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What's the easiest way to clean a burnt saucepan?
You've had a cooking nightmare and burnt food in your saucepan. Now you've got baked-on food stains that won't shift no matter how hard you scrub.
When the cleaning products in your kitchen cabinet aren't working, a quick Google might lead you to try baking soda, lemon juice, dishwasher tablets or even a dryer sheet as potential stain-busting saviours.
But which cleaning hack is most effective?
We scorched multiple tins of baked beans in saucepans so we could try each of these methods and find out which works the best.
There was one method that stood out for us. Watch our video below or read on to find out what worked.
The best saucepans in our tough tests have an excellent non-stick coating and are very easy to clean
Five steps to clean a burnt saucepan
- Fill the saucepan with enough water to cover the burnt bits.
- Add a dishwasher tablet.
- Put the pan back onto a medium heat and let the water simmer for 10 minutes.
- Rinse out and wipe away any residue with a soft sponge.
- Wash as normal to get a sparkling saucepan achieved with relatively little elbow grease.
We used a Fairy Platinum Plus dishwasher tablet in our tests, which makes this method cost approximately 29p per burnt saucepan cleaned.
Using a whole dishwasher tablet for a single dirty pan isn't great for the planet or your wallet, so we'd recommend using this method only as a last resort. That would be when you've got a really stubborn patch of burnt food you just can't seem to shift, and the only alternative is chucking the pan away.
Find the best dishwasher tablets to keep your plates, glasses, cutlery and china looking sparkling clean
Burnt saucepan solutions that work but need more elbow grease
These are the other methods we tried, in order of success.
They all worked eventually, but they needed much more scrubbing from us than the dishwasher tablet method.
Dryer Sheets
How to do it: Put a few drops of washing-up liquid into the pan and cover with a few inches of hot tap water. Completely submerge a dryer sheet in the water and leave for an hour.
Did it work? To our surprise, this method proved very effective on the areas of the stain the dryer sheet touched. These areas came away with a rinse, but the rest of the burnt food needed a lot of elbow grease and vigorous scrubbing to fully remove.
Our verdict: At about 8p a go, it's certainly worth trying and is brilliant for smaller patches of burnt food residue. But, as with the dishwasher tablet, it's not great for the planet.
Lemons
How to do it: Cut up three lemons and simmer in the pan for around 10 minutes on a medium heat.
Did it work? This method did the job but we needed to do quite a bit of scrubbing to remove all of the stains completely.
Our verdict: While it's arguably more sustainable than using a dishwasher tablet, this method is one of the pricier ones, at around 90p a go, and feels like a waste of three perfectly good lemons.
Baking soda, salt and vinegar
How to do it: Use equal parts baking soda, salt and vinegar (we used 50g/50ml of each) to make a paste, and cover all of the burnt bits with it. Then leave it to work for around 10 minutes. Repeat if necessary.
Did it work? This was the least effective household hack we tried. It worked, but we had to do it twice. Each time, there were fewer burnt bits left, but we still needed to do some serious scrubbing, and even after that the pan wasn't left looking new.
Our verdict: Costing roughly 42p per attempt and needing more than one go when we tried it, we'd not recommend this as your first choice if you have the option to try a different hack.
We ask an expert to explain 10 popular TikTok cleaning hacks – discover which ones work and which to avoid
Can you put saucepans in the dishwasher?
Many saucepan manufacturers claim their saucepans are dishwasher-safe, but we'd still recommend you wash non-stick saucepans by hand if you can.
The very hot water used inside a dishwasher can wear down non-stick coatings over several washes.
Read our list of commonly searched-for items and whether the manufacturer says it is dishwasher safe.
