Knowing how to clean a burnt stainless steel pot with less stress and elbow grease is an important skill. This is because at one point or the other we all would forget that we left something cooking on the stovetop. Or due to one issue or the other, we get the food we are cooking burnt.
Some folks have burnt their stainless steel pot so bad that they feel that the only course of action is to trash the pot. But before you trash another stainless steel pot, check out the methods that we would share in this article.
Cleaning Agents
There are so many products that have been formulated to help you clean your cook and bake ware no matter how burnt on the food is.
Check out the product label and precaution to be taken before using it. For some products, you have to fully ventilate the house and wear gloves because of the fumes and chemicals.
There are also products that all you have to do is squirt it on the burnt pans or pot, leave it on for a while and then come back and scrub off the pot.
One word of caution is that you must always read the label/product description of the product before buying. This is especially true for folks with little kids or those with allergies.
Organic Ingredients and Methods
These days many people are so concerned about environmental safety and rightly so. So if you are looking for ways to clean your stainless steel pot without endangering the health of your family, we got you covered.
Here are different ways to clean your burnt pans and pots with organic products; most of these products you already have in your pantry.
Baking Soda and Organic Dish Washing Soap
- Pour some baking soda in the burnt pot and add a little water.
- Place the pot on low heat and let it come to a boil.
- Turn off the heat and leave it to sit so that the solution can cool off. You can also leave the pot to soak for some hours or overnight. The length of time you leave the solution on the pot depends on the intensity of the burn.
- Use a spatula to scrape off the burnt food, then apply a scouring pad to scrub off the burn stains.
- You might have to go a second round with a baking soda paste, dish soap and scouring pad.
Cream of Tartar Paste
- Make a paste of the cream of tartar and cover the burnt part of the pot.
- Leave it to soak overnight.
- Scrap off the burnt food with a spatula or wooden spoon.
- Scrub with a scrubbing pad.
Lime/Lemon and Salt
You can use either lemon or lime for this method.
- Cut the limes or lemons into two squeeze out the juice into the pot but still leave the lime or lemon in the pot.
- Pour salt into the pot and place the pot on low heat to let it simmer for a while.
- Remove the pot from the heat and let it sit a few hours or soak overnight.
- Then scrub away with your scrubbing pad.
- You might have to repeat the process for real tough stains.
You can also use only salt if you don’t have lime or lemons on hand. Bear in mind however that using this method to clean a burn pan or pot would require some elbow grease.
You can also employ this method using some white vinegar and water. Add a cup of water to the burnt pan or pot with half cup of white vinegar. Then follow steps stipulated above.
If the burnt food fouled up the atmosphere in your kitchen or entire house, you can leave the burnt pot open as it simmers on the stovetop. This would help to clear away the bad smell in the house.
Tomatoes (fresh, canned or ketchup)
- Pour a healthy quantity of tomatoes of any variety into the pot.
- Add water if you are using ketchup or a canned variety that doesn’t have much liquid. But if you are using a variety that has enough liquid, then you may not need to add water. The aim however is to have some liquid that would allow the pot to simmer.
- If you don’t want to put the pot on heat, you can let it soak overnight.
- Then clean accordingly.
Conclusion
We believe that you do not ever have to discard your stainless steel pot no matter how burnt up it gets. One of the above methods and ingredients/ products would surely work to bring it back to as good as new.
Before we end this review, we want to caution that these methods isn’t a one method fits all for all your cook and bake ware. There are some kind of burnt pots and pans that require different methods of cleaning. An example of this is a crockpot or slow cooker.
To find out how to clean those, you can check out our article on how to clean a crock pot.
It is also pertinent to note that stainless steel can be easily scratched if you use harsh sponge to scrub it. And the effect of this is that the rate at which it burns up your food would increase.
Finally, we leave you with this video :-
