the best kitchen soap cleans almost everything
Liquid Castile Soap
The best kitchen soap is a versatile, plastic free, natural liquid Castile soap. Instant Liquid Soap is sold dry. You dilute at home and immediately have participated in water conservation and large scale fuel savings.
It can be used as dish soap, hand soap, surface cleaner, appliance cleaner, a fruit and vegetable wash, and a floor wash.
It should leave your kitchen sparkling clean and free of any soap scum residue, smell, or taste. There are a few very important factors to consider when choosing a versatile dish soap:
- Your dishes showcase the the food and not the dishwashing liquid or detergent used.
- The dish soap leaves your hands soft and smooth, while it is tough on grease and kitchen grime.
- The dish soap is a safe and effective fruit and vegetable wash.
When you eat right, the food is alive
Good Soap Matters
When you plan, grow or shop for the best food, and then spend time preparing exquisite meals to enjoy with friends and family, you want to taste and smell only the food.
Good kitchen soap is very important. Irritating kitchen soap that smells and tastes like something unrelated to the food is counter intuitive.
Not only is it poorly effective at keeping your dishes free from unwanted bacteria, it is a waste of time, energy, and resources.
My kitchen also has a bar of soap at the sink to wash my hands, which I do frequently. I use Tough Guy bar soap to rid my hands of unwanted food odors.
Clean Food
Real food is grown in healthy, live nutritionally dense soil. Dirt is devoid of nutrition and life. It's soil components have been used up.
When food is transported in trucks, it comes in contact with a lot of dirt and bacteria. There is good bacteria and bad bacteria.
Depending on what kind of food you eat, much of it is processed in factories and warehouses, whether it's organic or not. Large work places are filled with people, fork lifts, packaging of all kinds, etc.
No matter how much toxic bleach and other "industrial cleaners" are used, you probably don't want to eat there, let alone anything that fell onto the floor.
It's a good idea to wash food, before you ingest it.
What is Dish Detergent
Soap Ingredients
Good dish soap ingredients should look something like this:
Saponified organic coconut oil (and possibly some other recognizable oils, like olive oil, hemp oil, etc). These are simple soap ingredients.
If made properly, it should be very sudsy. Soap suds have a function, so if the natural soap you use does not suds, it doesn't work. It's a mechanical process.
Soap suds bubbles collect dirt, grease and other debris. The soap molecule is pointy, so it will puncture pathogens, like viruses and germs. Once the pathogen's protective membrane is punctured, the pathogen dies. Then the soap, along with the unwanted matter being washed off, rinses away.
Aside from being a great kitchen soap, the mechanical pathogen killing process is an excellent wound cleaner.
If a label says call poison control if ingested, you may not want to wash dishes with it
Detergent
Detergents are a bunch of chemical powders, foaming agents, bleaches, and harmful perfumes. Labels can include ingredients like this:
Sodium lauryl or laureth sulfate, c10-16 alkyldime-thylamine oxide, denatured alcohol, PPG 26 or another number, phenoxyethanol, propylene glycol, phosphate, phthalate, triclosan.
If you feel any of these symptoms when washing dishes, maybe it's time to switch from a toxic dishwashing detergent or liquid, to natural Castile soap as dish soap.
- Foggy and headache-y when using your dish soap
- Rough scratchy and or itchy hands during and after washing dishes
- Taste or smell your dish soap when eating. Eating chemical dish washing detergents can cause illness.
- Scratchy throat or pressure on your throat
Consider making the switch to good natural dish soap and save on headache remedies. Hand creams will actually make your hands smooth and beautiful instead of simply giving you relief.
Good Dish soap washes more dishes
How far does your soap go
Well made Castile soap is gentle enough to effectively wash hands and sudsy enough to collect enough grease and debris from an eggplant Parmesan casserole dish or greasy pork chop pan.
Both hand soap and dish soap are intended to clean but are usually not the same. Most hand soaps are some sort of gentle on skin soap intended to clean your hands but not much else.
Most dish soaps are detergents, containing harsh, non food grade chemicals that cut through grease. As a comparison, a dish soap gel will clean 1-3 dishes before you need to add more to your sponge. The same amount of good sudsy Castile soap will clean 5-6 dishes before you need to add more to your sponge.
A good kitchen soap should be versatile enough to be gentle enough to clean your hands, tough enough for the dishes, and a greasy stovetop.
Wash eggs right before cracking them open
Farm Fresh Eggs
The eggs in the photo are gifts from my chickens. Each one comes straight from the chicken with a protective wax coating on them called the bloom. This protects the egg and the potential chick inside (if left for the hen to incubate) from bacteria. It also enables the eggs to be stored at room temperature. We store them in egg cartons on a shelf or in an egg basket, because we get great joy looking at them.
Theoretically this also retains the best flavor and keeps the most vitamin D intact. Did you know that organic fresh eggs are an excellent source of Vitamin D?
I wash each egg in the kitchen with soap and water, right before cracking it open. It removes any dirt that could potentially contaminate the egg as it is removed from the shell. This small extra step controls the potential spread of disease. My chickens, like all chickens, bathe in dust and dirt, step in poop, and then help clean it off of each other.
I just found out from a farmer friend, that farmers who sell eggs are required to wash all eggs that are for sale. This compromises the integrity of the natural bloom, and these eggs will have to be refrigerated.
Good kitchen soap makes a house a home
Enjoy Home Cooked
Sparkling clean dishes, free from a detergent smell or aftertaste, are an essential component of good kitchen soap and a healthy kitchen. The suds have the important function of collecting excess dirt and grease. This is what makes natural soap work.
At this point in our own personal history, we have moved from eating out to eating in, even if we bring in prepared food. Enjoy being home and in your kitchen. Make it a comfortable, happy place to feed you, your family and friends. Get creative. Cook a lot, enjoy as much local bounty as possible. A healthy kitchen is a place to grow ideas to make a more sustainable world.