How To Clean a Really Burnt Pot

Today I’m going to show you how to clean a really burnt pot. 

I’m not a bad cook. Really I’m not. I may not be the finest chef in the world, but I can cook. (At least my husband says so. ;))

Yesterday though, yesterday I made my most shameful cooking blunder to date. Yes, it was worse than that one time I forgot about the steak I was grilling and nearly set the porch on fire. 

So, just a little backstory here…

My mother gave me a pressure cooker for Christmas this past year. The instruction manual it came with claims that it is the most useful piece of cookware you will ever own. I would have to agree. (Although a well-seasoned cast iron skillet is a very close second.) Since I pulled it out of the box I have used that baby several times a week. Sometimes almost every day of the week.

I love my pressure cooker! Homemade refried beans, hummus, pot roast, turkey breast, stews, chicken, and… rice.

Brown rice.

I’ve cooked brown rice in my pressure cooker many, many times. This wasn’t something new to me.

Yesterday I set about making dinner. Grilled chicken, steamed green beans, and savory brown rice. Yum! I had my chicken coming along nicely, my green beans ready to go on the stove, and my rice in the pressure cooker, cooking away.

Maybe I had a mom moment, I don’t know what else to call it. When using a pressure cooker you absolutely must turn down the heat once it is pressurized. I totally forgot!

I did not turn down the heat. Instead, I let the rice cook inside the pressure cooker for twenty whole minutes… on high.

A burning smell began to fill my little kitchen. Then came the smoke, and for the life of me, I could not figure out where it was coming from. I thought perhaps I had spilled something on my electric burner, I kept looking for the source.

I did finally realize what the problem was, but by that time my rice was too far gone.

In a second I yanked the pressure cooker, now pouring smoke, off the stovetop. The pot was so hot, it immediately caught the hot pad I had slipped underneath on fire. I, now slightly panicked, slammed the pot back down on the stove and shook the hot pad. Once the fire was out, I carefully grabbed the handles of the pressure cooker and ran it outside. I set it on the wooden rail of my porch and watched it smoke, making sure that it didn’t catch something else on fire!

It was nearly thirty minutes later when there was no more smoke escaping the lid. The pressure button still indicated the pot was pressurized, so I left it outside until morning.

How I wished I took a photo of the rice in the pot for you all to see. It was bad folks! Black. All burnt and black and yucky. There is no telling how long it had sat there and dry-boiled.

Here is a what it looked like after I scraped out most the charbroiled remains of the rice. I was left with all sorts of nastiness. Just look at it!

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How to clean a really burnt pot

Ew.

I knew that no normal wash would get this puppy cleaned, and I certainly didn’t want to sit there and scrub at it for a long time either. Am I the only one who has ever done this? Hopefully not! If you have a pot that resembles mine, do not despair! There is hope! I followed these super simple steps to get my pot clean once again. 

How to Clean A Really Burnt Pot:

  1. Cover the bottom of your pot with Baking Soda and give it a quick scrub to remove most of the larger burnt particles of food. Don’t worry about trying to clean the pot all in this first step, simply remove most of the charcoal. 😉 (You won’t need to use as much Baking Soda as I did in the photo… I went a little Baking Soda crazy!)

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    How to clean a really burnt pot
  2. Pour in two cups of vinegar, along with enough hot water to cover all of the burnt areas. Bring it to a boil, then turn it off and let that soak for two hours. (I did not bring the vinegar to a boil in my case because the smokey smell was too strong for me.)

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    Clean a really burnt pot
  3. Pour out the vinegar and water. The burnt residue should be loose enough to scrape off. Spend about a minute or so scraping as much off as you can.
  4. Add just enough baking soda to cover the bottom of the pot and give your pot a final scrub. There is just no way to completely avoid a little elbow-grease guys, I’m sorry! This method definitely helps cut down the scrubbing time though!

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    Clean a really burnt pot
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Clean a really burnt pot

There you go! This is what it looked like at the end.

As you can see there is still some staining in the bottom of the pot. I hate to say it, but there really is no way to restore the pot completely back to the shiny stainless steel it once was. You will be able to get it completely clean, but you may be left with some discoloring. No worries, it is totally safe to continue using.

Stainless steel is generally accepted as a perfectly safe piece of cookware, even with some discoloration. So take heart! Your pot may not be as new looking as it once was, but there is no need to throw it away.

There is some debate on how safe the non-stick coating on pots and pans is. Personally, if I had burnt a non-stick pot that bad, I would just throw it away and not risk potentially allowing harmful chemicals in my food.

I tend to get super distracted all the time, (thanks, right brain!)

If you are like me at all, you’ll want to focus just on your cooking when you are cooking. 😉

I was doing laundry and feeding my Little when the whole rice fiasco went down.

Hopefully, you all never have anything looking as bad as I did, but if you happen to do so, I hope this helps you clean out your pot without too much trouble.

Happy Cooking!

~N

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