How to Clean a Glass-Top Stove or Cooktop

If you are looking for a how-to video and or blog article on cleaning a glass top stove or cooktop, you will quickly realize there is no shortage of ideas! However, out of the 48,800,000 results on Google and a similar number on YouTube, very few focus on the how-to. Many, if not all, are focused on the products. There is also a considerable emphasis or using organic or natural ingredients like if you eat out of your glass top stove or cooktop.

Yes, vinegar, baking soda, peroxide, magic eraser, and some of the other popular home remedies work to a certain extent, but every once in a while, we have no choice but to pull out the big guns and get down to business. After all, the glass top stove or cooktop is not a garden or a pod where you cook your food!

As I mentioned in my video, I have been cooking on a glass top stove or cooktop since my early teens. During the economic boom of the 80s under President Ronald Regan, my family’s business did very well, and one of the first things my mom did when we remodeled the house was run to Jefferson Ward and getting herself a glass cooktop. You figure that with more than 40 decades of experience and four glass top stove or cooktop later, my mom would know a thing or two about how to clean a glass top stove or cooktop. So, when I found out how she has been cleaning her glass top stove over the last couple of years, I had to make a video about it!

My mom’s biggest complaint about cleaning the stove with vinegar, baking soda, peroxide, magic eraser, and some of the other popular home remedies is that they require quite a bit of effort or elbow grease as she calls it! That is the reason she enlisted the help of the DREMEL VERSA. This cordless and rechargeable mini polishing machine is quite versatile and ideal for more than just cleaning a glass top stove or cooktop. As a matter of fact, both my mom and I have started to use it all over the house. The Dremel Versa is excellent for cleaning the tub, pots, and pans, bugs stain in front of the vehicle, and even use it to polish the stainless steel hardware on the boat.

There are countless videos on YouTube of people cleaning their glass top stove or cooktop with power tools, especially cordless or power drills. If you try this glass top stove or cooktop cleaning method, you will discover that it is messy, very messy, since the cordless drill tends to splatter cleaning compound all over the place. One of the Dremel Versa’s key features is NOT the fact that it is rechargeable and cordless, but its splatter skirt! With the splatter skirt installed on the Dremel Versa, you can use fluids as thin as water and soap with minimum or no splattering what so ever! Not to mention “effort.”

Those who know about sports cars, luxury vehicles, or even a boat’s hull detailing using ceramic coating and things of that nature know how damaging abrasive substances like ruby compound and even baking soda are to the finish! While they effectively remove surface impurities such as rust stains and hard watermarks, they do this by wearing down on surface material.

Everybody knows that the glass or ceramic material found in today’s glass top stove or cooktop is tough. Still, if you consistently use an abrasive powder like AJAX or even as mild as baking soda, you will start seeing a dullness on the surface of your glass top stove or cooktop sooner or later. Little microscopic lines cause these as the result of using abrasive compounds. While they can be polished out, there is no need to go through that trouble.

On the other hand, chemicals like WD-40 penetrate with little and no effort and loosen rust and grime grip. That is what we need to achieve with caked, burned on, hard stains on glass top stove or cooktop. After loosening the caked, burned on, hard stains, the rest is easy.

If you clean a cast iron pan with vinegar and baking soda, you will soon find out that everything you cook on it will stick! That is my biggest issue with all the vinegar, baking soda, peroxide, magic eraser, and other popular home remedies. By dropping the PH and adding an abrasive, you are able to remove the lubrication from the cast iron pan. It is these high PH lubricants that keep the food from sticking. Although your glass top stove or cooktop does not absorb the polisher as cast iron does, lowering the surface PH and using an abrasive such as baking soda, you are guarantee that the next time you glass top stove or cooktop get dirt is going to be worse! The result is a visual cycle where you use more and more vinegar and baking soda, but the stain keeps getting worse.

That is the same scenario one faces if you wash your car or boat and don’t treat it with a protecting agent. The first time you take it for a drive, it is as dirty as it first was! However, if you notice this happens gradually more often as the car gets older! That is why I think it is imperative to ad some glazing polisher to your glass top stove or cooktop after cleaning it. After just a few applications, you will notice that cleaning the glass top stove or cooktop becomes easier to clean, and burn on stains are not as difficult to remove. It does not mean it won’t get dirty! But it will be much easier to clean!