Comments on: How to Treat Burned Pots and Pans

on 5/1/2008 From lizrae. I recently burned stew in my pressure cooker. I cleaned it successfully but could not get rid of the smell of burned food, which seemed to be in the metal. I tried everything,soaks, sprays, traditional tips and leaving it with the lid off for days. Nothing worked and I had to throw it out and buy a new one. Any ideas in case it happens again?

on 3/9/2008 This is the way my mom always did it - and I had to go into my memory bank today as "yep" I burnt not just one but 2 pans earlier. Put some pastina in a small pan to cook up so that when the tomato soup was done, I would add that and I forgot until I could smell the pasta burning (sigh). So much for a good hot lunch !!!

on 1/31/2008 I am the queen of burn, I seem to always have something stuck to my pots & pans, I did see a new product & ordered a box, IT WORKS, I found this product called Magic Sheets it is made just for me the queen of burn, I couldnt believe how fast I get my pots & pans clean without scrubbing it is great. The best thing is it is nontoxic unlike my cooking or I should say burning.

on 9/7/2007 I'm lucky I didn't start a kitchen fire. I had the rice on high and then got a phonecall. Anyway the pan was crusted with black. I got it all of the charred rice remains off with 2 treatments of oven cleaning spray and a SOS pad. Yeah for chemicals!

on 5/24/2007 How the heck do I get off a plastic garbage bag that was burnt on my pan? Yes I sat the pan on the bag Yikes....

on 5/24/2007 How the heck do I get off a plastic bag that was burnt on the borrom of my pan? Yes I sat a hot pan on a garbege bag by mistake YUK

on 5/21/2007 I tried a couple of cups of vinegar, boiled for a few minutes. Worked great.

on 4/24/2007 I recently need to try the suggested remedy using Hydrogen Peroxide. It is a miracle worker extraordinaire. I had a very badly burnt sauce pan (Chai Tea, left on the stovetop all night long!), and after following directions from "dearmom" the entire blackened mess peeled away without effort. The only thing I have to add it that initially I wasn't sure that it would work (brief soaking of 20 minutes, and I couldn't detect any change), but simply poured the HP off, and let it sit on the counter, the next day it went through the dishwasher and came out absolutely clean. Like I said, a miracle!

on 10/28/2006 Hi all, I hope this may help someone. I just for the first time in over 10 years let one of my stainless steel pots burn while heating some frozen stew that I had. I put it on the stove and got on the o’l computer and forgot about it. I did have it on very low heat but left it covered for about 2 hours until I smelled it and knew that I was in trouble. When I got to the pot needless to say I had a mess on my hands. My sister gave me a recipe to clean pots and pans a couple of years ago but like everything else I put up for safe keeping I don’t know where I put it. Now for the good part, what I did was to scar the pan the best I could but I still hade a long way to go. Although no one told me I went to the medicine cabinet and took out a small amount of (HYDROGEN PEROXIDE SOLUTION) and poured the remaining amount into the pot. All I had was just barely enough to cover the bottom. Than I went to my computer to see if I could find my instructions that my sister had given me at which case I did not find. I than went to Google to do a search for help on cleaning burned pots and came up with this site and read all of the information that others had posted as well as a couple of other sites. After about 20 minutes I thought that I would go back to the sink and see what I could do and to my very happy surprise when I did I found that the HYDROGE PEROXIDE had already done the job. With just a very little rubbing with a sponge that has the smooth side as well as the rough side took off all of the burn with no hassle. I only found this out by accident and thought that I would pass it on to everyone and hope that you have the same good luck as I did because it sure did not hurt my pan at all and I do have some expensive pots and pans. Hydrogen Peroxide will do a lot of things from teeth whitening to mixing in bath water and taking care of small cuts and such. If you get canker sores in your mouth from time to time you can prevent this also by washing your mouth out with it but I never would have dreamed that it would help to clean a burned pot like it did, so don’t reject this information as YEA RIGHT! Give it a try for yourself & Like I said I did try to clean the pot first and got what I could and than I thought that I would give this a try just by chance that it may work while I went to find something that would work just to find out that it in fact did work. If I had of tried it first I may not have had to even try to clean it before using it but on that I don’t know. I do know that the HD that I had on hand is old so I would think a fresh bottle would have worked even faster and I get mine at the dollar store at 2 16 FL. OZ. for a 1.00. I only had to use a very small amount because that was all I had on hand at which case only one time. Good luck and if it does for you what it did for me please let others know and to be fair with others if it does not than let them know that also. Maybe I just got lucky. Happy cooking and watch those pots & pans.
PS: I only tried this once & it was on Stainless Steel. I don’t know if it will work on all metal or not. Please excuse my spelling and grammar. I still have trouble spelling my own name and my spell checker doesn’t know what to do with me :=)

on 8/8/2006 After steaming corn without enough water in the pot, the bottom was black. Even a razor could not scrape it off. I soaked the pot in liquid dishwasher detergent with just a little bit of water. I boiled the liquid and just let it sit on the stove for several hours. I was then able to scrape off all of the black.

on 7/30/2006 Spray on a little oven cleaner. Then put the pot in a plastic bag for 30 minutes or so. Wash well with dish-soapy water and rinse.

on 3/7/2006 We burnt apricot mix onto the bottom of the jam pan. After trying everything to get it off, I used my oxy-acetylene torch on a wide flame to heat the outside of the pan base. Some of the burnt jam flaked off. Then I heated the burnt jam directly, followed by a paint scraper to gently remove the bulk of the mess. Finally sanding with wire wool left a new surface.

on 2/25/2006 I took the pan out to the workshop and used an oxy torch (wide flame on the cutting head) on the bottom which loosened some of the carbon on the inside. Then I scraped the flakes off with a wooden spatula. What was left was burnt on hard, so I heated it directly with the oxy flame (700 C). This started to oxidize the carbon. Then I scraped the carbon off gently with a paint scraper, finally finishing with a fine wire wool.

Result - a new finish in 10 minutes. No scratches, no discoloration.

on 1/13/2006 Carbon Off cleaner is wonderful. It is made by Discovery products in Washington state and comes in an aerosol can priced at about $12.00.
I have a new Bosch Stainless Range with stainless on the cooktop. I have tried many things to remove cooked on stains from around the burner without scratching the surface. Do not use anything that contains ammonia on the stainless because it will damage it.

I purchased the Carbon Off cleaner from a local restaurant supply and sprayed it on the cooktop, let it set overnight and the next morning I was able to wipe the cooktop 100% totally and completely clean. I rinsed it down with a wet cloth and dried it and it looks just like new. The information on the can indicates this product can be used for many different metals.

on 11/30/2005 I have never seen anything work like this product. After trying almost all of these tips with limited success on a very scorched pan, I heard about Bar Keepers Friend. It comes in a powder or liquid form in the cleaners section of your supermarket with the other specialty cleaners. Amazing stuff and worth its weight in gold. Should be called Barkeepers BEST Friend!!