How to clean fouled gas burners

Cleaning encrusted hob burners is much easier with this tip.

fouled gas burners
fouled gas burners

When cooking, various substances fall onto the burner crowns and flame spreading plates, the combination of which, together with the heat of the flame, causes incrustations that become more difficult to remove the longer it takes to clean.

dirty gas burner

It is often the case, let's face it, that you don't clean the gas burners every time after cooking.

To clean them properly, they should be removed, washed, dried and repositioned, making sure that no water remains inside the holes in the crowns, which would then make it difficult to light the fires.

In short, if you often find your cooker encrusted, you are in good company.

soaking in water and vinegar

So here is a solution that I have personally experimented with and that seems much more effective and quicker than the elbow grease you are normally forced to use to try to remove the brownish and blackish incrustations that form.

The only flaw in this procedure is that it cannot be carried out on all gas fires at the same time, as we shall see.

remove gas burner from water

The first thing to do is to remove one of the grids of the hob together with the plates and crowns.

Let's see the steps in order:

  1. If you have four burners remove three out of four burners and maybe leave the largest one.
  2. Put the fouled burners in a pot and cover them flush with water.
  3. Add four or five tablespoons of vinegar to the water
  4. Bring to the boil and let it boil for four or five minutes.
  5. At this point, taking care not to burn yourself, remove the burners from the water and place them on a plate.
  6. After letting the burners cool down for a moment, you can clean them with a steel wool or a fine steel wool.

I use a slightly coarser steel wool because it gives better results.

You will see that cleaning, after having put the crowns and plates in boiling water and vinegar, will be much much easier and less tiring.

steel wool and dishwashing liquid

For cleaning, use common dishwashing detergent in addition to the sponge.

cleaning the burner

Rinse and dry.

Put back at least two of the four burners and their grates in order to immerse and boil the last remaining crown and repeat the process.

In the end your burners will be almost as good as new and you will have saved yourself a lot of trouble.

final result

Here is the final pic documenting the cleaning of the gas burners and their gas flame spreaders.

fouled gas burners