Work out whether it is induction or gas first, because the two need opposite treatment. Induction is glass care: a ceramic scraper at a shallow angle and a cream cleaner. Gas means lifting the trivets, caps and crowns and soaking them, then clearing the ports with something wooden.
Fisher & Paykel cooktops turn up disproportionately in newer builds and apartment developments, where the whole kitchen was specified in one go. That has a practical consequence worth naming at the start: if you have an F&P hob, you very likely have an F&P oven under it and an F&P hood above it, and cleaning all three in one session is far more efficient than three separate afternoons.
Establish which surface you have first
Fisher & Paykel sells induction and gas, and older installations may carry radiant ceramic, which looks identical to induction and behaves nothing like it. The three need different products and different timing, and our cooktop cleaning guide covers how to tell them apart and the method for each.
What follows is what is specific to a Fisher & Paykel rather than to a cooktop in general.
The suite, and why one appliance is rarely the job
Fisher & Paykel designs its cooking appliances as a suite rather than as separate products, and on a kitchen where the hob, oven and hood all carry the badge the extraction above is usually sized for the hob below rather than chosen independently.
That is worth knowing for a practical reason. If your Fisher & Paykel hood is not keeping up with the hob, the answer is rarely that it is the wrong hood. It is far more often that its filters are loaded or its discharge is restricted, because the pairing was specified to work. On a kitchen where a hood has been replaced independently over the years that assumption does not hold, but on an original F&P suite it usually does.
The same logic applies to bookings. Because these kitchens go in complete, the hob, oven and hood reach the point of needing attention at the same time, and cleaning one while ignoring the other two tends to be a false economy: grease the hood fails to extract lands straight back on the cooktop it was meant to protect.
The gas hobs, and the trivets that come with them
Where a Fisher & Paykel hob is gas rather than induction, it carries cast iron trivets over an enamelled or stainless base, and those trivets are the bulk of both the visible dirt and the visible improvement.
They lift off cold. Soak them flat in hot water with a non-caustic degreaser for an hour, in a tub lined with an old towel so the cast iron does not chip the porcelain, then work them with a stiff nylon brush. Never wire: it scars enamelled cast iron and the scars rust.
Photograph the burner layout before the caps and crowns come off. Caps are sized per burner and are not interchangeable, and a large cap seated on a medium crown gives a flame that lifts off the ports and will not hold a simmer. That fault reads as a gas problem and is almost always a reassembly problem.
Dry every piece by hand rather than leaving it to air. Exposed iron flashes orange within hours in a Sydney summer, and a trivet that has been left wet once tends to keep rusting at the same spot afterwards.
The controls, and where they sit
On the induction models the controls are printed on or under the glass, and they lock out when wet. A hob that has stopped responding after cleaning is almost always a wet control panel protecting itself rather than a fault, and it comes back once the area is properly dry.
Nothing abrasive should ever cross the control area. On models where the markings sit on the surface rather than beneath it, a scourer wears them away permanently, and a hob with unreadable controls is a hob that gets replaced rather than repaired.
What never to use
- Steel wool, scourers or scouring powder on glass. Permanent haze from one pass.
- A metal blade held flat on glass.
- Oven cleaner on a glass hob, which can etch or discolour it and attacks printed controls.
- Wire brushes on enamelled cast iron trivets.
- Metal pins in burner ports.
- Cleaner sprayed onto the hob, which runs under the edge trim into the electronics. Spray the cloth.
Buying the kitchen in one go, and paying for it in one go
There is a pattern to Fisher & Paykel kitchens that is worth naming, because it changes what a sensible maintenance rhythm looks like.
Because these Fisher & Paykel appliances are specified together at the point the kitchen is built, they enter service on the same day, get used at the same rate and reach the point of needing real attention at roughly the same time. A five year old apartment with an F&P kitchen typically has a hob, an oven and a hood all in identical condition.
The Fisher & Paykel rangehood is reliably the one furthest behind. Owners tend to notice the oven first, because an oven announces itself with smoke and smell. The cooktop gets wiped often enough to look acceptable and the hood gets ignored entirely. So the appliance that is actually furthest behind is usually the one nobody has mentioned, and by the time the oven is bad enough to prompt a call the hood has been recirculating warm grease over the hob for a couple of years.
The practical version of this is simple: if the oven needs doing, the other two almost certainly do as well, and it is the same visit.
What actually goes wrong
A radiant ceramic top treated as induction, so spills are left to cool and then will not shift.
Permanent sugar damage from a boil-over left until the surface cooled.
Burners that will not light after a clean, which is a damp electrode nine times in ten and sorts itself out.
Worn control markings on a glass top, from a scourer used right where the controls are printed.
Rusted trivets dried by air rather than by hand.
Should you do it yourself?
Do it yourself on induction, where wiping the surface warm after cooking is genuinely the whole maintenance routine.
Do it yourself on gas, taking the burners apart every month or two before anything sets hard.
Get someone in if a radiant ceramic top has months of baked film, if there is sugar damage you want assessed, if a burner will not hold a low flame, or if you are booking the oven and hood anyway. On an F&P kitchen that is usually all three at once.