Behind the Knife - Chef Toolboxes Tell All

we have no backspash so the walls are pretty bad …and just how does gunk end up on the ceiling????
We are renovating now so i’m hoping to reform myself into a good housewife lol

The worst cleaning job is always the round metal covers under the eye on an electric stove. They are always neglected until it’s just gross.

My wife decided to “save” the peanut oil that we deep fried a turkey in one year without mentioning it to me. She kept it under our sink in plastic non-air tight container. Months had passed and since I never go under the sink unless there is a problem, I knew nothing of it. One day I come home and she’s crying. She went under the sink and suddenly smelled that it was VERY rancid so she decided to remove it. In doing that, she started to throw up from the smell and dropped the entire gallon of Rancid oil on the floor. Lucky me then got the job of cleaning up the oil along with her lunch from that day.

I am also a Blowtorch subscriber.

Cleaning a Fry-O-lator we bought at an auction. It came from a sports bar/restaurant that must have cooked their entire menu in it. The almost permanent sludge on the bottom was not bad to get off, it was the inch of build up on the sides. After two days of scrapping and power washing we got it cleaned.

Grease from my husband’s giant Fry Daddy

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I hate baked on, caked on grease! And I tend to get it on my pans, stovetop and even the walls due to my teen son and his lack of cooking skills (everything is fried up on high, thus causing splatter marks everywhere!) Unfortunately after 3 surgeries in the past on my rt. arm, I don’t have enough elbow ‘Grease” to get rid of the real grease!

When the pressure cooker exploded and three rice all over the walls, ceiling and windows.

It has to be when we first moved into our house the refrigerator was so disgusting it took so long to clean out I wish I had this stuff.

cheese cake i dumped on the stove mverno@roadrunner.com

I’d have to say the oven after the holidays. With kids and guests cooking and using the oven there are a lot of spills that just get baked on. The grease is unbelieveable.

My oven is usually a disaster. Help!

Upon moving into our first place after marrying..“inherited” an old range (in avocado green!) that had NEVER been cleaned!

Grease form anything we fry then think we c an just clean up the next day. nasty I know.

My stove top from cooking is always greasy and if Im not home no one cleans it after they cook

The first house my wife and I bought was a fixer upper owned by a very elderly couple who could no longer clean properly. They had a mouse problem and the amount of mouse droppings we had to scrape off the floor under appliances was amazing!

Wax from candle making.

syrup from the inside of the refrigerator that spilled all over the place thanks

I’d have to say the oven after the holidays. With kids and guests cooking and using the oven there are a lot of spills that just get baked on

The counters after fried chicken. BLECK. Thanks for the chance.
mogrill@comcast.net

I rented a place in which the stove burners all looked like they had a matte finish. There was so much cooked-on junk that the nice enamel finish was completely obscured on all the burners.

I’m a very messy cook. One of my worst cleanups ever was I spilled butter inside my oven and then it burnt all over. Don’t ask why I was melting butter in the oven, very long story.

Once I when my kids were toddlers I overslept and they didn’t Instead they poured out one of those huge bottles of cooking oil all over my kitchen floor Talk about slipping and sliding I thought I would never get that cleaned up.

Has to be bacon grease

The bottom of pots and pans and the small confection oven.

bgcchs(at)yahoo(dot)com

I’m signed up for the Blowtorch.

bgcchs(at)yahoo(dot)com

The stove vent is the worst

the oven after the holidays

The oven spills, when I bake chicken.

It’s the screen from the exhaust fan.

The grease gunk that collects behind the stove that when mixed with cat hair creates a nearly unbreakable bond. YEAUUK

I would have to say my oven after I make prime rib. It splatters so much but you can’t cover it. It’s just not the same if you do.

I bought a frozen pizza that told me to place it directly on the rack. What a huge mistake. It melted, and then burned all over my oven.
Alicia Webster
5webs@comcast.net

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Alicia Webster
5webs@comcast.net

When we moved into this house, we pulled out the stove, and the gunk that was stuck on the side of the stove where the counter hid it was almost impossible to scrape off.

The grease the tenants left in the stove-They only lived there 3 years but it looked like 20 years of grease

The Southern California wildfires burned up to my backyard in 2003 — I barely made it out alive. There was terrible smoke and soot in the kitchen, because that was the room closest to the fire, and I had left the windows open when I fled the fire. Adding insult to injury, the rodents who survived the wildfires invaded my home in droves, making nests in the air vent and the stove. Between smoke, ash and rodent urine and feces, that was beyond awful to clean.

Broken dried egg yolks in my refrigerator.

The stove is always the worst. It’s an older stove and seems to attract gunk around the burners.

Definitely the burners on my stovetop- how does anyone get them to look like new again?

I have alot of trouble with the stove especially inside the oven

It is so hard to clean up the stove after frying. Burnt cheese sucks too!

This might sound like a joke but its seriously not. I have a pet skunk and he once broke in my deep fryer and drank the peanut oil….then threw it up all over the floor. It was so gross and soooo oily. Worse oil mess ever

my oven every time my husband cooks anything! he gets grease everywhere when he cooks meat!

Everything in the kitchen ends up in the drain so I would say that the greasy mess in the sinks need help! Thanks! senekers@comcast.net

The air filter above my stove always gets this nasty greasy buildup. YUCKO!

I once moved into an apartment where the oven obviously hadn’t been cleaned in years. What a mess! It took me 4 days and 3 cans of easy off to get it clean.

The worst was cleaning the stove in our new-to-us house. I don’t think they had ever cleaned it. It took me three days and a lot of elbow grease to clean it.

I would like to try this on my stovetop.

The worst mess is under the cabinets and under the fridge, ughh.. Hate cleaning that!

Hamburger grease was the worst for me.

Hi, the worst grease that I have ever had to clean was the layers of grease and food bits collected under my stove top. Thanks.

I had a pan where I had cooked little smokies wrapped in bacon and covered in brown sugar. It was the most God awful mess that I finally gave up trying to clean it and just threw the pan away. Thanks.

I’m subscribed to the blowtorch. Thanks.

The evidence of my cooking exploits can always be found around my stove area; cleaning around the stovetop and the walls by it is always a challenge!

Has to be when I spilled the olive oil all over the counter. Yikes.

There’s a lot of carbon burnt on one burner of our stove. I need this so I can finally clean it up.

Once a whole jar of jam broke on the back of a lower shelf in my refergrator, didn’t find it for almost a month and by that time it had dried , and hardened and become part of the shelf

My oven cry’s for help, because I am letting it do it’s own thing. And sometimes my microwave looks like a tidal wave has hit it.

The worst was when we moved into our present house-a repo, 10 years ago. Everything was a mess but the stove was the worst. I don’t think they ever cleaned it and it smelled. I tried, I really did, but after a few months I told the hubby I had to have a new stove.It was just too gross.

When we moved into the apartment we lived in before we bought this house, it looked really clean…until I looked closley. Under and on top of the relatively new cabinets was a thick layer of grease that wouldn’t come off without a metal scraper. I swear the folks who had it before me must have been using it as a short order kitchen or something.

The worst thing was dried up pancake batter. ALL OVER the counters and cupboards from my 9-year old.

Thanks for the great contest!
bahjeep@aol.com

I once(never forgot again) left the catch-all off of my juicer. It was literally like I had blown up pineapple on my counter,covering every thing on it. A little pineapple went a long way. Even got the bottoms of my cabinets.

my oven right now has so much baked on gunk on the bottom that i dont think even easy off would touch..really nasty i let it go way too long :)

http://twitter.com/klp1965/status/8084531866

when we first moved in to our apartment, the fan over the stove what full of the WORST grease and grim that I have ever seen. I can’t even describe what it was! years of frying.

we cleaned it and got $ off the rent :)

the messiest thing i’ve ever had to clean is a greasy oven at an apartment we just moved into one time

I was making an artichoke dip and burnt my hand because of a crappy pot holder. The whole dish of dip flipped over into the oven and on the floor. It made a huge oily, cheesy, burnt mess!

The worst was bubblegum,cheese, and melted marshmallows. They just settle in any pans that I use.

You wouldn’t believe some of the burnt meat I’ve had to scrape out of the oven after my husband has cooked.

I had a candle drip all over my counter top and that was just impossible to get cleaned up.

Thanks for the giveaway… We were cooking a roast in our new oven and the oven rack, which my wife had not attached correctly, gave way, spilling the roast and a pan full of hot fatty drippings ALL over the place !!!

Following via Twitter: @brianpiero

Tweeted: http://twitter.com/brianpiero/status/8098070954

The worst was the oil in the deep fryer that had been left for about a month.

Oil that got stuck to the side of my pans after frying a whole lotta meatballs in it.

The worst gunk I have ever tried to scrape
is dried up hair dye solution

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We spilled a pot of gumbo over on the stove, and it was horrible to clean up!