Most Westinghouse glass cooktops are radiant ceramic, not induction, which means the surface itself gets very hot and spills bake on hard. Take them off while the zone is still warm, with a ceramic scraper at a shallow angle, then finish with a cream cleaner.
There is a specific frustration that comes up again and again with Westinghouse glass cooktops, and it is almost always the same misunderstanding.
Someone reads that glass cooktops are easy, that spills wipe off, that you barely need to clean them. Then their own hob welds a boil-over into place so thoroughly that it takes a scraper and half an hour, and they conclude either that they have a bad cooktop or that they are doing something wrong.
Neither. They have a radiant ceramic hob, and everything they read was written about induction.
Radiant ceramic against induction, and how to tell
Both are a single sheet of glass with no visible burners. They could not behave more differently.
Induction heats the pan directly through a magnetic field. The glass is only warm because the hot pan is sitting on it, and it cools within a minute or two of the pan lifting. Spills land on warm glass and usually wipe away.
Radiant ceramic has a heating element under the glass that glows red and heats the glass, which then heats the pan. The whole surface of the zone gets genuinely hot, stays hot for several minutes after switch-off, and anything that lands on it is cooked onto it immediately.
Three ways to tell which you have:
- 1Watch a zone in a dim kitchen. If it glows orange through the glass, it is radiant ceramic. Induction does not glow.
- 2Put a fridge magnet against the base of your saucepan. Induction only works with magnetic cookware, so if your aluminium or copper pans heat fine, it is not induction.
- 3Touch the surface beside the pan after cooking, carefully. Radiant ceramic is hot well away from the pan. Induction is barely warm.
Most Westinghouse glass hobs in Australian kitchens are radiant ceramic, and that is not a criticism of the appliance. They are cheaper, they work with any pan you already own, and they last. They simply need a different cleaning habit.
The habit that solves it
On a radiant ceramic hob, the moment to clean is while the zone is still warm and the cooking is finished. Not once everything has cooled and been put away. That window, a few minutes, is when a spill will still lift with a scraper and a cloth. After it cools, the same spill has hardened onto glass that was at 300 degrees when it landed, and it is a different job entirely.
Specifically:
- Anything sugary is an emergency. Jam, syrup, a sweet sauce, milk that has boiled over. Molten sugar bonds to hot glass and can take the surface layer with it when it eventually comes off, and that is the one genuinely permanent mark you can inflict. Stop cooking, protect your hand with a folded cloth, and scrape it off now.
- Starchy boil-overs, rice water and pasta water, dry to a hard white film that is far easier warm than cold.
- Oil spatter is the forgiving one and will wait.
The method for what has already set
- 1Let it cool completely. Cold cleaner on a hot ceramic surface is a genuine crack risk, unlike on induction where the glass is rarely that hot.
- 2Wipe away everything loose, so nothing gritty gets dragged under the blade.
- 3Ceramic hob scraper at about fifteen degrees. The blade slides under the deposit. Flat, it skids and polishes the surface. Upright, it can chip the glass. Work in one direction rather than sawing.
- 4Cream cooktop cleaner, a small amount, worked with a folded paper towel in overlapping passes.
- 5Buff dry with a clean microfibre.
- 6Repeat rather than escalate. Two passes with a scraper and cream cleaner will beat one pass with a scourer, and the scourer leaves permanent haze.
Westinghouse gas hobs
Plenty of Westinghouse cooktops are gas, with cast iron or enamelled steel trivets over enamelled burner bases.
- 1Cool, then lift off the trivets, caps and crowns, photographing the layout because caps are sized per burner.
- 2Soak the trivets and caps 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.
- 3Work them with a stiff nylon brush, never wire, which scars enamelled cast iron and leaves the scars to rust.
- 4Clear the burner ports with a soft brush and a wooden toothpick. Never metal.
- 5Keep liquid off the ignition electrodes, or the burners click without lighting until they dry.
- 6Dry completely and reassemble crown, cap, trivet, each to its own burner.
Why so many of these are the same three hobs
Westinghouse shares its cooking platform with Chef and Electrolux, all part of the same group, and in practice that means a great many kitchens across New South Wales have close relatives of the same cooktop under different badges. Chef sits below it on price and Electrolux above, and the underlying hob is frequently more similar than the branding suggests.
That is genuinely useful to know for two reasons. If you are trying to identify a surface and the Westinghouse documentation is thin, the equivalent Chef or Electrolux manual often describes the same arrangement. And if you have a mixed kitchen, which is common where an appliance has been replaced piecemeal over the years, the same method applies across all three rather than needing three approaches.
It also explains the age spread. These hobs turn up in houses where the oven was replaced a decade ago and the cooktop was not, so it is entirely normal to be cleaning a fifteen year old ceramic surface beneath a much newer oven.
What never to use
- Steel wool, scourers or scouring powder on glass. Permanent haze from a single pass.
- A metal blade held flat. Ceramic scraper at a shallow angle only.
- Oven cleaner on a glass hob. It is made for enamel at temperature and can etch or discolour the surface.
- Cleaner sprayed onto the hob, which runs under the edge trim into the electronics. Spray the cloth.
- A wire brush on enamelled cast iron trivets.
- A cracked cooktop. Off at the wall and replaced, not used.
What actually goes wrong
Permanent sugar damage, from a boil-over that was left until the hob cooled. The single most common irreversible mark on this brand, and entirely preventable.
Haze across the whole surface, from a scourer used in frustration after the first attempt failed.
Rusted trivets on gas models, dried by air rather than by hand.
An owner convinced the cooktop is faulty because it does not behave like the induction hob they read about. It is working exactly as designed.
Burners that will not light after a clean, which is a damp electrode nine times in ten and fixes itself.
Should you do it yourself?
Do it yourself, and the whole answer is timing rather than technique. Wipe the zone while it is still warm after cooking and you will almost never need more than a cloth. That one habit is worth more than any product.
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 across it, if there is sugar damage you want assessed before you assume the worst, if the trivets have set solid, or if you are booking the Westinghouse oven below anyway, which most people do.
Keeping it clean
- 1Wipe the zone while it is warm, every time. On radiant ceramic this is the difference between a two minute job and a thirty minute one.
- 2Treat anything sugary as a stop-now job, not a later job.
- 3Keep a ceramic scraper in the drawer beside the hob rather than under the sink. You will actually use it.
- 4Lift pans instead of sliding them.
- 5On gas, soak the trivets every month or two rather than waiting for them to look bad.
When it has gone past a warm cloth, book a clean online or check we cover your suburb on our service areas page.