CLEANING

How to clean a burnt pot with 3 simple ingredients

September 15, 2018

No matter how great a cook you are, you will likely come across a burnt pot. You let it sit and soak overnight but the next day, that burnt on food is just not coming off….

Last Sunday, I was cooking in my kitchen (as I tend to do most Sundays). I had chili in the crockpot and spaghetti sauce on the cooktop. Somehow the burner on the cooktop was turned up and next thing you know, burnt sauce! I was able to salvage the sauce but the bottom of my pot was a mess. I did the typical soaking overnight and managed to get most of the mess off of the bottom but there was still some burnt residue.

My Burnt Pot (Before):

As you can see, my husband was scraping the bottom to try and get the mess off of the bottom of the pot but it was pretty stuck.

So what did I use to save my burnt pot?

I know that vinegar and baking soda are natural products often used for cleaning and I also saw a video on Rachel Ray about removing burnt on food with aluminum foil. I have all 3 of those items in my home – so I thought I would give it a try!

I first tried the balled up aluminum (just like you see in the video) it worked a bit but not as easily as it did in the show. My burnt on mess was a bit damp and I wonder if that was a factor (in the video it appears that it is completely dry).

So I moved onto the next plan:

Mix about 1/4 cup of white vinegar to my pot and about 3 cups of water. (I didn’t measure precisely, that’s why I’m saying about).
Bring the mixture to the stove top and let it to a boil for about 5-7 minutes.
Once boiled for 5-7 minutes, return the pot back to the sink (carefully, it’s hot!) and add about a table spoon of baking soda.

And just like science class, it bubbles up like those mini volcanoes we built in class. I could see some of the burnt pieces rise to the top of my water. I let the water cool off to a point that it wasn’t scorching hot and I used my kitchen brush to clean off the burnt bits. With minimal effort, most of it came off. The little stubborn bits……I used that balled up aluminum and it worked like a charm!