Have you ever burnt something in your stainless steel pans? We recently switched from non-stick to stainless steel pans and the first time my husband used them for dinner, he burnt the pan – BAD. Now, I couldn’t really get tooooo angry because he was cooking dinner and that’s a pretty awesome thing. However, above is what the pan looked like after it had soaked for over 24 hours. Yikes! I started to question why I had chosen stainless steel for my new cookware.
By the way, here’s the pans I bought. I love them! That is, when they’re not burnt. 🙂
I’m happy to say that I did finally clean the pan but it took a little elbow grease. It’s not as easy as most share online. It took multiple steps and lots of patience. But what’s a girl to do? I have to have pans to cook in.
What you’ll need to clean your burnt stainless steel pan:
baking soda
Vinegar
water
Brillo pad (not pictured)
The first technique I tried was the boiling method. You put one cup of white vinegar and one cup of water in a pan. Bring it to a boil. The bubbles go to town on the burn, so I had hope that it would really work.
After letting it boil for awhile, I added two tablespoons of baking soda, let the water cool and then started to scrub.
And this is what it looked like. Bummer, right? It’s better but it was still bad.
The second technique I tried was a baking soda paste. I added two tablespoons of baking soda and little water to make a paste. I then went to town scrubbing it.
And while it was better, there was still some stubborn burnt on crust.
At this point, I was pretty frustrated. These “easy” methods were not doing the trick, but I wasn’t willing to give up. I decided to let the pan soak – and soak it did for another 24 hours.
I finally buckled and bought some Brillo pads and started to make some traction. After scrubbing and scrubbing and letting my husband take a turn since he was the reason the pan was burnt after all, we were able to get the pan clean!
Ta da! It’s not perfect but it’s much, much better. The moral of the story is buy a Brillo pad and see what it can do before you waste a few days with the other methods.
Have you ever burnt your pans really badly? What method did you try?
Comments & Reviews
Margo says
Thanks so much for the baking soda tip. That and lotsa elbow grease cleaned my pot up like new