Kitchen grease: why scrubbing harder does not work, and what actually does

Kitchen grease does not come off because you scrub harder. It comes off because you give an alkaline cleaner time to work. Cooking oil is a fat; fat and water repel each other, so a wet cloth just pushes the film around and leaves a smear. An alkaline product (a kitchen degreaser, washing soda, or at a pinch hot water with plenty of dish soap) chemically turns that fat into something water can carry away — but the reaction needs 5 to 10 minutes of contact. Spray and wipe straight away and you have wasted the spray. Below is how our cleaners in Johor Bahru actually do a greasy kitchen, which product goes on which surface, and the two popular "hacks" that make things worse.

Why does grease not come off with water and scrubbing?

Because grease is not dirt, it is fat, and fat does not dissolve in water. Fresh cooking oil is a liquid you can wipe. Leave it on a hood, a cabinet top or the wall behind the stove for a few weeks of stir-frying and it does two things: it collects dust so it becomes a sticky brown paste, and the heat slowly polymerises it into a varnish-like layer that is bonded to the surface. At that point a wet cloth has nothing to grab. Scrubbing with a rough pad does move some of it, but it also spreads a thin film everywhere the pad goes, which is why a "cleaned" hood still feels tacky. Pressure is not the missing ingredient. Chemistry is.

What actually dissolves grease?

Alkaline cleaners. Cooking oils are triglycerides, and an alkaline solution breaks their ester bonds and converts the fat into a soap-like, water-soluble substance — the same reaction (saponification) soap makers use (how alkaline degreasers work). Once that has happened, water rinses it off with almost no rubbing. There are three practical levels of alkaline you can buy in Malaysia:

The pH numbers above come from standard chemistry references and a range hood cleaning guide that compares washing soda with lye. Prices are from Malaysian online retailers in October 2026 (Qra, Pantry Express) and will drift.

How long should the degreaser sit before you wipe?

Five to ten minutes. This is the step almost everyone skips and it matters more than which brand you buy. Professional degreasing guides put the dwell time for alkaline cleaners at 3–5 minutes for light grease and 5–10 minutes for heavy, polymerised grease (stonesealerusa; The Clean Home). During that time the alkali is doing the work your arm was trying to do. Two practical rules:

• Do not let it dry. If the surface dries before you wipe, the reaction stops and you get streaks. On a hot kitchen afternoon in JB, spray a smaller area at a time or mist it again.
• Warm helps. Grease softens with heat. A splashback wiped while the stove is still warm (not hot) and a filter soaked in hot tap water both come clean far faster than cold.

Our cleaners spray the whole hood and splashback first, then go and do the sink and countertop, and only come back to wipe the hood after. That is dwell time built into the order of work, not extra time on the clock.

Which cleaner is safe on which kitchen surface?

Alkaline is not safe everywhere, and this is where DIY kitchens get damaged. The surface decides the product, not the amount of grease.

If you are not sure what a surface is, test the product in a corner nobody sees and give it the full dwell time before deciding.

Does baking soda plus vinegar remove grease?

No — mixed together they largely cancel each other out and you are left with fizzy salt water. Baking soda is a base; vinegar is an acid. Combined, they react into water, carbon dioxide (the bubbles) and sodium acetate, a neutral salt with no cleaning power. A chemist at Virginia Tech put it plainly: the two "basically cancel each other out" (Apartment Therapy; The Conversation). The fizz looks like something is happening, which is why the hack survives.

Each one is useful on its own: baking soda as a mild alkaline abrasive paste on a glass hob, white vinegar as a weak acid for limescale around the tap. Just not in the same bowl, and vinegar does nothing for grease at all because grease needs alkali, not acid. The dozens of Chinese-language "soak your hood filter in baking soda and vinegar" videos work only because the water is hot and the soak is long; the vinegar is along for the ride.

How do you clean a greasy range hood filter step by step?

Soak, do not scrub. This is the one job in the kitchen where the chemical does all the work if you let it.

1. Switch the hood off and let it cool. Pull the mesh filters out (most clip or slide out from the front).
2. Fill the sink or a basin with the hottest tap water you have. Add a good squirt of dish soap, or 2–3 tablespoons of washing soda if the filters are brown and sticky. Not oven cleaner — most filters are aluminium.
3. Push the filters under and leave them 20–30 minutes. Go do the splashback meanwhile.
4. Brush gently with a soft dish brush. The grease should slide off as a cloudy film. If it does not, the water went cold; refill and give it another ten minutes.
5. Rinse, shake, and let them dry completely before clipping back in. A wet filter back in a hood grows mould in a week in our climate (we covered why in the 12 spots nobody cleans).
6. While the filters are out, wipe the inside lip of the hood with degreaser and a cloth. The grease tray or cup (if your model has one) empties into the bin, never the sink.

Doing this once a month if you fry daily, once a quarter if you mostly steam and boil, keeps the filter from ever reaching the varnish stage. Once it has, washing soda still works — it just takes two soaks.

What should you not do to a greasy kitchen?

Four things we see the aftermath of every week:

• Spray-and-wipe in one motion. No dwell time, no result, and a smeared film that looks worse under the light.
• Steel wool on stainless steel or a glass hob. The scratches are permanent and they hold grease, so the next clean is harder.
• Oven cleaner on the hood or filters. It is sodium hydroxide at 5–10% — fine on the carbon inside a steel oven, destructive on aluminium, and a burn risk on skin without gloves.
• Bleach for grease. Bleach disinfects and whitens; it does not dissolve fat. And in a kitchen full of acidic products (vinegar, some descalers, toilet cleaner one room away) it is the ingredient most likely to end up in a dangerous mix.

Is it cheaper to do it yourself or hire someone?

For most kitchens, do it yourself. A RM10 bottle of kitchen degreaser and 20 minutes handles the hob, splashback and hood exterior; a 30-minute soak handles the filters. Spread over a month that is cheaper than any cleaning company, including us, and it is not a job that needs skill — only patience with the dwell time.

Where paying makes sense is the grease you cannot reach or have not touched in a year: the inside of the hood around the fan, the tops of wall cabinets, the wall behind a freestanding cooker, the inside of the oven, the cabinet interiors under the sink. That is several hours with the right chemicals and a lot of ladder work, and the surfaces are often damaged by the wrong product before we arrive. Our standard home cleaning visit is RM150 for two cleaners for two hours and is built around floors and bathrooms; a full kitchen degrease is a deep cleaning job that we quote after seeing the kitchen, because the time depends entirely on how long the grease has been there and what the surfaces are made of (the difference between a regular and a deep clean). Anything added on site goes at the listed +50%, so tell us the kitchen is the target when you book.

If you would rather not spend Sunday with your head inside a range hood, we are here — and we will tell you honestly whether what you have is a 20-minute job you can do yourself or a half-day one.