The basket occasionally went in the dishwasher which cleaned the surface, but the well gunked grease has been building up.
Tried soaking the basket in soap and hot water. Scrubbing with a soft sponge. And then running the dishwasher multiple times but it only got a small part of the grease out.
The category of chemicals you’re looking for are called de-greasers.
One common, readily available, relatively unharmful type is citrus decreasers like Citrisolv or similar.
Get the dangerous alkaline concentrate and dilute it as directed for the situation. It’s much cheaper. Whatever environmental concerns are canceled out because 1 gallon was transported instead of 64-128 gallons.
I buy the orange stuff by the gallon because I can use it for bike chain degreasing, and woodworking ( as a solvent for oil finishes, etc.), etc.
When we want to break hydrocarbon chains we use bases by default. But, I’d not use a base on a bike chain because if it rusts even a little bit it’s junk.
For woodworking why is this better than mineral spirits?
I don’t know about ‘better’, but I prefer it for being less fumey, I feel better about occasionally getting some on my skin, and prefer not using petroleum derivatives. I know there’s low fume mineral spirits and I’ve used that for paint cleanup, but i’m not confident it behaves the same for finishes.
That makes sense. I’ll give it a try. Thank you for teaching me.