After (several years after) I realized I was cooking with ancient Teflon pans, I replaced them with brand-new Teflonish no-stick pans, but to my surprise, stuff stuck to the pans. Consistently. I would fry up a piece of chicken—with a little olive oil, mind you, for flavor—and inevitably I would find black spots on the pan that would be very hard to wipe off. Soaking, elbow grease, overnight soaking, much more elbow grease—nothing worked. The black burnt-on spots remained.
But one day I decided that a couple of black spots shouldn’t affect frying up a few strips of bacon, so I did. Fried the strips good and proper, after which I had black spots plus the usual fried-bacon residue. To my astonishment, however, not only did the bacon residue come off the pan with a little light scouring but so did the stubborn burnt-on spots as well.
I repeated this phenomenon a few more times, and every result was identical. Stubborn burnt-on spots, cooked bacon, and voila—the black spots disappear. This makes no sense to me. Bacon grease as a solvent? I don’t get any of it: why the no-stick pans left me with eradicable burnt-food stains in the first place and why cooking bacon in the stained pan easily removed the spots. Do you have any ideas?
Bacon grease is an excellent but relatively slow solvent. It will clean scorch marks from all sorts of pans. It can take a while on a heavy deposit so after making bacon you can cover the pan and let it sit for hours or even days if needed. For non-stick pans it shouldn’t take long.
Are you familiar with the concept of seasoning a cast-iron pan? It sounds like what you did was similar to that. What sort of material was your non-stick pans?
It could be a stain that needs high temp to remove or just fat soluable . It’s possible that earlier cooks didn’t hit the ‘release temperature’ and was just crusted on. This is super common on outdoor grills.
Seasoning is a bit different. One thing it does is remove oil that may be soaked into the pores of the steel/iron during manufacturing (it won’t be nice cooking oil). Then it begins the process of building up baked on char on the pan that will produce a smooth non-stick surface in time. I’m not positive but I thing non-stick surfaces depend on a pore-less surface to prevent food from sticking. OTOH, who knows how the pans on sale at Target are made. I don’t use non-stick pans except for an electric skillet I have. In the past I’ve found the material will eventually come off. Once the surface is penetrated water and other material will make it’s way in and a lot of the non-stick coating begins to come off.
@GailForce, I understand you may prefer the convenience of non-stick pans. I stick to stainless steel or cast iron pans. Properly heated and greased before cooking won’t result in food sticking hard although it may require a soak and scrubbing occasionally.
Is that why they recommend bacon grease for cast-iron seasoning? Especially if you have food that won’t come off without a firm scrubbing that will hurt the seasoning?
Or does the bacon grease recommendation come from 1930s households where it was either that or lard?
The other thing is that you can delay damage by being careful not to scratch the non-stick coating, and then if you don’t buy expensive non-stick pans, replacement is not a big deal.
Don’t know but back back in the 30s lard was much more commonly used for cooking than today. Bacon grease should contain a fair amount of salt too, but not in the quantities used in some seasoning processes to absorb machine oils.
Yeah, you can keep them intact with care. But I don’t like plastic cooking utensils either. If you’re going to use non-stick surface though you might was well try to keep them in good shape.
Silicone spatulas are pretty good, and you can also use wooden tools. Plus I remember watching a YouTube video of Jacques Pepin making a traditional French omelet (example) and using a fork, tine-side up, to stir the egg mixture in a non-stick pan. (This was when I was trying to learn to make French omelets before giving up and remaining satisfied with being able to make American ones.)
Or you can invest in a high-end non-stick pan and just need a sponge to whisk away any remains. They last forever if you don’t scratch the surface. But never use cooking sprays on them.
Modern non-stick surfaces are nothing like the very fragile true Teflon of the 1960s. You may as well compare a 1960s Ford Mustang to a 2024 Ford Mustang.
If it wasn’t the typical dark Teflon color, it might have been a ceramic “non-stick” coating, which is generally not as non-stick as Teflon. That might account for why stuff stuck on it in the first place. And/or the existence of scratches, as mentioned already.
I clean my cast iron with salt and lard.
(I have one we use for gravy because that tends to make my pans stickedy. YMMV.)
Sprinkle salt heat pan low and lard til it’s soft. Scrub with a paper towel. Rinse. Dry completely. Inside and out. Water is your enemy here.
For the OP:
The non stick we have has never gotten mysterious black ghost spots. But I find anything with tomato reacts with non-stick. Unless you’re very careful it chars on the bottom inside of the pan. Scrubs off by hand or in the dishwasher it’s removed.
Scrubbing with really hard copper or steel scrubber may remove your non-stick coating. We use a smiley face Scrub Daddy. Best things ever. And they make me happy. Dawn has their own variation.
If bacon grease from cooking bacon works to remove it, I call that a lucky coincidence. And I’m gonna try it.
Bacon fat is lard. Any pork fat is lard. The equivalent bovine fat is called tallow. They have interesting differences, but you have to be really into to baking (or lubrication of wooden machinery) to be actually interested…
The best lard is sourced from around the intestines, whereas bacon fat is attached to meaty muscle, close to the skin.