5 Great ways to clean grease

Burgers in the skillet, chicken in a deep fryer, even a take-out pizza can leave a greasy mess all over your kitchen.And unless you’re Samantha from “Bewitched” and can make problems disappear with just a twitch of your nose, you know a good scrub is on its way.

Water alone can’t get rid of grease because water molecules don’t stick to grease molecules. And elbow grease isn’t always enough to tackle the baked-on gunk found in kitchens. Commercial grease cleaners can do the trick for most messes, but if you don’t have any products on hand (or you’d rather use products without harsh chemicals), what else can you do?

There are ways to fight grease using things you already have around your home. These five household solutions for eliminating kitchen grease will have you out of your cleaning gloves and back relaxing in no time.

5.Flour

Flour is super useful for tackling grease spills if you use it immediately. Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Getty Images
If you’re cooking and have a grease spill, you can clean it up immediately before it becomes a problem later. One easy way is to sprinkle flour over the spill. Let the flour sit for a few minutes to absorb the grease and then you can easily wipe it up. This only works if the grease isn’t dry. If it is, try the next method on our list.

4: Baking Soda and Water

Baking soda and water is ideal for ridding your counters and other hard surfaces of old grease spills that are hard and dry. Maderla/Shutterstock
Baking soda’s a great all-purpose cleaning solution for lots of things around the house. When it’s mixed with water, you can use it to remove tarnish from copper, juice and coffee stains from countertops, discoloration on stainless steel and, you guessed it, hard-to-remove grease.

Baking soda is an alkali, which means it does a great job of dissolving grease. And because it’s mild, it destroys grease without destroying the surface you’re cleaning. Just mix 3 tablespoons of baking soda with 1 cup of water. Use the solution on a sponge to scrub away light grease stains from hard surfaces, like countertops, your stovetop, and even pots and pans.

3: Dish Soap

Grease splatters on the counters, walls and cabinets when we’re cooking, but what about when it gets on your clothes? How to get it out of your favorite shirt or tablecloth? For those soft surfaces, squirt a tiny bit of dish soap directly onto the stain. Let the soap soak for about half an hour before washing the linens in cold water.

Soaps are designed to attach to grease and fat molecules and help wash them away, and dish soaps are some of the strongest grease-fighters around. So when you use a drop of dish soap to pretreat grease stains on clothes and other linens, it does a great job of releasing the grease from the fabrics.

2: Salt and Rubbing Alcohol

You know how to get grease out of your shirt, but what if it drips on the kitchen carpet or rug? Those can’t just be tossed in the washing machine.

For large items things like chair cushions and other soft goods, you’ll need salt and rubbing alcohol. Mix one part salt and four parts rubbing alcohol and rub the mixture hard on the stain until it lifts away. After the grease is gone and your solution dries, vacuum up the excess salt and use a damp cloth to wipe away any marks left behind.

1: Vinegar
For tough, caked-on grease stains, especially those stuck to the stove and the inside of the oven, you can spray white vinegar directly on the stain and let it soak in for about five minutes. The acid in the vinegar will help dissolve and soften the tough, crunchy parts (mostly a food-grease mixture), making it easier to scrub away with a soft sponge.

For the best results, apply the vinegar when the surface is hot. So if you need to clean your oven, do it just after use, or heat it up slightly beforehand.

Vinegar doesn’t cut grease by itself the way alkali materials do, but it can help soften up the mess and make cleaning it easier. You also can use white vinegar can also be used as a preventative grease fighter for your pots and pans.