How do you clean your chef jacket? - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by spikebones 

hello everyone :)

i have the worst stain EVER! on my jacket :( carbon. pitch black, super fine carbon. you know the stuff you find on the side of the pot when your flames are burning yellow. anyway, this is one's persistant. it wont budge. i've bleached, washed & soaked, you name it... it's still there. if there is anyone here who knows how to remove it successfully, please share the love. if it works, i will personally bake you the MEANEST chocolate sponge cake ever, fill it with any filling of your choice, cover it in chocolate and fedex it to your door step.

You could try Carbon Off

LOL. I love this thread. 

Hey Tincook ..... You're replying to a request ? from 3-26-08. Just so you know. Ed Buchanan  made a comment that commercial laundries can use live steam. If you work in a cool enough place, one with really good espresso machines, you can use live steam too. I've scrubbed liquid dish soap into stains at breakdown time, then let them sit until we were finished with cleanup. Before walking out, I used the milk foaming arm on the coffee machine to steam blast out the stain. It worked pretty well. Wearing a black coat is a really good problem solver too, T-Y FrySauce. So is just buying a new coat (+/-$16 by me). ChefSeanVincent's idea of having a fancy coat put away for special deals is really smart. Anyway ... there have been a lot of great suggestions made in this thread. My addition is hand cleaner from the auto parts store. "Goop", "Gunk" and "Green Stuff" have been my favorite brands over the years. I've scrubbed it in when I got home and thrown the coat on the pile for laundry. They've always come out clean. I hope I've helped this old thread. LOL. 

Hey Tincook ..... You're replying to a request ? from 3-26-08. Just so you know.

I was #hacked!!!!

LOL my friend. You're in good company. I've replied just like that to a half dozen or so threads. Still, this is a good topic. They haven't, to my knowledge, yet made any "no need for cleaning" chef coats. I'll order a dozen or so when they do. 

Tide stain stick attacks stains as soon as they happen. This is followed by a cold water wash using 1:1:2 bleach:fairy dish soap:tide for cold water.

That was my savior back in cooking school.

I now have my jackets (whole uniform, generally) laundered professionally. I couldn't be happier!

Oxy clean soak as other people stated but a great tip I picked up when working in Aus is to use eucalyptus oil when soaking, or whatever smelling oil you like. Cuts through that grease smell thats always hard to get rid of especially on aprons.

I am a chef in a very busy, very large commercial kitchen. I go through a lot of jackets in a week - one or more each day!

The best and easiest solution I have found is to set up a big tub of soaking solution at the start of the week and throw the jackets in it at the end of each day.

You can take out the ones put in the previous day and put them in washing machine. A 24-soak should get rid of the stains. You can leave them in for longer if you wish.

The soaking solution is nothing special - a store-bought oxy soaking powder - that means its active ingredient is sodium percarbonate.

In Australia (where I am now) I use one called Sard. There are plenty of similar ones available in the US, the UK and elsewhere.

The soaking water needs to be cold (hot will "fix" stains). But you can wash later in hot water. I also put a scoop of the oxy soaker in the wash cycle with the washing powder. This seems to help get a better result.

This is a reply in regards to getting the chefs whites bright again. Put 1/2 cup of bicarbonate soda in with the washing powder then 1/2 cup of white vinegar in with the rinse cycle. DON'T PUT THEM IN TOGETHER OR YOU'LL GET FIZZ! My sister put me on to this tip when she was using cloth nappies as the vinegar helps to brighten, deoderise and sterilise whilst not being harsh on fabric or skin. You might find a faint vinegar odour when you hang clothes out to dry but i've found that the sun takes care of this :)

Hope that helps! Now if I can just figure out how to get the actual stains out of my husbands nice bright jackets I'll be very happy indeed! Anyone know what the Australian equivalent of Tide or Shout Ultra Gel would be? We don't have those products here :(

I send to commercail linen company. They use STEAM  which is best and only way to get them stain free. I and everyone else has tried other ways over the years.

iv washed my own jackets for years, iv always stuck with dawn for grease and white vineger for tomatoe based stains allways let set before washing, and yes that new shout gel works great also! i usually stick with things i have around the house but for those who are washing five to seven coats a week buying a nice industrial cleaner makes it alot easier.