Timing and Cleaning

2025-12-16

I made a blog post about timing when it comes to my breakfast routine, how timing my espresso is really important and how it is the most timing sensitive part of my morning. This also applies to another part of my life and that is cleaning. Some things can be cleaned at my leisure, life coffee in a stainless steel group head is one. I can dump the coffee and clean it immediately, but I can also leave it for the entire day and clean it at night and it is just as easy.

This probably has a lot to do with the surface of pan or dish that has food stuck on it. Stainless steel is not very reactive and so it is ok to leave stuff on it. Contrasted with cast iron, I am not supposed to leave acidic food in the cast iron so that needs to be cleaned kind of quickly. But things like glass, steel, and ceramics are pretty non-reactive so they can be left for long stretches with all types of food in them with no problem.

But I think the slightly more interesting part of this is that there are some foods that are really really hard to get off of stuff and need to be cleaned (or at least soaked) immediately. The first one I will go over is oatmeal. I make oatmeal twice a day for the family, it is delicious and pretty nutritious compared to other simple grains. I usually add walnuts and raisins in which I think is kind of healthy, Sneha makes fun of the amount of raisins I add so perhaps it is not that healthy. But either way, after I am done making oatmeal I try to immediately soak and quickly clean the stainless steel pot I cook it in or it will be stuck on. If left in the sink without soaking the oatmeal will dry out to an absurd amount and fuse itself to the pot. Then I have to spend multiple minutes running water over it and scrubbing with the most abrasive sponge I have to slowly chip away at it and to fully clean the pot. Even the dish washer can’t handle dried oatmeal well.

The second thing that I found needs immediate attention after cooking is Indian chai. This is also typically cooked in a stainless steel pot, it is a mix of water, milk, and tea leaves that is boiled for a long time and strained. Even after I strain the leaves and throw them in the trash, the boiled milk is a nightmare if left to dry. It makes some kind of really really gross film that again needs an abrasive sponge or even one of those steel scrubber to get off. I actually think soaking helps less here than oatmeal and cleaning immediately is the best strategy. It helps that we dont make this often but if we have guests or Sneha get a chai craving, I will be sure to clean right after cooking.

Those are the two biggest offenders in my book. I try not to let dishes piles up but with two young kids it often happens, but these are two dishes that need to be cleaned up right away even if the sink is full of other dirty dishes.

-Gary