Yesterday afternoon I put the tea kettle on to make some tea. It’s a nice $100 stainless steel All-Clad, which we bought several years ago after going through a series of cheap kettles. For some stupid reason instead of waiting for the water to boil like I usually do, I went back downstairs to my office in the basement, got distracted by work, and completely forgot about the kettle. My wife had been out running errands and returned a couple hours later after picking up the grandkids from school. I came upstairs and – oh crap the kettle is still on! It had boiled dry and bottom of the kettle (inside and out) is all blackened.
Can this kettle be salvaged or do I just need to suck it up and buy a new one?
Find a product called “Barkeepers Friend” and it might be the answer. It is a cleaning product designed specifically for stainless steel. It contains, among other ingredients, oxalic acid. If you have other stainless steel cookware, or rust stains on any of your sinks or fixtures, you need this stuff anyway. It is great.
The outside is easy, as using Barkeepers Friend with a wet cloth will likely restore the surface to it’s original luster. For the inside, I’d soak it in some for short periods, swirling it around, and dumping out. It might several attempts, but it will remove the blackened surface. Keep the soaking periods brief, a half-hour or less.
Thanks - I think my wife has some Barkeeper’s Friend. I will check with her.
I guess my biggest concern was the metal getting overheated. We used to have a set of those copper-bottomed Revereware pans and I remember hearing or reading that if they boiled dry you were not supposed to use them after that - it did something to the metal that made it not food-safe. So I wasn’t sure if that applied to stainless steel as well.
Put some baking soda in there, add some water (more than enough to cover the burned area), bring it to a simmer, while it’s simmering add some more baking soda (it’ll foam up), let it simmer for a bit longer. Pour out what will now probably be some very blackened water; scrub the remaining black in the pot with whatever you’d usually scrub such a pot with. Repeat if necessary.
That presumes it’s not actually burned through. If it is, it’s had it.
– The thing about the copper-bottomed pans, as I understand it (I might be wrong), is that the copper itself isn’t food safe, at least for some foods, because while a tiny bit of copper is an essential nutrient, too much of it is toxic. So if the inner liner has burned off the copper and exposed it, the pan’s not food safe any longer.
They are slower on 110v, but they’re still loads faster than putting a kettle on the stove. At least, on an electric stove. We have a decades old Russell Hobbs electric kettle and it is so quick compared to any other method of boiling water. And yeah, it turns itself off when the water boils.
I tried Barkeeper’s Friend and also heating water + white vinegar + baking soda but it’s still looking pretty scorched inside and out. I may give it one more shot over the weekend but we’re not very hopeful.
My wife just wants to order a new one from Bed Bath and Beyond - she’s got a coupon for $20 off.
I meant baking soda alone, not with vinegar. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The vinegar will cancel out the baking soda – you’ll get a brief fizz, but not the effect of the longer simmer.
IME the baking soda trick works best done fairly close to right away; though it might be worth one more try.
My wife put one of my Calphalon Tri-Ply pots on a stove element that was known to ‘run away’ (I managed to fix it, based on recommendations here) and burned it. I was able to clean out the blackness with Barkeeper’s Friend… though the bottom has coil-shaped warps.
BKF required a bit of souring. Not sure how you’d do that inside of a tea kettle.