Cleaning The Burnt Gunk Off A Stainless Steel Pan

Last week after cleaning the glass baking dishes my husband asked me to try cleaning his stainless steel pans. He does most of the cooking in our home. He loves it and finds it relaxing after long days at work and school.

The other day he tried a frozen Chinese dinner and cooked it according to the instructions. Paul said while he was cooking it, he was not sure the instructions were going to work out and he was right. The bottom of the pan is covered in black burned on gunk. Just terrible! This was about two weeks ago and Paul has been soaking the pan and washing it every time he has done the dishes {that is right ladies...he cooks and does the dishes!!!}.

We have two pans, the first is a cheap one we got when we were first married, the other is part of a better set  of pots and pans my parents got us.

Here is what you need

Here is the first one. See....the pan is in bad shape. I was not kidding you.

First thing I went ahead and tried the same technique I used on the glass baking dishes. It worked ok on the underneath part of the pan but it had hardly touched the stuff on the inside. When Paul came in the kitchen and saw me going at this pan he told me that the only thing he found that was working was to take a butter knife and scrape it. That would take forever and make my skin crawl every time it scraped on the pan.

Then I remembered we had a Lysol Scrubber Sponge, this has a really tough scrubber on one side. A simple switch of the sponges and we were in business. My back was not going to let me stand much longer so Paul went to town with the sponge and baking soda.

Pan number two: As a side note my parents are so funny. They were on this kick of watching Americas Test Kitchen and they recommended a brand of pans. I can not remember all the reasons my parents said these were on the top of the list but they were and so my parents wanted to get all of their married kids a set. This particular set was on sale and going to be discontinued because a new style was coming out so my parents were on the hunt. They went to 5 different stores to get four sets. Once the first gift was opened on Christmas morning, the rest of us knew what we were getting!!

The dishes clean up really nice but this one {the one Paul uses the most} is starting to get some build up on the outside where grease has spilled over then been cooked on the outside. Once we pulled out the scrubber sponge this one started to clean up really well which Paul was happy to see, after all, it is his favorite pan.

I am not going to write out all the steps, just hope over to the instructions for cleaning a glass baking dish and follow that. Here are a couple of tips for cleaning the stainless steel pans.

• Use a scrubber sponge along with the baking soda
• Scrub in a circular motion, it makes a huge difference instead of just going back and forth

We were working against nap time and loosing the sun to take some photos, so the pans are not done yet but one more soak and scrub during nap time and they will look like new!

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