Monday, December 17, 2012

Removing tomato pasta sauce stains in plasticware

I love Italian food, and I love a good red pasta sauce but I always make too much food and I like to store in Tupperware, Ziploc, whatever plasticware floats your boat so that I can enjoy it for another meal.

Unfortunately , tomato sauce leaves horrible orangey red stains, is hard to get out of your plasticware, and in my mind looks like you haven't cleaned it- which annoys the crap out of me. Also, I hate scrubbing, it is not good for the nails.

Soooo I've tried a couple of methods to see which cleans up best.


1. Bleach - this is effective and is just like soaking rags or white sheets. The biggest issue I have with this particular type of cleaning is I don't like bleach around my food. There is no harm if you rinse properly, and apparently Tupperware suggest this method.

You can use the liquid bleach, or a bleach powder and turn it into a paste.


2. Denture cleaning tablets - The clear purpose of denture tablets is to clean item meant to be used in the mouth - so I feel safe using this on my dishes/food containers. However you need to get into it quickly otherwise it doesn't work.

Remember - when you are first rinsing your Tupperware/plastic things/Ziploc don't rinse with hot water , rinse with cold water.

In my opinion the issue with tomato based pasta sauces is that the additional colouring to make them red means that the stain will be there.

I find when I make my own tomato pasta sauce this doesn't happen as much. Also a bonus to making your own pasta sauce is that it takes no time at all and you get to see exactly what you are putting into your sauce.

However, they do say that prevention is better than a cure soooo I've recently learnt that if you spray the inside of your plastic container with a little bit of oil - this works super well I don't know why but it means the sauce doesn't seem to stain the same way. I've done this numerous times now and it works a charm.

Alternatively put some plastic wrap on the inside, pour the spaghetti and sauce in , close the plastic wrap over the top and then pop the lid on  - or use a black base plastic or something that is not clear. That way you won't get annoyed when it stains because you won't see it.

If it smells like sauce after you've washed them, place a cut up lemon inside and zap it in the microwave for a minute.

Hope this helps ;-) I'm working on things to do with vinegar now. Let the experimenting and researching continue!