Welcome to another of our “How To” series. This time around we are tackling an often overlooked part of your kitchen health and hygiene, your Cooker Hood Filter.
Cooker Hood Filters have one job and that is to collect grease, so if it is doing its job properly, it is going to look and feel, well, greasy! Over time the filters will become clogged with grease and when that happens your filter will loose its effectiveness and in really bad cases stop working all together.
It is important therefore to periodically clean or replace the filters in the range hood.
Cleaning the Hood is the first step, no point in replacing the filter if you are putting it back into a dirty hood. There are a couple of dedicated products you can use to make that job quick and easy.
The first is by Oven Mate and is a trigger spray that is especially useful if you have a mesh variety range hood. The Oven Mesh Cooker Hood Filter Cleaner clears out the sticky residues that collect in the metal filters of your cooker hood extractor. This will help remove food odours and improve the performance of your cooker hood.
The second is for all other types of hood and is quite at home keeping the rest of the range and hob area clean too. Unifit Professional Cooker Hood Cleaner and Degreaser, removes dirt and grease and is suitable for cooker hoods, filters, hobs, splashbacks and ovens.
Most Cooker Hood Extractors will use one of two types of filter. They will either have a Foam type filter or a Paper type filter. It is not practical to even attempt to try and clean these, there are designed as used and dispose.
The filter is the most overlooked item in the cleaning of the kitchen, it is tucked away, often above head height and is normally out of sight as well.
If you have a mesh type extractor the whole filter unit can be cleaned simply and easily. Firstly remove the filter assembly from the hood (you will need to refer to the manufacturers instructions for your model). We would recommend using the Oven Mate Mesh Cooker Hood Filter Cleaner
Spray Oven Mate Mesh Cooker Hood Filter Cleaner evenly over both sides of the metal mesh and leave for approximately 15 minutes to allow grease and dirt to be broken down.
If the filters are very dirty, they may need to be left longer for Oven Mate Mesh Cooker Hood Filter Cleaner to penetrate.
Rinse under a hot tap to wash out residue and dry thoroughly before replacing filters in extractor fan.
For the non mesh type hoods and extractors, The filter assembly is normally fixed and just the filter can be removed. Just a general cleaning is all that will be needed before replacing the filter itself, Unifit Professional Cooker Hood Cleaner And Degreaser will work very nicely here, it is just a simple spray and wipe, just make sure all the surfaces are cool before beginning.
There is a third type of filter that is not so common and that is Carbon Cassette. These are sealed units of activated carbon that trap the grease particles over time. These units while uncommon, are the easiest to replace as the whole unit is contained and easy to handle. These by their nature cannot be cleaned so once it starts to loose its effectiveness, just replace it.
While the filters will stop working over time and need replacing, you can almost extend their life with a little preventative measure of simply just cleaning the fan and hood after every use.