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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

I totally do not agree with the "don't prewash in the sink" bullshit. It's based on specious reasoning about how "well" automatic dirt sensors can work. And, it does not necessarily waste water. "it depends" -eg if you wipe the plates with a cloth, there may be less running water.

Dishwasher checks by consumer groups do not test egg protein, or avocado. They need to test with real world, tight locking protein and fats.

And with lentils: the amount of fine gritty fibre which can remain in suspension is just fantastic. And then in the rinse cycle, it sits in the feet of plates and cups.

I also believe that electro-coupling between different metals in cutlery means they age faster if you don't space them properly. If they touch, they can make a circuit.

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If it weren't for the internet, it never would have even occurred to me to 'prewash in the sink', how difficult is it to wash a single plate anyway, at the point I'm 'prewashing' each plate I may as well just wash it in the sink?

The best I can come up with is that maybe it's advocates have a lot left on the plate, and where I would scrape into compost if that happened are using a sink garbage disposal grinder thing?

If it's just some kind of saucy residue like goes into my dishwasher (without any need for any kind of 'prewashing') then any machine that can't cope with it needs returning.

We have an automatic pre-washer that works quite well, the brand is Golden Retriever.

Hope you never eat anything with, among other things, onions or garlic.

My dog (a dachshund/rat terrier mutt) once dug up and ate whole bulbs of garlic from our garden. Terrified, we took him to the vet. The vet said "if garlic was likely to hurt terriers, there would be no terriers."

I'm not suggesting anyone run out and feed their dog a bunch of garlic on purpose - that would be dumb - but if you look at the toxicity data, a 30 lb dog would need to eat something like 200 grams of garlic to have a serious problem.

Truth be told (which will stick it to the "that's disgusting" response), we don't do it very often, and definitely try to stay away from the bad-for-dogs foods (onions, garlic, grapes, chocolate). The bulk of the pre-washing happens in the dishwasher or in the sink.

> Hope you never eat anything with, among other things, onions or garlic.

As with many things, the risk is highly overstated -- so please stop spreading FUD.

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"Onion poisoning is consistently noted in pets who consume more than 0.5% of their body weight in onions."

https://www.petmd.com/dog/nutrition/can-dogs-eat-onions

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"Consuming as little as 2 grams per pound of your dog’s weight can cause observable changes in a pet's stomach, and larger amounts can damage the blood. For reference, each garlic clove weighs an average of 5 grams. For a medium-sized dog weighing around 25 pounds, treatment will be needed if they ingest 50 grams of garlic—approximately 10 cloves, or half of a garlic bulb."

https://www.petmd.com/dog/nutrition/can-dogs-eat-garlic

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Unless you're literally feeding your dog a dish with onions and garlic, it isn't an issue.

> how difficult is it to wash a single plate anyway, at the point I'm 'prewashing' each plate I may as well just wash it in the sink?

Wife and I came to the same conclusion. We just wash things in the sink, and use the dishwasher as an overpriced drying rack.

I’ve wondered this my whole life. Dishwashers are the Pareto principal in real life form. Do 80% of the work yourself first…

No, just don't do that.

The dishwasher already pre-washes.

I've put stuff absolutely covered in peanut butter, egg, bottom of air fryer, hot pot pan, etc in the dishwasher without prewash. Always comes out clean.

Yes, I'm not sure I'd call it 'pre-washing' (it's just washing?) but we agree. To be clear I don't 'pre-wash in the sink', I was saying it's absurd to me and didn't even occur to me as an option or a decision I was making not to - I also don't 'pre-wash' my clothes, for example - until seeing people (mostly Americans perhaps) talk about it online. I don't think I've ever even heard of it in person, nevermind known someone do it.

Yeah I realized we were in agreement after posting :D

You put cooked food into the compost? Aren't you worried about the salt?

Rarely, because I eat my food (I said 'if that happened'). But if I make stock say, I'll end up with a lot of salty sludgy vegetable mush, and yes I'll compost that & no I'm not worried about the salt.

What I've noticed is it's heavily dependent on the dishwasher.

I've not had the privilege of having a new dishwasher till my most recent place, all the dishwashers prior have been 10+ years old. This new one though which is a Miele dishwasher has maybe 1-2 dishes that need to be manually washed per week at the very most. Whereas my older dishwashers it was anything from an extra 1-2 dishwasher loads per week worth of failed cleans.

I'm surprised you need to do that much. I end up with probably more like 1-2 a year that need manual cleaning without ever prewashing.

The miele cutlery drawer is a game changer

Also a huge Miele fan but in our case their water softener is the game changer. (On top of the other stuff :-)

Yep! Make sure to keep the salt topped up.

More likely a reflection of my partner and I's diet. A lot of broths, soups and similar. Even 30 minutes of the plate being static in the dishwasher means the food dries on and sticks.

We don't rinse our plates, just scrape them. If I have to hand wash 1-2 bowls and plates over the week it's a non-event. We're still saving a lot of water compared to hand rinsing all of our dishes before putting them in the Miele.

IDK I eat oatmeal every morning and only run a load every few days.. Dried on oatmeal is not match for the normal cycle even at half-load setting. Nothing survives the enzymes in modern detergent and the cascading coverage of my dishwasher..

If my dishwasher has a dish in it that didn't get clean I just... leave it in there for the next cycle. It'll get clean eventually.

I honestly thought a second bash wouldn't help, but it's worth a crack. I'll give it a go.

It sort of depends? For most stains it works just fine, but it's hit-or-miss for vegetable matter. Spinach especially has a tendency to stick to things and then get rock hard in the drying cycle. For those I manually scrape off the spinach with a fingernail -- it's usually only one or two flakes -- before sticking it in for another cycle.

I don’t prewash and it works pretty well. The problem is if bits of food sit overnight in the washer they spoil and make the whole wash stink.

Maybe it’s your dishwasher or you are not putting powder in the pre-rinse compartment in addition to the action pack or powder in the main compartment. It doesn’t matter how old or baked-on the food residue is, and it can be baked-on cheese, egg, meat, burned gravy, whatever and it’ll reliably come off in the (European) dishwasher each time, every time.

Even when I was in a rental with a crappy American unit from the 80s, it would still get everything though I often had to use the extended “pots and pans” cycles for that to happen.

But yes, utensils can and do corrode in the dishwasher over time if you have different metals thrown together in the high-temp, high-conductivity alkaline bath.

"if you use a 2hr + programme then nothing survives the caustic soda"

Sure. The point is, normalising "you have to wash dishes for 2 hours" and saying "shifts stubborn stains" is really overdoing it. If you can get some of these foods off the plates before they dry, and can do a shorter wash, its win--win

Is it though? It’s not like you have to sit there watching the dishwasher for 2 hours.

By letting the food “sit,” I save water two different ways: no need to rinse off proteins or sauces, and no need to run the dishwasher with a less-than-full-load (which wastes both water and electricity).

To be honest, since having kids and their being at a certain age, we now run the dishwasher filled to the brim every other day at most, so it’s a moot point. But in all cases, it runs while we’re sleeping and it makes no difference to me if it takes an hour or six.

The only time I’ve ever wished it finished faster is on the occasion of hosting guests and having more than the regular expected daily churn in dining ware. And that doesn’t happen enough to matter.

Why even have a dishwasher if you have to (pre)wash your dishes anyway?

Why bother with plates when we have teeshirts to hold the soup in?

Are you implying that even when you employ plates and bowls, you still have to also use t-shirts to hold the soup?

If that's the case: (A) yes, your analogy is sound. And (B), you should probably switch crockery, because most people don't have this problem.

Ive never put a dish into the washer without pre-washing it.

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