The Best Way To Clean Stainless Steel Pans And Season Them

i shot a comparison video between the old clad copper core pan and the kirkland copper core pan and it exploded and so did your comments it seems like everyone has an opinion on how to clean stainless steel pans so let's put those opinions to the test today i'm going to dirty all these pans and then i'm going to clean them strictly based on the suggestions that you left in that video down below [Music] i have a peculiar relationship with stainless steel pans even though you may see me cooking with them on this show i really don't use them in my home a lot years ago i purchased a whole set of look crusade pans and they're just as expensive if not more expensive than all clad and those top end brands but they're also a lot easier to clean unless you really burn them then they're just as hard to clean unlike stainless which may stain a little bit or get scratched porcelain coated pans they discolor and that's something you gotta have to get used to it doesn't affect the performance of the pan but it's definitely an eyesore why do i use stainless steel here in my test kitchen well unfortunately i can't afford two sets of licorice pans one for my house and one for here and i can't keep taking them from my house and these kirkland pots and pans that i use here on the show were pretty well made and very affordable i think the safest metal to cook with is the one that's commonly found your body and that's iron so i use cast iron a lot i also like to use pans that have inert coatings on them like porcelain pyrex which is glass or ceramic that's what i use the jury is kind of out on stainless steel pans a lot of people feel that they are very safe especially if you purchase them from a reputable country that uses the finest metals and a lot of them feel that it doesn't matter where you buy your stainless from it's just they're not safe one thing is 100 sure aluminum is something i do not cook with i have access to a website that allows professional chefs like myself to purchase all clad products at a discount but when i went to that website before the holidays it seemed like everything that i wanted to buy was sold out so i went to williams sonoma which seems to always have sales on all clad products and i used to call it williams and sonoma thank you for correcting me rob i did purchase one so the all-clad pan that i purchased was identical to the pan in the set that you can buy from kirkland when i did the comparison video i never thought that the kirkland brand would hold up to the all clad brand and now like you the proud owner of stainless steel pans i want to keep them clean i also want to find the easiest way of doing that now in the comparison video that i did i may have gone a little overboard with how dirty i got them so today i want to keep it realistic and i'm going to make all of these pans equally dirty but i'm not going to burn the daylights out of them i do want to make sure that there's some decent carbon buildup in these pans so i'm going to cook two pieces of bacon in these pans at a moderately high heat i'm gonna get the bacon slightly burned and i'm also gonna cook a couple of pieces of the same amount of tomato in each one i'm gonna clean each one of these pans based on your suggestions and surprisingly enough none of you suggested my secret weapon which i will show you at the end of the [Music] good what are video making uh i'm not making anything this week i'm making these pans dirty and based on viewers suggestions i'm gonna clean them to see which is the best method to use to clean stainless yeah you want to help me clean up come on [Music] method number one plain old boiling water one viewer suggested to simply take the dirty pan put some water in it boil it use a wooden spoon no chemicals just scrape away with the tip of the wooden spoon and that gets it clean enough to take it to the sink and then finish it off with soap and water boiling the pan really works super well the hot water lifted up most of the grease really quickly i only agitated the bottom with a wooden spoon for about 30 to 50 seconds but it did require a little bit of elbow grease in the sink overall not a bad method method number two vinegar there were two ways that people suggested cleaning a pan with vinegar the first was to boil the pan with equal parts water and vinegar and that would lift off all of the grease it really didn't make much of a difference whether the vinegar were there was not in my opinion it worked just as fine without the vinegar cleanup was about identical in the sink a little bit of elbow grease second to make a slurry with salt and vinegar and use that to scrape away the gunk let's try with this yellow sponge first all right it's really coming off nicely with the yellow sponge not bad but the gunk is not coming out so easily so let's switch to the green looks like the salt is acting a little bit as an abrasive not a bad method overall i'm gagging here on the scent of vinegar which is a little annoying but i think if we would have maybe boiled this a little bit first with the hot water it would have been much easier to take off i can't even breathe here actually the salt and vinegar was not so bad it needed a little bit more elbow grease than if i hadn't boiled it but i would say the elbow grease on this was about a three and did a really nice job of cleaning the pan environmentally safe no soap method number three baking soda the plan here is to soak the pan in the sink with hot water and baking soda for an hour so the guy online he never told me what hot meant with hot water so i brought it to 140 degrees so that pan is sitting in the sink with baking soda and hot water let's see how it cleans [Music] so method number three with the baking soda worked ridiculously well i didn't have to use any green scouring pad everything wiped off almost instantly with the yellow portion of the sponge all right you have to wait a little bit on the elbow grease scale it was a zero at the most a one shocking even the cruddiest of crud came off with no problems whatsoever hands down an absolutely phenomenal way to clean a stainless steel pan thank god i didn't skip this comment i thought someone was trying to be funny and what they initially were talking about was scrubbies not doobies and i'm reading and i'm saying to myself dubies oh yeah what do you do you smoke a doobie so it makes the pan cleaning process easier [Music] here's the thing about scrubbies they're awesome i purchased them in my restaurant by the case they're fantastic i would not have the same restaurant without these scrubbies they just rip through the grease so much better than steel wool or soap pads but every single manufacturer of stainless steel pans does not recommend that you use any steel wool any brillo pads soap pads or scouring pads or scrubbies on any of their pots because they feel like it will take away the finish however all of these manufacturers none of them will cover scratches so what's the difference if you don't mind looking at a finish that is not mirror-like like the day you bought it maybe you would consider using steel wool or scrubby pads on them it certainly makes the cleaning process easier now you can do a fairly reasonable job of trying to keep those scrubs clean but ultimately they're going to collect dirt and that dirt means bacteria so not exactly simple and easy to have around in your kitchen you may want to try to figure out how to soak them in something maybe a bleach water solution more for a commercial environment method number five and this was hands down the most recommended method of keeping these pots and pans clean bar keepers friend let's see how the manufacturer recommends we use barkeeper's friend it says here sprinkle onto a wet surface rub gently with a wet cloth or sponge rinse thoroughly within a minute of application then wipe dry i mean i boiled my pans last time with this stuff i guess i should have read this first boiling water in the pan seemed to work better than barkeep's friend when i first put the bar keeper's friend on it let it soak for a minute then i used the yellow part of the sponge just to see if i could take off any of the grime without using any portion of scouring pad at all it didn't work very well once it started cutting through the grease it started to work pretty nicely but with a little bit more elbow grease i would say on a scale of one to ten the elbow grease was a five now method number six is bonami someone recommended that bonami works much better than bar keeper's friend so we're going to give that a try too according to bone i mean same instructions wet surface sprinkle on bone on me rub with wet sponge or cloth rinse so the bone on me man that didn't work very well at all i had to put a lot of elbow grease to get the crud off the bottom of that pan i wish it worked better i thought it would be exactly like the bar keeper's friend but it really wasn't it was a lot of work on a scale of one to ten i would say that the elbow grease on that was a solid eight now method number seven is interesting because i use dawn soap in my restaurant i actually buy five gallon pails of this stuff but this is a different type of dawn soap it's called platinum foam someone swore by this and said this is truly the best way to get grease out of your pan and i'm excited to give this one a try so the dawn platinum foam did a really great job of cutting through the grease but not such a great job of cutting through the crud at first i got excited because i saw it cutting through the crud with just a bare sponge but then realized later on that it was a lot more elbow grease than i thought just about as much as the bone on me method number eight is seasoning so i'm gonna do this all over again and try it with seasoned pans but how do you season stainless a lot of people think it's a myth you don't need to season them but according to maiden which is an american made product they have a method for seasoning their pans and they recommend that you do season stainless steel pans dry your pan preheat the pan on the stove over medium heat heat expands so this will help open up the pores in the metal once your pan is hot place a small amount of oil in the pan place a wad of paper towel in the oil and wipe around the inside of the pan until there's a very thin layer of oil across the entire interior you don't want to use too much oil here it's better to start off with too little than too much make sure to use an oil with a high smoke point like vegetable avocado or grapeseed oil and once the pan begins to lightly smoke remove it from the burner and let it cool once cool use a different paper towel wipe the pan and remove any excess oil pan is cool oil is wiped out i'm gonna cook some tomatoes and bacon on a seasoned pan see if it makes any difference in the cleaning process interesting thing this would not allow the carbon from the sugars and the bacon and the tomato to stick to it once it was seasoned i almost was very tempted to scrub at it with a wooden spoon while it was hot because it looked like i can get most of the crud off while it was hot but to be fair with the other techniques that we used all the other pans were cold so i let this cool to room temperature now i'm going to try and clean it while it's seasoned and see if any of this actually stuck to the pan so initially it seemed like when you season a pan it would be easier to clean it stains the stainless it makes it a little darker so i don't think it's necessary to season it for the purpose of cleaning the pan it might be necessary to season it for the purpose of the utility where say you want to flip an omelette or have eggs nonstick or something like that while you're while you're cooking them yes then i would recommend seizing it because if you as you can see in the video it was very hard to get anything to stick to that pan when it was seasoned i love this method with the baking soda so much that i went back heated up the water and i tried to clean it again with the baking soda just to let it sit for an hour and see if it took the yellowness off from the seasoning people said that it will discolor it i mean i'm sure it may obviously made it very easy to have food slide off of it but very hard to clean it it's super challenging to get it back to its original shiny stainless steel color i i tried the baking soda and boiling it that got some of the yellow off dried degreaser that got some off but these hard carbon stains that are kind of embedded into the pan i mean at my elbow grease level on this was a 10 out of 10. the bottom of it's yellow honestly i'm not a big fan of seasoning stainless steel i mean it kind of defeats the whole purpose especially when it cleans really well when it's not seasoned now i'm sure maybe i did something wrong this is my first time doing it uh you know i feel terrible being so down on it but i did not have a good experience with this if you had a better experience or if i did something wrong here just leave a comment down below but right now i will never season another stainless steel pan again method number eight my secret weapon orange degreaser i love this stuff this is a commercially available brand called orange thunder which you may have a hard time getting your hands on but there is also an equal quality brand on amazon that i use and i put a link to it down below it's called super orange and it's a great great cleaner as well i love to use both you can choose what strength you want to use when you purchase these brands if you go straight onto it it's a really really bad heavy caked on grease like a barbecue or something like that or you could do lighter for cleaning surfaces it's really great stuff you may need to just clean a little bit of grease off of a part whether it's for cooking or not it works great i mean you saw when i poured it into the pan that it actually pushed the grease away now it didn't work as nicely on the crud as the baking soda did still though really really good thing to have in your arsenal if you want to clean grease so what's the best method to clean stainless steel pans hands down baking soda hot water let it sit for an hour the cheapest the most environmentally safe the easiest no elbow grease one out of ten out of elbow grease if that super clean pan with the yellow side of the sponge what a method thank you so much for sharing that with me the second best method my secret weapon orange thunder look it didn't take the crud off but it's really great at cutting grease you can cut grease anywhere those have to be food grease it cuts any kind of grease that stuff is awesome so those are the two methods i recommend for you to use here today i really want to thank you for watching this video i hope it was a big help to you and if it was please leave a comment down below let me know which method you like best hit that subscribe button stay healthy and we'll see you again really soon

Channel: AwareHouseChef

Views: 203,617

Keywords: Hellenic snack bar, Costco, meal prep, Greek Food, Awarehouse chef, A wearhouse chef, Aware House Chef, organic cooking, cooking techniques, awarehousechef, hellenic snackbar, best way to clean stainless steel, best way to clean stainless pans, cleaner comparison, bar keepers friend, how to season a stainless steel pan, how to, how to clean, best way to clean pots and pans, all clad, cleaning all clad, how to season stainless, best way to clean stainless steel pots and pans

Id: J-bNN74TY_4

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021