Cleaning Burnt Pans

My daughter is not good at multi-tasking. Especially when it comes to cooking and texting.

Exhibit A: My good stainless steal pan after she burned popcorn in it.  Ouch. 

This is after she and my husband tried to clean it out.  The lid was just as bad; I was counting this one as a goner.  No amount of soaking or scrubbing was doing the trick.  As a last ditch attempt, I tried a tip I had read about previously, although I didn't have much faith it was going to work.

The magic trick?  Ammonia.

Yep. The stinky stuff your grandmother used to clean up greasy messes.  The stuff that will knock you out or wake you up if you get too big a whiff of it.

Just take a small glass bowl and put some ammonia in it.  Set it inside your pot and put the lid on.  If you don't have a lid or it's not tight fitting, you can put the whole thing in a garbage bag and seal it up.

Now, let the whole thing sit tight for a day or two out in the garage or back yard. Don't peek.  It's the fumes that cause this trick to work. 

When the time is up, dump out your ammonia and scrub gently with an S.O.S. pad.  The mess should come off like buttah...

The same process works for messy grills or your oven.

Now, if only this trick would get rid of the gunk in my daughter's room...