How do you get grease off of silicone kitchen items

General lounge
#1

This one has been bothering me for years and I’ve not found a decent answer online about this.

Basically this particularly applies to 2 things

  1. silicone sheets for oven cooking
  2. silicone cheesecake springform pan

And to a lessor extent
3) silicone spatulas
4) silicone cases like the Stasher brand bags (good for Sous Vide!)

For 1 and 2, once they get greasy doesn’t seem to be any way to get rid of that, the sheets we usually use for making bacon in the over and the cheesecake pan for making, well… cheesecake.

We wash them with Dawn (and other dish soap), multiple times and they are still greasy, in the case of the cheesecake pan, it’s also been through the dishwasher several times and still comes out greasy and still smells a bit like cheesecake and the sheets still smell like bacon. I’ve used in both the oven and the Instant Pot to make cheesecake with springform pan.

Scrubbing them, soaking them etc, doesn’t make any difference. During hand washng process all seems good, you go to put them away next after drying and still greasy.

As to the spatulas and stasher bags, generally a good forceful cleaning with Dawn or another spin through the dishwasher resolves things.

Anyone got any ideas on the cause of this and how to resolve it?

#2

You’ve tried lemon juice solution or rubbing it in baking soda?

2 Likes
#3

No but i will now!!!
:grinning:

1 Like
#4

I bring the ammonia for this sort of thing.

#5

Try Windex, it is ammonia and a great degreaser.

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#6

We use those silicone cooking sheets at least once a day, in my experience just washing them with a good amount of foamy soap degreases it nicely, one thing that’s bit me a few times is that I neglect to clean both sides and once it dries it feels very greasy.

#7

Well that’s the thing, using nice foamy soap Dawn is just not cutting it :frowning:

Though will try the other suggested options as we wash both sides very thoroughly using Dawn (and other brands)

#8

Thanks for the Windex suggestion! It worked fantastically on my silicone oven mitts today when cleaning.

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#9

I buy ammonia and dilute it in a spray bottle. Same as windex but much less expensive.

#10

Btw, it’s generally good to check a chemical resistance chart for which cleaning products work well (or not!) with what plastics.

https://mykin.com/rubber-chemical-resistance-chart has silicone listed.

3 Likes
#11

Where has this chart been all my life? :smiley:

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#12

Need to add that chart https://mykin.com/rubber-chemical-resistance-chart to our wiki chem page.

I see silicon as 2 for Ammonia, Liquid (Anhydrous)

I have worked a lot with concentrate Liquid Ammonia. That is generally quite dangerous. But diluted in water it is not.

In fact the treatment for Liquid Ammonia is to immediately dilute in water to a level it is no longer dangerous.

The dilution level is very critical.

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#13

Ditto. A little soapy water and they are good to go. Never had this problem. I would be careful with Ammonia as it’s not good to eat or breath. Vinegar should work as well as lemon juice.

#14

I don’t have an answer, but I have 2 almost identical silicone spatulas which I run through the dishwasher after using them. The green one always feels greasy when I go to use it the next time, but the blue one is fine.

(I’ll give vinegar a try and see if that helps.)

#15

Alcohol is also an amazing de-greaser. I use 99% Isopropyl. Safer than ammonia imo

#16

Suggestion from food52 was to heat it first then scrub with a paste of baking soda. Several others all suggest that getting it hot first is important. This was for silicone mats but spatula should be similar.