Buzz

By Rochelle Bilow |  July 14, 2021

As any chef worth their salt will tell you: Cooking in a restaurant means doing all of the jobs. Even head chefs have to roll up their sleeves and scrub pots and pans every once in a while. And so we had a feeling our favorite professional cooks could teach us a thing or three about keeping our kitchens in fighting shape (if not completely spotless). We asked some of the best chefs in the country to share their top cleaning tips. These are the lessons we thought you might not have heard before.

1. Use vinegar to cut grease and grime.

Ron Hsu, the executive chef and co-founder at Lazy Betty, cleans crusty griddles with vinegar. The trick is to pour on a bit while the surface is still hot (stand back; it will splatter!). He also boils copper-lined items in a salted vinegar-water solutions. “It helps make the scrubbing of the copper much easier,” he says. White vinegar is also a staple for cutting grease at Rodney Scott’s BBQ, according to Rodney Scott himself: “I always keep a little white vinegar around when I’m cleaning to help cut the grease.” If simple, old-fashioned vinegar is tough enough on grease for a pitmaster specializing in whole-hog barbecue, it’s tough enough for us!