EASY-ish Le Creuset Cleaning | Work Smart, Not Hard

Greetings, the hot Sorcerer here. I love my Le Crusuet pots. But inevitably, like all enameled cast iron pots, they start to look like this with brown stains that won’t removed no matter how hard you scrub. Or perhaps you were naughty like me and burned the hell out of your pan like this. No judgment here. I’ll show you how to wash away your sins with as minimal scrubbing effort as possible. And turn your disaster from this into this. First lets tackle the brown stains on the dutch oven. The best tools for the job are a soft nylon brush – I have the official Le Creuset brush but I’m sure you can find cheaper options - and plain ol’ baking soda. Start by pouring baking soda into your pot. Add a bit of water. Not too much, you just want to make a paste. If you add too much water like I just did… you’ll probably have to add more baking soda. So just gently scrub around the pot. It shouldn’t take much effort – I’m literally just moving the brush back and forth apply almost no pressure. I should probably mention… you shouldn’t use something like steel wool on these pots. It’s really not needed and you’ll probably end up damaging your enamel. Scrub scrub scrub. And give it a rinse. And voila, your pot looks like brand new. Ok so that’s the easy part. What do you do if you really burned the hell out of dinner? Obviously start by scraping out whatever food is left. Don’t use any metal utensils to scrape the bottom. I used a wooden spatula thingy – preferably use one you don’t really care about since you might damage the edge of the utensil. Anyway… be sure you’re not doing this on a hot pot. Scrape scrape scrape I did find this nifty pot scrapper online. It has a nice contoured edge to scrape around the rounded sides of your pan. Looks like a useful kitchen addition for less than $10 Then use a sponge with a semi-soft scrubbing side and apply some of your favorite blue dish soap. Start gently scrubbing and try to get off as much of the carbon as possible. On a side note.. I thought I would be “smart” and try soaking the pot overnight in some Coke. I figured with a PH of around 2-2.5ish it would remove the baked on carbon… but it really did nothing. But hey… apparently I’m no chemist. So after the coke failed I read the Le Creuset website. And they say to boil water and baking soda for 8-10 minutes. I was… a bit skeptical. But I gave it a try. I just poured probably half the box of baking soda into the pot and maybe 4 cups of water. Then just let it cook on high heat for 8 minutes. And after 8 minutes.. yeah.. most of the baked on carbon simply wiped off with the wooden spoon. I kept cooking for another 8 minutes. I don’t really understand the chemistry that’s going on here but I’m guessing the baking soda is acting like a soap. It’s not dissolving the carbon – you can clearly see particles floating off the pan. So if you’re a chemist, enlighten us below in the comments on what’s going on. Anyway… this KINDA SORTA worked. I’ll save you the boring details.. It took another round of boiling the baking soda AND THEN scrubbing the pot by hand. Captain obvious here would say “it’s probably better not to burn dinner”. Because.. yeah.. this isn’t exactly “hard work” but it takes time. And here is the aftermath on my stove of all that baking soda. It was a mess. And the aftermath on my stove was a baking soda mess… After burning dinner, remaking dinner in another pot, and then around 30 minutes of work, you too can have a clean pan like this. Thanks for watching.

Channel: The Hot Sorcerer

Views: 286,544

Keywords: cleaning, clean, soap, burnt, dinner, pots, pans, lecreuset, dutch oven

Id: FhMEC4tlFlc

Length: 3min 52sec (232 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 02 2022