How to Clean Burned Oil from a Pan

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I burned my veggie burger and in doing so sealed an enamel-like coating of oil onto my stainless steel pan.

Uh oh.

The oil wasn't budging with regular dish detergent and sponge action. I dusted the pan with baking soda then sprayed it with water to create a paste that I left to dry overnight. Baking soda paste gets grime build up off of ovens, so I figured it should also work on my pan. Right?

fingers crossed.

Wrong. When I tried scrubbing the pan the next day, I still made very little progress. I should note that the scouring pad on my two week old dish sponge is basically non-existent. (The plant-based scrubbers on biodegradable sponges don't hold up too well.) I'm pretty sure a better scrubber would have yielded better results.

I tried heating water in the pan along with some baking soda before scrubbing again. No change. I possibly made things worse because I got distracted and let the water boil for a pretty long time. The pan was smoking again. Argh!

I scrubbed the pan with my scrappy sponge, some Bon Ami powder cleanser, and lots of elbow grease. I did this for about three minutes, then left to go grocery shopping, leaving the damp Bon Ami paste to dry on the pan until after dinner. Four hours later I scrubbed some more, probably a solid five minutes, et voila...

Thanks Bon Ami!

It's about 98% perfect. The few remaining brown specs of oil can be addressed with some more Bon Ami and elbow grease the next time I clean. Almost perfect is good enough for me tonight.

Olivia Lane is a Blogger, Green Living Educator, and Health Coach trained at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She's also author of Baking Soda & Bliss: The Healthy & Happy Guide to Green Cleaning.   

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