Identify the surface first. Induction and ceramic are glass: a scraper held at a shallow angle and a cream cleaner, never a scourer. Gas is enamel and cast iron with trivets and caps that lift out and soak. Brass caps and knob collars must never meet caustic cleaner, which tarnishes them permanently.
A Smeg cooktop is not one thing. The brand sells gas burners on enamel, induction under glass and radiant ceramic under glass, and the three want almost opposite treatment. A cream cleaner that is perfect on an induction top does very little on a burnt-on gas trivet. A degreaser that shifts baked fat off cast iron will haze a glass surface and tarnish brass.
So before anything comes out of the cupboard, work out what you are actually looking at.
Which Smeg cooktop do you have?
Gas. Visible burners, removable brass or enamelled burner caps, and cast iron trivets sitting over an enamelled steel or stainless base. Smeg's gas hobs are the ones that reward the most careful handling, because they have the most separate parts and the most metals in one appliance.
Induction. A single unbroken sheet of glass with printed touch controls and no visible element. It stays cool except where the pan sits, which is why spills on an induction top usually wipe off rather than bake on.
Radiant ceramic. Also a single sheet of glass, but the elements glow red through it and the whole surface gets genuinely hot. This is the surface that bakes sugar and starch on hardest, and it is often mistaken for induction.
The quick test between the last two: put a fridge magnet on the surface and turn a zone on low for a few seconds with a pan on it. Induction only heats ferrous cookware and the surface around the pan stays cool. Radiant ceramic heats regardless of the pan and stays hot for minutes afterwards.
If your cooktop is part of a Victoria or Portofino freestanding range, the hob is gas and the whole appliance is priced as a freestanding stove rather than as a separate cooktop, which is worth knowing before you book anything.
Glass tops: induction and ceramic
The rule on glass is that the surface is harder than most people assume and far less forgiving than they expect. It resists heat and pressure well. It scratches permanently and it stains permanently, and neither can be polished out.
- 1Let it cool. Cold cleaner on hot glass is how a top cracks, and most cream cleaners bake onto a warm surface into a film that is worse than what you started with.
- 2Lift the loose material first with a damp cloth, so you are not dragging grit across the glass with everything else.
- 3Use a ceramic hob scraper at a shallow angle, roughly fifteen to twenty degrees, on anything hardened. Held flat it skids and polishes. Held upright it chips. The blade is designed to slide under the deposit, not to chisel it.
- 4Apply a cream cooktop cleaner, a small amount, and work it with a folded paper towel or a non-scratch pad in overlapping passes.
- 5Buff it off dry with a clean microfibre. Cream cleaner left on the surface dries to a chalky bloom that looks like damage and is not.
Two things cause almost all permanent glass damage. Sugar and anything containing it must come off while the zone is still warm, because molten sugar bonds to hot glass and takes the top layer with it when it eventually lifts. Boiled-over jam, syrup or a sugary sauce is a stop-what-you-are-doing job, using a scraper and a folded cloth to protect your hand. And dragging cast iron or a rough-based pan across the surface leaves grey metal marks that look like scratches. Those usually are not scratches and a cream cleaner takes them off, so try before assuming the worst.
Gas: caps, trivets and the burner heads
A Smeg gas hob comes apart further than most people realise, and the whole job gets easier once it does.
- 1Cool, then lift everything off. Trivets, burner caps and burner crowns all come away by hand once cold. Photograph the layout first if you have burners of different sizes, because caps and crowns are not interchangeable and a cap on the wrong crown gives a poor flame.
- 2Soak the trivets and the enamelled caps in hot water with a non-caustic degreaser. An hour in a lined sink does more than any amount of scrubbing. Line the sink with an old towel so cast iron does not chip the porcelain.
- 3Brass caps do not go in that soak. Wash them separately in warm soapy water and dry them immediately. Brass is the one metal on the appliance where a strong cleaner does permanent, obvious damage, and it goes dull and blotchy in a way that no polish fully recovers.
- 4Clear the burner ports with a soft brush and a wooden toothpick. Never a steel pin or a drill bit: enlarging a port changes the gas-to-air mix, and the result is a yellow flame and sooty pan bases.
- 5Clean the hob base with the burners out. This is where spills actually live. Keep liquid away from the ignition electrodes, which are the small ceramic-tipped pins beside each burner. A wet electrode gives a clicking igniter that will not light until it dries.
- 6Dry everything completely and reassemble in the right order. Crown, then cap, then trivet. A burner that sits slightly proud lights unevenly, and it is almost always a cap seated on a crumb.
What never to use on a Smeg cooktop
- Caustic oven cleaner on brass burner caps, brass trim or the chrome collars around the control knobs. This is the single most common permanent damage on a Smeg hob and it cannot be undone.
- Steel wool, scourers or abrasive powder on glass. One pass leaves a haze that catches the light forever.
- A metal blade held flat on glass. Shallow angle, ceramic scraper, or nothing.
- Cleaner sprayed directly onto the hob. It runs into the burner wells, under the glass edge trim and into the electronics. Spray the cloth instead.
- Anything abrasive on the printed touch controls of an induction or ceramic top. The markings are printed on the underside of the glass on better models and on the surface on others, and on the second kind they simply wear away.
- A wet cloth over the ignition electrodes before you have finished, if you want the burners to light afterwards.
What actually goes wrong
Tarnished brass caps. By a distance the most common. Someone cleans the oven below, uses the same cloth on the hob, and the brass is dull by the following week.
A permanently marked glass top from sugar. Almost always a boil-over that was left until the surface cooled, by which point the sugar had already bonded.
Burners that will not light after a clean. Nine times out of ten a damp electrode, which fixes itself in a few hours. The tenth is a cap on the wrong crown.
A yellow, sooty flame from a port cleared with something metal and now slightly too large.
Scratched control markings on a glass top, from a scourer used on a stubborn mark right where the controls are printed.
Should you do it yourself?
Do it yourself on a glass top with routine soiling. A scraper, a cream cleaner and ten minutes after each big cook keeps an induction or ceramic surface looking new almost indefinitely, and it is genuinely easy.
Do it yourself on a gas hob if you are willing to take the burners apart and soak the parts. The work is not difficult, it just takes an hour and a bit of patience.
Get someone in if there is brass on the appliance and it has already gone dull, if a glass top has hardened sugar you are afraid to tackle, if burners are lighting unevenly, or if it has not been done in a year or more and the hob base under the burners has set hard.
Most people book the hob with the oven underneath it, which is usually the same Smeg and the same visit. See how to clean a Smeg oven for that, and how to clean a Smeg rangehood for the extraction above, since a hood that is not pulling properly puts everything it fails to catch straight back onto the hob.
Keeping it clean
- 1Wipe spills on a glass top while the zone is still warm, and treat anything sugary as urgent rather than as a job for later.
- 2Lift pans rather than sliding them, especially cast iron.
- 3Take the gas trivets and caps off for a soak every month or two, well before anything has baked hard.
- 4Keep cleaner off the brass. If you only remember one thing from this page, that is the one.
- 5Run the rangehood on every cook, not just the smoky ones. Most of what settles on a cooktop arrived as airborne fat from the pan beside it.
When it is past a wipe and a cream cleaner, book a clean online or check we cover you on our service areas page.