Help me save my pan!

In My Humble Opinion
1

I made dinner last night in my nice newish large aluminum pan, and due to circumstances beyond my control (mainly me not paying attention) it has now become encrusted with a rather thick layer of carbon made from really well caramelized sugar. Soaking it overnight in soapy water hasn’t made a dent in it. I thought of trying vinegar or baking soda (not at the same time!), but I figured if I asked for advice here, I could put off tackling it for a while and go back to bed.

Any ideas? Someone must have had this problem before…

2

Whenever I have a oogy pan, I put it back on the stove, fill with water, throw in a handful of baking soda, and cook it up. Let it simmer for a while. I have never yet had a pan where the gunk didn’t just come off afterward with an easy scrubbing.

3

The tip I’ve heard for this is to mix a paste of vinegar and cream of tartar, apply that to the pan (one website says to use a cotton ball for this), let it sit for 5-10 minutes, then wash it normally in hot, soapy water.

4

Baking soda is not good for aluminium. It pits it.

Try boiling vinegar in it.

5

Well, it took some doing, and I ended up alternating between baking soda AND vinegar, then finally scraping with my thumbnail, but it’s clean now. Woo! Thanks.

6

Bead-blasting cabinet. It works great on uncoated cookware you just can’t replace. I refurbished a 90 year old iron skillet that had massive rust problems. A plain aluminum pan should be no problem. It worked so well, I grabbed all my other old yellowed aluminum and steel pans and made them look almost new.

7

Automatic dishwashing powder can work miracles. Sprinkle it on and then dribble just enough water to make a paste. Don’t touch it - it will burn you! But it’s alkaline (acidic? I always mix the two up.) that it does a much better job of nibbling away gunk than dishsoap for handwashing dishes. Let it sit for an hour and then clean the pan.

8

You don’t need to put anything in the pan except water. Just toss that on the stove and boil it.

9

I’ve found this works great for cast orn, but not so great for other metals.

10

Cast orn? :smack: Time for me to go back to bed.

Cast iron, of course!

11

Not for this particular problem, but in the case of cast iron skillets that have gotten really gross, Cook’s Illustrated just tested the “put it through the self-cleaning cycle in your oven” solution (the traditional one is to put it in a campfire and let it burn out) and it worked like a charm. Reseason after.

12

I wonder if Coke would work. I know it strips the wax off my floor if I happen to spill some.

13

The “Old School” at home version of this treatment was (is?) to put the skillet (cast iron only) in the hot coals in your fireplace. Works great. Yes, re-season.
Peace,
mangeorge

14

Add a little dish soap and it works pretty well on aluminum too.

15

In similar situations with stainless steel and cast iron, I’ve used oven cleaner spray. It’s noxious, but it dissolves burnt residues nicely. I don’t think it would damage aluminum, but it might leave the metal with a greyish cast.

I’m glad you were able to figure out an alternate route, though.

16

Be aware that Teflon gives off a seriously poisonous gas above a certain temp, do not do this with teflon!

We used the vinegar method to good effect, tho.

17

Save your thumbnail and get one of these cheap little plastic pan scrapers. They do an amazing job getting stuff de-stuck from pans and don’t scrape.

It wouldn’t have gotten the sugar off, but once you softened it with any of the useful methods described above, it would have scraped it all right off.

Note that this is different than a big plastic icing spatula. This is smaller than a playing card and very rigid.