A Word About Prerinsing
Don’t do it. Yes, you read
that correctly—prerinsing is wrong. “Dishes should be scraped to remove
large chunks,” says Dries. “But if you’re rinsing, you’re really just
wasting water and electricity.”
So why is everyone in the
habit of prerinsing? Because older dishwashers removed food soil by
diluting the food in water, and then hoping it went down the drain.
Which it often didn’t.
The vast majority of today’s models
have filtration systems designed to catch food and pump it down the
drain so that very little dirty water carries over to the next cycle.
Higher-end models not only have self-cleaning filters, but hard food
disposers as well, which grind food and send it down the drain.
In addition, modern detergents are designed to attack food, which can
actually cause problems if there isn’t any food on the dishware. “The
detergent in the unit aggressively goes after something, and if you
don’t have food soil in the unit, it attacks the glasses, which will get
cloudy,” says Mike Edwards, a dishwasher designer and senior engineer
for Bosch. So ignore your friends when they tell you that you have to
prerinse.
How to Load the Right Way
Mike Edwards knows a
thing or two about how to load a dishwasher—he’s been designing them for
22 years. His suggestion: “Read the manual. We put a lot of effort into
it!” Each tub is a little different, but even so, there are two golden
rules: Like items shall be loaded with like. (More items fit that way.)
And all items should face the middle of the unit—that’s where the jet
spray comes from.
•
Avoid nesting Water, water vapor
and heat need to touch every surface of the items being washed, so leave
space between dishes and don’t overfill.
•
Place Items facing Down Placing bowls, pans and cups upright means they’ll fill with dirty water and won’t be able to drain.
•
The Lower Rack
Put bigger dishes here, close to the jet spray. Plates, pots, pans,
mixing bowls all go here; platters go against an outside edge so they
don’t block other items. Durable mugs and thick glasses can also go on
this rack.
•
Silverware Load the silverware basket in
the sink—knives handle-up, and forks and spoons handle-down—making sure
not to overfill. Many baskets are designed to sit in a variety of bottom
rack locations; after you load other items, place the basket where your
remaining empty space is.
•
The Top Rack Place glasses
and cups along the edges, next to the tines (not on them; if you put
them on the tines, the tines can break and you’ll fit fewer items). Load
smaller plates and saucers in neat rows facing the middle. Long
spatulas, cooking spoons and knives lie flat, in the long basket for
this purpose, if your unit has one.
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