Burnt Offerings

April 16, 2007 4:41 AM

Whoops! I've temporarily (I hope) lost my cooking mojo - how do I remove the carbon from my saucepans?

So, one night I was steaming rice via the absorbtion method (bring rice & water to the boil and then turn down with the lid on to finish off). Somehow I managed to forget that I was cooking anything and the result was a layer of carbonised rice that was nearly impossibly to pry off the pan.

I've tried everything in my cleaning cupboard and not even steel wool can shift the residue. My pans are made from good quality stainless steel. How do I shift the carbon? Draino? Acid?

I've since repeated this cooking disaster (this time with a chicken tagine) which, although not quite as bad (thanks to the smoke detector) is still going to be a complete bitch to clean.

Help!

posted by ninazer0 to home & garden (21 comments total)

Soak it. And soak it for a bit longer. Then try again.

You can also buy specialist carbon removers - this for example but there are many others.
posted by edd at 4:46 AM on April 16, 2007

One thing that helps is heating the pot up with soapy water. As it begins to bubble, scrape a scrubbie or steel wool along the bottom of the pot with a long spoon. Then, soak and soak and soak some more.

You will not be able to get all of the carbon off. However, once most of it is off it won't show up in your food and will gradually disappear.
posted by Deathalicious at 4:54 AM on April 16, 2007

I have also found that scraping at it with a hard metal spoon does wonders. You may scrape a little of the metal off but it won't affect the longevity of the pot.
posted by Deathalicious at 4:55 AM on April 16, 2007

Wow - you guys are quick off the mark! Unfortunately, I have tried the soaking, the heating with soapy water and the scraping with spoons. Of these, only the scraping with a spoon shifts anything but the tiniest amount only. It will take me until the heat death of the universe to clean this pot with a spoon.

I don't need to clean the pot to prevent the carbon turning up in the food - this is way too solid for that. I need to clean the pan because now other stuff seems drawn to stick on the already stuck stuff (what - temperature differential or something?).

The carbon-off stuff looks perfect, but I have a sneaking suspicious it might not be available here (Australia).
posted by ninazer0 at 5:20 AM on April 16, 2007

Ok, I recently did this with a brand new saucepan. I thought I was going to have to throw it out, but I did end up getting the carbon off.

What I did was to keep soaking it, and every day clean it with steel wool. Each day a little bit came off, and the more that came off, the better the soaking worked. It took me about a week, but I was able to remove 98% of the black stuff that way.

It can seem like soaking isn't doing anything, but sometimes you need to soak it for a long time to see any results.
posted by dweingart at 5:43 AM on April 16, 2007

Try making a thick paste of bicarbonate of soda and a little bit of water, and leaving it to sit on the carbon overnight. You'll still have to scrub, but it will make it marginally easier. It will only take the top layer off - you'll need to reapply several times.

You can get stainless steel cleaner in Australia - my mother used to use it, though I've never tried it.
posted by une_heure_pleine at 6:07 AM on April 16, 2007

I used soft scrub and a somewhat abrasive scouring pad when I had this problem. I ended up with tiny scratch swirls all over, but I eventually got all of the garbage off of the bottom of the pan. ymmv.
posted by mikeh at 7:09 AM on April 16, 2007

My aunt swears by Greased Lightning . I scortched a batch of chili pretty badly in the bottom of my pressure cooker, and soaking it in this, plus scrubbing it with a scotch-brite scrubbie, took care of it pretty easily. I can't tell if it's available in Australia, though. (I can buy it at places like Target, but Target's Australia site was uninformative, as in no search function.)
posted by leahwrenn at 7:15 AM on April 16, 2007

My mamma would reccommend any and all of the cleaners mentioned above, plus a liberal application of elbow grease. Meaning, you're gonna have to scrub at the pot for what seems like forever, no matter what cleaner you use.
posted by muddgirl at 7:36 AM on April 16, 2007

Get some biological washing powder, in some warm-to-hot water, and leave it overnight in the pan. Must be bio, not non-bio.

If that doesn't work, get some household ammonia. Very nasty stuff. Follow the instructions on the bottle to the letter, but basically sprinkle some on the burnt bit, put it in a bag, and leave it for a day or two.
posted by Solomon at 8:05 AM on April 16, 2007

This has happened to me in the past, and I've simply filled the pot three-quarters full of water and added anywhere from 250 ml to 500 ml baking soda. Then I sit the pot on the stove, bring the water up to a simmer, and let the baking soda do it's wonders. You will probably have to top the water off as it evaporates, but the carbon should eventually flake off. You might want to scrub the pot a couple times and refill it with fresh baking soda and water, but it will eventually come clean and sparkly. I've tried this method many times and it's never failed me. It also works to brighten the inside coating on ceramic pots.
posted by Felicity Rilke at 8:12 AM on April 16, 2007

Soak and a scrub will often work, particularly if it isn't burnt on too hard. Plastic scrubbies (the green ones) are the softest types and will not damage even the softest tin pans. For stainless, you can use a copper scrubbie. These work very well on pots and pans with a bit of elbow grease.

For tough residues on metal, especially stainless steel, you can use lye-based oven cleaner with care. Spray-on, but use for 1/3 or 1/2 the time recommended. Use gloves, vet well, etc...
posted by bonehead at 8:58 AM on April 16, 2007

the ladies on this show boiled plain old Coca-Cola in the blackened pan for a few minutes and it appeared to do the trick.
posted by killy willy at 9:01 AM on April 16, 2007

BTW, acids, like vinegar and lemon juice, are the wrong chemistry for carbon residues. You want to use bases, not acids. Mild bases are soaps, moderate bases are detergents, harsh bases are lye and draino. Don't use draino on pots---it's far too strong.
posted by bonehead at 9:02 AM on April 16, 2007

I would also recommend a good cooking timer that you can take with you when you walk away from the stove to remind you to come back.

This Polder timer has saved my bacon more times than I can count (but luckily, it does, so I don't have to).
posted by Caviar at 9:28 AM on April 16, 2007

Similar question on Chowhound.

Try their suggestion of dishwasher detergent paste, since it sounds pretty easy.

But if you can get a hold of PBW, that stuff is miraculous.
posted by IvyMike at 9:51 AM on April 16, 2007

I've had great success with a wire brush attachment on an electric drill.
posted by TiredStarling at 10:09 AM on April 16, 2007

If you are going to try the baking soda slurry approach, I'd also throw in a handful of uncooked long grain rice to act as an abrasive. You can use sand, or fishtank gravel, instead, but you have to be pretty careful not to put those down your drain.
posted by janell at 10:31 AM on April 16, 2007

GUMPTION

your in Australia so I can tell you it's at the supermarket cleaning isle white tub yellow lid 500g so same size as butter but it's round. It's smaller than the other products all around it and sometimes they hide at the back of the top shelf!! It's around $4 ($3.60-$4.30) NON TOXIC It is the most incredible tremendous stuff ever I'm going to marry it I swear!! You'll never look back.

It gets fake tan off my hands, cleans silver, tupperware, sneakers, rust, my floors with a broom rather than a mop. You name it things look brand new details on things you've owned forever but never noticed before. Like I said I'm going to marry that stuff. I've done that and worse to pots pans and those sins just disappeared like they never happened so I PROMISE you it will get it back to new. Fuck mojo you'll have GUMPTION!
posted by mu~ha~ha~ha~har at 8:32 PM on April 16, 2007

Hot ammonia, all the way. I used it to get carbonized gunk off of a stovetop that had been cooking it on to itself for about 5 years. Soak a rag in it and drape it over the carbonized spot if you can't get the pot in the sink. Let it soak for a little while. Then scrub at it with a moist rag and a baking soda paste.
posted by Foam Pants at 10:38 PM on April 16, 2007

I have used a stainless steel cleaner, and a hell of a lot of elbow grease in a similar situation. If the carbon is speckly, use an abrasive stainless steel cleaner and scrub at it with a cloth over the end of a single finer, to increase the localised pressure. Worked for me but I had to scrub the hell out of it.
posted by tomble at 6:22 AM on April 17, 2007