How to Clean Kitchen Chimney Grease at Home: Comprehensive Guide

Chimneys are an essential part of any kitchen, especially an Indian kitchen. Indian cooking involves spicy and oily food, which generates many grease and oil in the kitchen environment. The kitchen chimney’s primary function is to remove all the smoke, oil, and grease from the kitchen environment and ventilate it. This makes the chimney’s components and inside greasy. For the proper functioning of chimneys, all the components and inside the chimney must be cleaned regularly. If you leave the chimney uncleaned for a more extended period, it will decrease the chimney’s efficiency, or the oil/grease may also drop from filters and contaminate the food you are cooking. Don’t worry; here we will tell you everything that you need to know about how to clean kitchen chimney grease at home. But first, let us tell you about some methods that can make your whole chimney cleaning process easy and effective.

When you search for “how to clean kitchen chimney grease,” you might find too many ways. But don’t we all want the most effective ways which give us instant & outstanding results? Therefore, below I have mentioned some most effective ways to clean your kitchen chimney grease out of all the methods available on the internet :

Baking Soda

Baking soda is the most preferred cleaning solution used by most people to clean kitchen chimney grease at home. This baking soda cleaning solution has mild alkaline and abrasive properties, which help remove the grease and oil stains without causing any harm to the surface.

There is another way to clean kitchen chimney grease using baking soda solution. To perform this method, first, take a tub and fill it with hot boiling water. Now add 2-3 tbsp of baking soda, 2-3 tbsp of salt, and 2 cups of vinegar into it. Leave the filters into the solution for 1-2 hours, then gently scrub the filters and wash them with plain water. Now let it dry for some time before replacing them.

You might also like: How to Clean Chimney With Baking Soda at home (bestcookery.in)

Caustic Soda

Caustic soda solution is another most prevalent way to clean kitchen chimney grease at home. The acidic nature of caustic soda easily dissolves oils, fats, grease, and organic compounds.

Vinegar

Due to the acidic, mild abrasive, and disinfectant properties, vinegar is considered an all-purpose cleansing agent. You can also use vinegar to clean your kitchen instantly. For this, dip a paper towel or tissue into the vinegar solution and clean the surface. Apart from this, below is the procedure to clean the kitchen chimney grease using vinegar.

Dishwashing liquid

The liquid surfactants present in dishwashing liquids help unblock and remove the grease and oil deposits from the chimney’s filters.

Detergent

Detergent powder mixed with boiling water is also a great cleansing solution that removes the oil and grease stains.

Paint Thinner

Paint thinner is a powerful formula to remove stubborn grease & oil stains from the chimney surface. It contains powerful cleaning agents such as acetone, turpentine, toluene, and other mineral spirits.

How to use:

To remove the grease from your kitchen chimney, you need to soak the thinner in a piece of cloth and rub it on the chimney’s greasy surface. If you don’t have paint thinner, you can also use nail polish remover. This will easily break the stubborn grease and oil stains and give you outstanding results.

The period of cleaning the kitchen chimney depends upon the type of food prepared in your kitchen. Overall, a kitchen chimney should be cleaned up at least once in 2 months. But if you frequently prepare a lot of oily and spicy food, then you should consider cleaning the meshes and filters of your kitchen chimney once a month. The frequency of cleaning chimney also depends upon the type of filters present in the chimney, such as :

• Cassette Filters – If your chimney has this type of filter, you would be required to clean the filters once in 8-10 days. It is because these filters are made up of multiple layers of aluminum. They contain small pores and grease sticks, which easily get blocked. 
• Baffle Filters – These filters come with the technology of separating smoke and grease. That means they don’t get clogged with dust and grease easily. So, with these types of chimney filters, you are required to clean them once in 2-4 weeks. 
• Charcoal Filters – The charcoal granules present in the filter absorb the smoke, odor, and grease. That’s why these filters cannot be cleaned, so they should be replaced once in 3 – 6 months.

The chimney in your kitchen helps remove all the smoke, airborne grease, vapor fumes, and steam that accumulate in your kitchen environment while preparing Indian food. A chimney has several components such as meshes, filters & baffles, which gets greasy after some time. Once a thick layer of grime gets deposited over the small pores and surface of the chimney’s components, it blocks the flow of gases through them.

Therefore, it becomes necessary to clean them periodically to keep the chimney in a functional state. The microbial infestation is another problem that can be caused if the chimney is not cleaned correctly. In this problem, the deposited grime areas grow bacteria and fungus, which can cause health problems and can also lead to foul odor in the long run.

Are auto-clean chimneys easy to maintain?

Now, most of the modern kitchen chimneys come with an auto-clean option. These chimneys make the whole maintenance process so easy. It’s just a game of a click. Once you click the button – a heating element available inside the chimney breaks down the grease and transfers it to the oil collector box. Then, you can remove the collector and clean it thoroughly.

What should we keep in mind while cleaning the kitchen chimney?

If you are cleaning your kitchen chimney manually at home, always remember the following thing: 

• Remove all the chimney parts carefully. 
• Clean all the parts separately. 
• Always wear safety gears/ hand gloves while dealing with any kind of harmful cleaning ingredient/ chemical.

Above I have covered almost everything that you may need to know related to “how to clean kitchen chimney grease.” Using the methods mentioned above, you can easily remove the grease from your chimney filters, meshes, and other external parts. However, you cannot ignore cleaning the chimney from the inside, which gets oily and greasy over some time. To properly clean your chimney from the inside, you need the help of a professional. You are not required to clean the chimney from inside frequently. Cleaning from inside is required to be done once a year. 

I hope this article has helped you get all the knowledge and ideas to clean your kitchen chimney grease effectively.