I don't always have time to let shit soak in dishwashing liquid, and even then, it doesn't work all that great.
When you do have time, I'd recommend baking soda.