Dishwasher: Prewash or not?

mhphoto · Feb 29, 2012

HMFIC's post got me thinking about our family's kitcheny habits.

I was raised in a house where everything was prewashed (prewash being defined as getting all the chunks and 90% of the sludge off anything before it goes in) before being put into the dishwasher.

But my wife's family is completely opposite. They don't prewash anything. The only thing they do is knock the chunks into-you guess it-the garbage disposal, then put the plate in the dishwasher, sludge and smaller chunks that stuck to the sludge and all.

What are the rules pertaining to this at your house?

Johnny · Feb 29, 2012

You pretty much clean the dish before you put it in the dishwasher at our house. The dishwashers only function is to sanitize.

ignerntbend · Feb 29, 2012

Scrape the crud off before you put them in the dishwasher. Do not despair, Howard Hughs was scared of germs. Do not presume, Hitler was scared of germs.

HMFIC · Feb 29, 2012

Ahh... another point of contention in the kitchen.

This one depends somewhat on the dishwasher. Once you get beyond whatever the disposal can manage, prewash is becomes an issue of 'will it get clean'. For me this is just a practical matter that is easily solved and tested. Most current dishwashers are good enough to do better than I expect and so while I still use the fork-scrape-in-the-trash then rinse policy, it might not be necessary.

BadgeBunny · Feb 29, 2012

Johnny said:
You pretty much clean the dish before you put it in the dishwasher at our house. The dishwashers only function is to sanitize.

Thank you. You wash them, then you put them in the dishwasher so they can get washed again, just in case you missed a germ because your scalded hands couldn't stand the boiling water you poured in the sink.

Peabody · Feb 29, 2012

Johnny said:
You pretty much clean the dish before you put it in the dishwasher at our house. The dishwashers only function is to sanitize.

This.

A dish does not go in my dishwasher with a trace of food on it.

ignerntbend · Feb 29, 2012

Jack Nicholson was scared of germs in that movie he was in. There's medicine for that.

BadgeBunny · Feb 29, 2012

ignerntbend said:
Jack Nicholson was scared of germs in that movie he was in. There's medicine for that.

I'm not scared of germs but I have a REAL healthy respect for them. I've seen what they can do to your insides upclose and personal like ... No germs for me if I can help it.

RidgeHunter · Feb 29, 2012

When RidgeHunter was young, he was taken to potluck dinners at his grandmother's or sometimes great-grandmother's church. Young RidgeHunter would memorize the dishes owned by his mother and grandmother and only eat from said dishes.

Sometimes he'd walk up and discover someone else owned the same dishes. Never fear, for at least grandma has little name tags on the bottom to identify her dishes at potlucks. An advantage of being a kid is you are low enough to the ground to drag them over to the edge of the table, lean over, and look for the tag. Sometimes an adult would ask him what he was doing with the green beans hanging over the edge of the table, and he really didn't know what to tell them. Probably the same type of people that would ask him what he was doing when he stalled and took the same stair twice on a given flight. It's because he was counting them and the number was NOT ACCEPTABLE. :rolleyes2

ignerntbend · Feb 29, 2012

There's germs out there I don't even wanna think about, but the average germ? The average germ couldn't live in the squalid hovel I call home for more than a few seconds. I laugh at germs. I won't live in fear just because there're germs out there that can hurt me. I'd rather die on the toilet than live at the sink.

Dishwasher: Prewash or not?

Do you prewash before putting things in the dishwasher?

Prewash

No Prewash

mhphoto

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Johnny

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ignerntbend

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HMFIC

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BadgeBunny

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Peabody

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ignerntbend

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BadgeBunny

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RidgeHunter

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ignerntbend

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