Cooking is an activity that demands patience and focus, and we don’t always have plenty of either. It’s all too common to leave a stew simmering on the stove, start doing other tasks around the house, and forget about it until you begin to smell something burning.
But the worst part isn’t the food that ends up ruined, it’s the state of the pot itself. When you see that your new, shiny pressure cooker looks like a crematorium and there’s no way to scrub the baked-on food off, it’s hardly comforting to think that this could happen to anyone.
If after loading the pot or pan into the dishwasher on the highest setting and stubbornly scrubbing with detergent you still have a blackened layer, it’s time to try more aggressive methods.
There are several ways to recover our cookware from disaster. Perhaps the most traditional is to clean them with vinegar, pouring it into the pot or pan and bringing it to a boil. The acetic acid will soften the organic residues, as well as remove the burnt smell. But this method is insufficient when we’re dealing with more serious carbonization.
That’s when you have to reach for the heavy artillery.
Bleach is a godsend
The best way to clean burnt-on residue from a pot is to turn to bleach. The method is similar to the vinegar one, but it makes your kitchen smell like a swimming pool. You simply cover the scorched area of the pot with water and add a small splash of bleach, bring it to a boil and let it work for about three minutes until the black layer disappears. Let the water cool and scrub the remains with a soft scouring pad. It will come out looking as good as new.
As explained to DAP by chemistry PhD Eduardo Guisasola, a researcher at Ardena, “heating the bleach helps accelerate the degradation (oxidation) of the burnt food residues (organic matter). By oxidizing the organic matter you form new chemical compounds that are water-soluble and can therefore be removed by rinsing the pan.”
In fact, as Guisasola notes, if we did not heat the bleach we would obtain the same result, but more slowly. In fact, heating the bleach causes its main chemical compound (hypochlorite, diluted to 5–10% in basic/alkaline water) to decompose and lose its cleaning action. But the degradation of bleach happens more slowly than its reaction with the organic matter, and that is why the pan gets cleaned.
“If you kept heating the bleach for a long while and then added it to the pan, you’d just be giving the burnt bottom a warm bath,” notes Guisasola. And this is why it’s also not recommended to use hot water with bleach to clean the floor either.
Now, if you’re going to clean your pot with bleach, don’t forget to wear gloves at all times and ventilate the kitchen very well. The fumes released by bleach are toxic. Remember, of course, to scrub the pot thoroughly with soap before using it again. And next time, take a little more care.