Grease, rice and a disposer that was never finished, from the kitchen drains our crews cleared this year
The short answer: nothing but water and dish soap should go down a kitchen drain on purpose. Cooking grease, rice and other starches, and big loads of food scraps cause most of the kitchen clogs we clear, and a new disposer installed without its knockout removed causes trouble of its own. Scrape plates into the trash or compost, wipe greasy pans with a paper towel, and let the drain carry water.
That is the advice Chase gave a Mukilteo homeowner this summer after pulling food and grease out of a kitchen line with our jetter: water and soap only. Here is what we keep finding, and why each one matters.
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1. Cooking grease, fat and oil
Grease is liquid in the pan and solid a few feet down the pipe. It cools, sticks to the pipe wall, and catches everything that comes after it, so the clog forms well past the sink where you cannot reach it.
In September 2026, at a house in Boulevard Bluffs in south Everett, Logan, Chase and Willie found a grease clog ten to fifteen feet from the kitchen sink. They broke it with a three-eighths-inch cable, ran water for about fifteen minutes and dump tested the trap.
A month later, in Port Gardner, Logan and Willie ran a cable down a kitchen line several times and it came back with no solids at all, just a heavy coat of grease. They confirmed they were reaching the four-inch main in the slab, so they were working the whole kitchen line, and it still would not drain. Their recommendation was a cleanout cut into the line in the basement just above the slab, and jetting from there, because grease built up along the whole pipe cannot be cleared mechanically.
Hot water does not fix this. It only moves the grease farther down the line before it sets.
2. Rice, pasta and other starches
Rice swells in water and packs together in a pipe. A little gets past every strainer, and over time it adds up.
In August 2026 a Mukilteo homeowner on the hill east of Old Town called because the double kitchen sink would not drain. Rice was the culprit, and it was not the first time. Willie and Logan ran our sewer machine through the cleanout, and once both basins were taking water, they did two running dump tests with both sides emptying at once. The line took everything, and the cleanout plug went back in.
A sink strainer that catches the last spoonful, and scraping the pot into the trash before it goes in the sink, keeps rice out of the pipe.
3. Big loads of food scraps, even with a disposal
A disposal grinds food, but the ground food still has to travel the whole kitchen line, and it settles in the same flat runs where grease collects. A disposal is for the scraps that slip off a rinsed plate, not for clearing a cutting board. On a house on septic, ground food also adds to what the tank has to hold, which our garbage disposal page covers.
When food and grease build up together along a long run, a cable only punches a hole through them. That is when the line needs a jetter, as on our Mukilteo drain cleaning page.
4. A dishwasher draining into a new disposer that still has its knockout plug
This one is not something you pour down the sink, but we find it often enough to include. A new disposer comes with a plug sealing the dishwasher inlet, and the plug has to be knocked out when the dishwasher hose is connected.
In October 2026, in Old Town Mukilteo, Willie and Logan found a disposer that had been installed six to nine months earlier with the plug still in. The dishwasher had been trying to drain against it the whole time. The discharge hose was gunked up, and the air gap on the sink had a failed gasket that let water out through the sink hole and into the cabinet. They replaced the air gap and the hose, knocked out the plug, and tested with three cancel-and-drain cycles.
If water appears in the cabinet when the dishwasher drains, or the dishwasher leaves water standing, have the connection checked.
5. What can go down
Water, dish soap, and the small bits that rinse off a scraped plate. That is the whole list for a kitchen drain. Toilets have their own list, in our post on what not to flush.
Kitchen Drain Questions
Is it OK to pour grease down the drain if I run hot water after it?
No. Hot water keeps grease liquid only for a few feet, and then it cools and sticks to the pipe farther down, where it is harder to reach. The grease clog we cleared in Boulevard Bluffs in September 2026 sat ten to fifteen feet from the sink. Let grease cool in a can and throw it out.
How can I tell my kitchen clog is grease?
You usually cannot from the sink, but the cable tells us. When a cable comes back coated in grease with no solids, as it did in a Port Gardner kitchen in October 2026, the pipe is lined with grease rather than blocked by one object. That kind of line needs jetting, not just a snake.
Why is water leaking into my sink cabinet when the dishwasher drains?
Often the air gap or the dishwasher's drain connection has failed. In Old Town Mukilteo in 2026, a disposer's knockout plug had never been removed, the discharge hose was clogged, and a failed air gap gasket let water into the cabinet. Replacing the air gap and hose and removing the plug fixed it.
My kitchen sink clogs every few months. What should I do?
Have the line cleaned properly once instead of cabled every few months. A recurring kitchen clog usually means grease along the whole pipe, and the fix is a cleanout where the line can be reached and a jetter to scour it, which is what our crew recommended in Port Gardner. Then keep grease out of the sink.
Our recommendation
Keep a can for grease, scrape plates into the trash or compost, use a strainer in every basin, and run the disposal only for what is left on a rinsed plate. If you have a new disposer, make sure the knockout was removed when the dishwasher was connected. And if the sink starts draining slowly, call before it stops: a slow kitchen line is a quick visit, while a line packed solid along its whole length is a jetting job.
Call Us When It Backs Up
Stollwerck Plumbing & Sewer clears kitchen drains across Mukilteo, Everett, Lynnwood, Edmonds and Whidbey Island, from our shop in Old Town Mukilteo. Our plumbers are licensed and on our own crew, and every job carries our one-year guarantee.
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