How to clean cooktops, by brand

Three surfaces are sold as cooktops and they need different products and, more importantly, different timing.

Telling them apart

Induction heats the pan directly through a magnetic field. The glass is only warm because the pan was hot and it cools within a minute or two. Spills usually wipe off.

Radiant ceramic has an element under the glass that glows red and heats the glass, which heats the pan. The surface reaches high temperatures, stays hot for minutes and bakes on anything that lands.

Gas has visible burners, removable caps and crowns, and trivets over an enamelled or stainless base.

The two glass types look identical. In a dim kitchen a radiant zone glows orange through the glass and an induction zone does not. Induction also only heats magnetic cookware, so if an aluminium or copper pan works it is not induction.

This distinction matters more than any product choice, because almost all advice about glass cooktops being effortless was written about induction, and on radiant ceramic it simply does not apply.

Glass: the method

Let it cool. Wipe away loose material first so nothing gritty is dragged under the blade. Use a ceramic hob scraper at about fifteen degrees, so the blade slides under the deposit: held flat it skids and polishes, held upright it can chip. Finish with a small amount of cream cooktop cleaner worked in overlapping passes, then buff off dry, or the cleaner leaves a chalky bloom people mistake for damage.

Sugar is the one emergency. Molten sugar bonds to hot glass and can lift the surface layer when it eventually comes away, which is the only genuinely permanent mark you can inflict. Take it off while the zone is warm.

Grey streaks are usually not scratches. They are metal transferred from a pan base that was slid rather than lifted, and cream cleaner removes them.

Never use steel wool, a scourer, scouring powder or oven cleaner on glass, and never anything abrasive over printed touch controls, which wear away permanently on models where the markings sit on the surface.

Zone bridging, and why the printed circles mislead

Many induction hobs combine two or more coils into a single continuous cooking area, so a roasting dish or fish kettle can sit anywhere across a wide strip and heat along its whole base. Makers give it different names, including FlexInduction, MaxiSense and PowerFlex, and the cleaning consequence is identical whatever it is called.

The printed circles describe where the coils are, not where the surface will get hot. On a hob with bridged zones there is far less dead space than the markings imply, so residue sitting in what looks like a safe gap will get hot the next time something large goes down. Clean the whole strip rather than the circles, and treat anything sugary that lands off-centre as urgent, because a spill deliberately left because it was not on a zone is exactly the one that bonds.

It also explains a frequent report, which is that a new hob marks more easily than the one it replaced. Usually it does not. It simply has a larger area that actually gets hot.

The edge, framed or frameless

Where a hob is framed, there is a seal line between the glass and a stainless surround. Where it is frameless, there is a bead of silicone around the glass at the benchtop. Either way that junction sits fractionally below the cooking surface, so nothing wipes it clean by accident, and on a dark benchtop it is hard to see until it has darkened noticeably.

Run a damp cloth around the full perimeter whenever you clean the glass. If it has hardened, lay a warm damp cloth along it for ten minutes to soften it before working with a soft brush. Keep anything sharp well away from it, because that silicone is the only thing stopping water reaching the cabinetry underneath.

Touch controls and moisture

Controls printed on or under the glass trigger phantom touches when wet, and many hobs respond by locking themselves out entirely. That is the appliance protecting itself rather than a fault, and it clears once the area is properly dry. Dry the control zone deliberately after cleaning rather than letting it air, and never let anything abrasive cross it: on models where the markings sit on the surface rather than beneath the glass, a scourer wears them away permanently and a hob with unreadable controls gets replaced rather than repaired.

Gas: the method

Cool the hob, then photograph the layout from directly above before anything comes off. Caps and crowns are sized per burner and are not interchangeable, and a large cap on a medium crown gives a flame that lifts off the ports and will not hold a simmer, which reads as a gas fault and is a reassembly fault.

Soak trivets and enamelled caps flat in hot water with a non-caustic degreaser for an hour, in a tub lined with an old towel so cast iron does not chip the porcelain. Work them with a stiff nylon brush, never wire, which scars enamel and leaves the scars to rust.

Clear burner ports with a soft brush and a wooden toothpick, working across the port rather than along it. Never a metal pin or drill bit, because enlarging a port changes the gas-to-air mix permanently and produces a yellow, sooty flame.

On a hob with several burner sizes, the two extremes fail differently. The wok or large burner blocks first, because it does the most work and carries the most ports across the largest circumference, so if one burner has become unreliable start there rather than assuming a supply problem. The simmer burner is the one ruined by impatience: it has the smallest ports and least gas flow, so enlarging one with a metal pin destroys exactly the capability it exists for.

Keep liquid off the ignition electrodes, the ceramic-tipped pins beside each burner. A wet electrode clicks without lighting until it dries, usually within a few hours, which is the commonest post-clean complaint and fixes itself.

Dry every cast iron piece by hand rather than leaving it to air, because exposed iron flashes orange within hours in a Sydney summer.