How to Deep Clean a Glasstop Stove

Cleaning a glasstop stove can often feel overwhelming or even impossible. With stains, buildup and scorch marks galore, a glasstop stove is dreaded among anyone who’s ever had to clean one. But don’t despair. There is actually a very simple way to clean yours, and it doesn’t take too long or involve too much work!

When it comes to housekeeping, I have to admit, I’m somewhat of a disappointment to myself. As a full time stay at home mom, I feel like I should be on top of our messes more. Especially when it comes to the kitchen, where we prepare and eat our food.

I tend to leave the clean up from dinner until at least the next morning, and often it stays through until the next meals have been prepared. In fact, what often propels me to clean up is when we run out of clean dishes or the counters are so full that I can’t actually prepare anything!

For lazy housekeepers like me, there are tons of products that help make things easier. I’d much rather grab a cleaning wipes to wipe down my kitchen table than to actually get out the rags and spray. And honestly, with the convenience, why not? I have better ways to spend my time – like playing with my three adorable little boys. Or checking Facebook for the 300th time that day.

But once in a while, I’ll admit the mess gets to me. That happened to me a few days ago. With the holiday fun we had, our kitchen had been used and abused for the last few weeks, and when I went to make Sunday lunch, I took one look at my stove and groaned. It was a mess.

From water over-boiling and leaving rings to sticky hard masses of sugar from the homemade candy I’d made to burnt on food that had never been cleaned up, it needed a thorough cleaning.

I knew what I had to do.  I rolled up my sleeves, gathered my supplies and set to work.

Fair warning – this takes some time and elbow grease, but the results are SO worth it.

Here’s what you’ll need:

A razor blade or sharp knife
baking soda
rags
dish soap
disinfecting wipes or a good kitchen spray

First, give your stovetop a wipe down with a dishrag, collecting as much of the mess as you can. You want to remove everything you can before you break out your razor blade.

Take your razor blade (I lost mine somewhere, so I used a very sharp paring knife) and gently scrape up all of the dried on gunk that you can. This will get up all the sticky stuff and any hard masses and usually a little bit of the burnt on stuff. Just be careful not to scratch the surface. And DON’T try this with a metal stove!

Next, wipe down the stove again to remove all the excess particles. Again, it’s important to get rid of all the stuff you can easily remove. It makes the next part easier!

Now, sprinkle the whole stove with a nice even coating of baking soda. It doesn’t have to be thick, but make sure you’ve covered all the stains.

Soak your rags in very hot, soapy water. I use plain dish soap, and it’s fine, but I will always recommend that you use Dawn dish soap just because it truly is better than any other. Wring them out just a tiny bit so they’re not dripping, but make sure they’re still super wet. Spread them out on top of the baking soda.

Now go off and do something else. Check Facebook. Play with your kids. Read a magazine. Don’t go near the stove for at least 15 minutes.

Once you’ve waited the appropriate time, go back and pick up all the rags. Your baking soda will have formed a paste while it was waiting for you.

Take one of the rags and use it to gently move around the baking soda on your stove. Rub in small circles, using some elbow grease and go over all the stains. You should find that they come up really easily. Some of them might take a bit of muscle, but most of them should come up with no issue.

Switch out your rags and keep mopping up until all of the baking soda (and the stains!) have been removed. Think of it like an exfoliator, but instead of getting rid of dead skin on your face, it’s getting rid of dried, crusty stains on your stove.

Nice, right?!

As I stood and admired my shiny glass top, I suddenly remembered an episode of My Name is Earl. Remember when that was a thing? What a great show. If you haven’t seen it, you gotta. So funny.

The episode in question was called O, Karma, Where Art Thou, and it features Earl (Jason Lee) taking over the duties of a fast food worker for a time. His nasty boss (played by a pre-MCU-era Jon Favreau) has him cleaning up a food preparation area.

Earl thinks he’s done a pretty good job, until his boss challenges him, asking if it is clean enough to eat off of. Earl sees no problem at all and says he’d happily eat off of it. So his boss grabs a french fry and wipes it along the rim of the area, where there is a build up of grease and other matter which collects onto the french fry.

His point proven, he forces Earl to eat the fry, a disgusting and completely abusive lesson about checking beyond obvious areas when cleaning up. That scene always made me gag, and I’ve always checked hidden areas ever since.

Ahem. Anyway, I looked more closely at the stove, and I noticed the area of the stove surround – especially the corners were filled with black and grey greasy matter. Ugh. And the knobs that controlled the heat? They were so dingy, greasy and disgusting. Underneath them was even worse!

That’s when I grabbed my disinfecting wipes. I love these things. They have a scrubby texture to handle tougher messes. They’re more absorbent, with a thicker wipe. Perfect for what I needed!

I first used them to slide around the stove surround, using my fingernail to get it as close as possible to the mess. The wipe picked it up with no issues. Then, I set about cleaning each knob. The wipes again did a GREAT job, removing months of greasy buildup! Those knobs looked brand new!  Finally, I gave the whole stove a once over with a clean wipe, making sure that every inch of it was fit to eat from.

So there you have it. My stovetop is finally clean. Like new, even! Of course, no one is allowed to use it EVER AGAIN… Just kidding. I love cooking on a clean stove!

I hope you can use this hack the next time you notice your kitchen needing a little TLC.

What’s your favorite cleaning hack? I’d love to hear them!

Katie Reed

Katie Reed is a passionate writer and mother of four vivacious boys from Salt Lake City, Utah. Drawing from her own journey through TTC, pregnancy, and the joys of raising children, she offers a wealth of insight into the world of motherhood. Beyond her heartfelt tales, Katie delights her readers with family-friendly recipes, engaging crafts, and a curated library of printables for both kids and adults. When she’s not penning her experiences, you’ll find her crafting memories with her husband and sons—Dexter, Daniel, Chester, and Wilder.