Fruit burned on bottom of saucepan

December 26, 2024 6:16 PM

I'm looking for personal successful experiences of removing burnt fruit on a saucepan.

I was gifted fruit (orange slices and cranberries) and cinnamon to simmer in a pot. Sadly, all the water evaporated and left burnt remnants on the bottom of my Revere Ware pot. I've searched for solutions but there are a lot of different suggestions. I'm hoping that someone in this community has been able to successfully remove burnt fruit from the bottom of a pot.

posted by Scout405 to Food & Drink (14 answers total)

I've had good luck with Bar Keeper's Friend (powdered oxalic acid) for getting stains from burning sugars out of stainless steel pans. It's generally cheap and low-risk to try, but don't leave it in direct contact with the pan for more than a couple of minutes.
posted by ayerarcturus at 6:34 PM on December 26 [7 favorites]

Seconding Barkeeper's Friend, but before applying, give the pot a few hours' soak in hot water to soften up any caramelized sugars.
posted by Bardolph at 6:38 PM on December 26 [6 favorites]

Toss some baking soda into the bottom of the pot. Pour in water - about 1/2 full.

Set on the stove for a gentle simmer ... don't wander off too far. As the mixture boils, you'll see the flakes of burnt on gunk float off. Use a wooden spoon to keep gently scraping it off. Sometimes it takes one or two cycles of baking soda/boiling of this to get most of it, then a gentle bar keepers friend or bon ami to clean up the rest.
posted by typetive at 6:39 PM on December 26 [25 favorites]

Simmer some water in it and don't let it go dry! This is usually enough if you're patient but at worst it will improve the situation for whatever you go for next.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:39 PM on December 26 [3 favorites]

Just to be sure, is this vintage stainless Revere Ware? Apparently there were some later nonstick things released under that brand.

If stainless, then all the suggestions above. And if you have no success, steel wool or the stainless "magic eraser"-type sponges (i.e. not the regular ones but special ones for stainless steel).
posted by trig at 6:41 PM on December 26 [1 favorite]

I have had success with severe scorching by simmering my pot with a couple inches or so of water and some dishwasher detergent (a tab, or just some). Once it’s simmering you can scrape at the scorchy bits with a wooden spatula.
posted by leahwrenn at 3:00 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

Assuming it’s stainless on the inside, an oven cleaner like Easy Off or Carbon Off will do the job.
posted by slkinsey at 4:05 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

My method is to begin with the baking soda trick (definitely do it at least twice) because it's easy and gentle. If that doesn't work, I move on to oven cleaner. And if that doesn't work, I scrub it with whatever abrasive material - because at this point it's either do that or have to throw away the pan.
posted by kitcat at 7:42 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

^ One clarification. The Easy Off is for removing a lot of burnt gunk. If the baking soda did the trick and there are only little bits of black left, then I would skip it and use the abrasive.
posted by kitcat at 7:45 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

If there is measurable physical stuff stuck on, I find stainless steel scrubbers better than steel wool. (Steel wool is very fine, stainless steel scrubbers are coarser.)
posted by needs more cowbell at 8:33 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

A visiting friend burned one of my old Revere pots and the copper came off. Watch out for this!
posted by mareli at 9:22 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

Oven cleaner. Then Metal Scrubbie + Barkeeper's Friend.
posted by theora55 at 9:37 AM on December 27

After you have most of it off, stainless steel and copper bottom Revere ware can go in the dishwasher and that does an amazing job of cleaning things off because it's immersed in hot water longer than most of us have the patience for. The bottoms of my stainless pots and pans always come out gleaming. Be careful all the water has dried off before using on the stove.
posted by drossdragon at 3:44 PM on December 27 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I have burnt many things on many pans, including while making jam, and gotten them clean, but the worst case and biggest cleaning triumph was the Cuisinart saucepan I grabbed from a neighbor’s trash can that had a carbonized layer of something on the bottom of it that was clearly so bad the original owner gave up and tossed it. (Burnt pan bonafides here: I grabbed it because the week before I forgot to turn the burner off my stove and exploded the disk bottom of a very expensive pan…something that I could not fix but I knew burnt on food was fixable and it was a similar size to the one I ruined so I felt like the pan was meant for me.) It took me days to get that pan clean, over the course of a month, but I say this to cheerlead that you can deal with any burnt on food on a stainless steel pan* as long as you KEEP AT IT.

I will list the steps I take for hopelessly burnt on food below and once again say this might be a process you repeat over and over! Don’t give up if you don’t succeed the first time. Keep chipping away at it and eventually more and more of the bottom of the pan while become clear and it gets easier from there. My steps are similar to what most answers are above but step 2 is the key and has not been mentioned.

Step 1: Put a few inches of water in a pan with a squirt of dishwashing soap. Dawn is excellent but any liquid dish soap is fine. Simmer this for anywhere from 15-60 minutes. Or for hours, if you are able to keep adding water to it. It shouldn’t foam that much but keep an eye on it. This really helps to loosen up the gunk for the next step.

Step 2: While the pan is still warm, scrape the bottom of the pan with the blunt edge of a metal utensil. You can leave the soapy water in the pan if you want, but I usually empty the water so I can really scrape with all my might. For the Trash Can Pan that I rescued, I used a big metal spatula from IKEA and scraped the hell out of the gunk at the bottom to scrape off as much as I could. There are specific dishwashing tools called pan scrapers that you can buy but they are almost always plastic and too wimpy — metal is really the ideal here because you’ll be scraping so hard you can break wood or plastic utensils. The sound can be horrible but this step is truly what will get you at least 90% of the way to clean. You are not going to hurt the pan if it’s uncoated stainless steel. Go nuts. Repeat step 1 when your arms get tired of scraping. When you finally are left with spots of burnt on crud but not a solid layer, proceed to the last step. Until then, keep scraping. This is a task you can literally chip away at over days, don’t assume one session will be enough.

Step 3: Wear dishwashing/plastic gloves for this step because the cleaning powder is not friendly to bare skin. Dry the pan and put a good sprinkle of Barkeeper’s Friend or Bon Ami powder (must be powder!) in the bottom, and sprinkle just a few drops of water in. Too much water will take away the abrasion that you need. Use a scrubby sponge or steel wool and work on getting the remaining small flecks of burnt on crap off the pan. Enlist your scraper from step 2 as needed. Repeating step 1 can be helpful here, just, of course, make sure the pan cools down enough.

For some people this might not be worth the effort. Your time might not be worth the cost of a new pan. But it is satisfying!

*If it’s coated in nonstick, skip step 2 and make sure whatever you use in step 3 says it is safe for nonstick pans, but it’s actually harder to get off badly burnt food on nonstick pans and I would be far more inclined to say it is not worth saving. Skipping step 2 applies to anodized aluminum too, but I don’t know if Reverewere has any anodized lines so assuming this doesn’t apply. And definitely not relevant to you but to other readers, if using my method on porcelain coated cast iron (e.g. Le Creuset), then either be extremely careful if scraping with metal utensils or go with plastic or wood because you can chip the enamel if you aren’t careful.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 5:29 PM on December 27 [1 favorite]