Citric Acid Isn’t a Dishwasher Miracle, but It’s Worth Trying

To put citric acid to the test, I sent bottles of Lemi Shine to five Wirecutter colleagues who had reported that their dishwashers regularly struggled with stuck-on food or hazy residues. Lemi Shine has overwhelmingly positive reviews on Amazon, as it currently has an overall buyer rating of 4.8 stars (out of five) across more than 13,000 reviews, which is a phenomenal rating for any product.

Unfortunately, none of my colleagues noticed a change in the cleanliness of their dishes when they added Lemi Shine to their dishwashers, whether it was dispensed during pre-wash or the main portion of the wash cycle. That’s disappointing, but not entirely surprising. Hard water is just one of several reasons why a dishwasher could be struggling.

“Glassware still tends to have that wet-dog smell that I was hoping would go away with this addition,” said cleaning writer Caroline Mullen, who lives in the soft-water paradise of New York City. My educated guess: It’s probably the dirt-cheap GE dishwasher that came with her apartment. She might also need to do some maintenance, or switch to a higher-performing detergent.

Smart-home writer Rachel Cericola also has soft water — and a much better dishwasher, a former Wirecutter pick made by Whirlpool. Lemi Shine still didn’t help her machine remove the bits of food that occasionally get left behind on her dishes. I suspect that the culprit is her off-brand detergent.

Even if you’re sure that you live in a hard-water area, citric acid isn’t always a slam dunk — as my colleagues in Los Angeles discovered. Writer Alexander Aciman, who was living in Los Angeles at the time of testing, saw no benefit: “Food simply doesn’t get rinsed off in this dishwasher,” a bottom-of-the-line Amana machine.

“I had really high hopes for this, because LA has hard water,” said travel and outdoors editor Ria Misra. “Unfortunately I didn’t really see any difference, good or bad.” She has a decent Whirlpool dishwasher and uses a good detergent and rinse aid, but she found that even with the citric acid additive, some dishes still had a cloudy residue. This one has me stumped — maybe her dishwasher is just worn out.

So citric acid won’t always help get your dishes noticeably cleaner. But there’s no downside to trying it out once or twice. It will help break up any mineral scale that might have built up inside your machine, which could subtly boost your appliance’s performance and prolong its lifespan. It’s worth a shot.

This article was edited by Katie Okamoto and Megan Beauchamp.