Archived The Wonders of Degreaser

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So I know that if you work in food at Target, you know what the oven degreaser is. And how that stuff can clean pretty much ANYTHING. So I thought, let's share our war stories! ;)

I worked at FA for a week or so before I realized just how crazy powerful this degreaser stuff was. Of course, that was AFTER I'd taken to scrubbing one of the breadstick oven pans without gloves. *shudder* My fingers were in such bad shape; so dry because all the top skin had rubbed off and they cracked like crazy. I was MUCH more careful after that, but would still sometimes end up with burns on my wrists from where the gloves ended. Once, a drop landed on my arm and I couldn't wash it off in time; still have the scar! Once I started cleaning the pizza ovens, I took to wearing a crew-neck t-shirt and long sleeves when I cleaned, and it worked pretty well for keeping the stuff off of me. Still had to be very careful. I learned that the second you even THOUGHT you got some of that stuff on your skin, you had to rinse it right away or you were in for some discomfort!

Still, it always amazed me that for such a powerful cleaner, it was used so frequently on food surfaces. I never liked to use it on food-touching surfaces unless I could get said item into the dishwasher afterwards, but sometimes you couldn't and then you had to make sure that you rinsed like, a million times.

I probably wasn't supposed to, but I used that degreaser to clean pretty much EVERYTHING. I remember there was a stretch of 10 days that our pizza oven broke, so we all got VERY familiar with exactly what could and could not be cleaned with degreaser. ;) (Hint: Our fridge door handles and our proofer/retarder could not be cleaned with degreaser; the metal would turn black. Fun times!). I'd spray that stuff all over the wall and watch it drip yellow. Once, I pulled our maketable away from the wall and cleaned one side that had probably not been cleaned in a year; it had Pizza Hut posters on it and I didn't even know that the backgrounds were meant to be white; they'd always been quite yellow. :p

If something was dirty, or felt tacky, a quick clean with degreaser would fix that baby up. I always had fun tearing apart random things that hadn't been cleaned in FOREVER and watch the yellow just drip off of them. Quite the satisfactory feeling.

Btw, this is sort of unrelated, but did you know that glass cleaner will take icee stains right off the counter-tops? It's crazy how well it works.

Anyway, I wish I had some degreaser for home, although I'm sure it would eat the puny finishes right off of all my appliances and counter-tops, lol. Commercial kitchen, I have not!
 
Is the degreaser a product used only in the Pizza Hut express locations? (Sorry, kind of a silly question, I've never worked food).
 
Spray degreaser (not quite the same as oven degreaser) can pretty much take up anything, including blood (don't ask me how I know - check the Fantasy Target thread for clues) but it does wreck your skin pretty bad.
It's good to spray in the eyes of an assailant coming over the counter at you but cutlery will finish the job effectively.
Oven degreaser needs gloves - no doubt.
Thing to remember when using it on food surfaces is the 1 2 3 method:
1. degreaser
2. water (that spray bottle in your caddy that gets ignored)
3. sanitizer.
That way you're removing the stain/spill, you're removing the degreaser residue & you're sanitizing the surface to make it food-friendly.
And, yeh, glance glass cleaner works pretty good on the icee stains (@#$!! red & blue).
Now that the holidays are winding down, we've been tearing apart prep areas & supply shelves getting everything back in order. You'd be amazed what you uncover (ie: needed equipment AFTER the fact, bodies of long-missing TMs assumed termed, etc).
 
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The degreaser is strong stuff. It strips away your skins natural oils and causes your skin to dry or break out.

Careful on advertising the window cleaner trick. One of my old ETLs asked me how I got a big ICEE stain up that had set-in on a table for over a week. I told him the blue Window Cleaner. He freaked and glared at me telling me to only use sanitizer on the table tops. After that discussion, I just used it on ICEE stains in secret.

I used to use a diluted mix of degreaser the hot dog rollers. Place some wet paper towels on top of the rollers, then sprayed the mixture on top. Everything comes up easy, and wiped it clean with sanitizer. Then one day, we were told that we couldn't have degreaser back in Food Ave anymore. Then we started putting ice on the rollers with a line of folded towels at the bottom. A little messy and took twice as long to clean, but it worked.

The chemicals that Target had in the ratio mix squeeze bottles were so effective. Then they switched to the automatic mixing stations. Nothing could get clean from that stuff.
 
When in SBux, I had what my MD called a "toxic reaction" to that stuff. The mist caused my eyes to swell like golf balls. I ended up moving to cashiering (I was seasonal). Ironically, if I'd been able to tolerate it I would have been kept because our store can't keep SBux TMs. Oh, well ... an opportunity for someone else, I suppose!
 
I HATE the oven degreaser. Yeah, it cleans ridiculously good but it burns your throat like crazy.

The window cleaner stuff? is magic. Love love love it.
 
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