Cynthia Kuhn

Never Too Late

We must have been the last people in the world to hear that nonstick pans are not so great for you. And we had the same ones since we got married; even if they weren’t all scraped to heck (they were), they were way past the 10-year deadline for use. Oops!

So we decided to take the leap/plunge/bait and trade our old faithfuls for stainless ones. Nothing fancy. But still: new and shiny.

Turns out there’s a bit of a learning curve for cooking with stainless steel. I became terrified about ruining the pans. So we read all about how to warm them properly, using medium heat and adding water at the appropriate time to make the drops dance on the surface, happily signaling that the pan was ready to receive your ingredients. Then it was supposed to be all sunshine and rainbows from that point on.

But this maneuver is not as easy as you might think. And after we couldn’t get the happy drops so we just threw in the food and hoped for the best, we ended up with a mess of a skillet featuring fused layers that rejected all attempts to be removed.

(In other words, I ruined the pan. Immediately.)

For a week, we researched solutions. We tried simmering. We tried scrubbing. We tried soaking. We tried scraping. Nothing budged.

Finally, we stumbled across a video that suggested heating a mixture of equal parts white vinegar and hot water. My husband, a high school science teacher, was intrigued. We poured in the mixture and stood over the burner staring at the pan. It felt like we were in chemistry class, hoping the lab would work.

As the mixture began to bubble, we gasped as little bits of food disengaged from the pan and floated to the top. All by themselves. Soon larger sections were magically disconnecting as well. When everything was said and done, the spatula glided like a Zamboni through material that had been previously glued to the bottom. It was a genuine cleaning miracle!

And even better, we are no longer afraid to cook in our stainless pans because we know we can clean them with a little science.  Good bye, teflon flu–and hello, sunshine!

ps: We didn’t have any Bar Keeper’s Friend, which is supposed to be the be-all, end-all for stainless. But this method is a keeper too. 🙂

Have you learned any new tricks lately? Or what was your latest new cooking adventure?

75 thoughts on “Never Too Late”

  1. CYNTHIA: Hurray for science in solving your stainless steel pan crisis!’Happy cooking.

    I switched from non-stick to ceramic skillet last year. It is working great so far.

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    1. Hi Grace! I’m so glad to hear it’s working for you. It was a tight race betwen ceramic and stainless when we were researching what to get to replace. I have been very interested in trying Green Pan. 🙂

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  2. So glad you found a solution. We do most of our cooking in our cast iron skillets and pot and our wok (husband uses mostly the wok).

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    1. Hello! Thank you for sharing that. Your setup sounds great. I would love to try cast iron someday…and this comment helped me realize that we didn’t get a replacement wok yet (ours is nonstick)…putting that on the wish list!

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      1. Our oldest cast iron is an 8-inch skillet, which I bought as a college sophomore 51 years ago. I had a hot plate so I could cook my own meals in my dorm room; I worked on Sundays and therefore missed dinner, so I’d cook my own. We still use it almost daily, especially to cook breakfast. We also have a flatiron, a 10-inch skillet, and a cast iron dutch oven.The rest of the cast iron cookware ranges from 22 to 45 years old.

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  3. Cynthia, how very cool! White vinegar features in several magic fixes. We followed instructions (or so I thought.) to make weed killer using a mixture of white vinegar, Dawn soap and Epsom salt. It didn’t work on the weeds but it killed the grass. Back to the drawing board.

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  4. I finally learned to cook with stainless steel maybe a year ago, and it’s a game-changer! If I had it all to do again I would ditch most of my pots and pans and go through life with one stainless steel skillet and one enameled cast iron Dutch oven and there is very little I wouldn’t be able to manage.

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    1. Hi JK: Thank you–you have inspired me to keep trying. I want a game-changer too! (Hoping not to have to do the vinegar boil every time I cook…ha). And I adore the idea of a minimal kitchen lineup. 🙂

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  5. When we got married, my parents gifted us with a full set of Revere ware. You know, the stuff with the copper bottoms. We used that and a cast-iron skillet for ages. In the search for the perfect non-stick pan for omelets, which would not kill us with Teflon, we tried almost everything, including ceramic (which worked wonder for a year, then quit). What we have now is from Calphalon – anodized something-or-other. Works great, but I had to make sure all my spoons, spatulas, whisks, etc. were rubber or nylon. Metal will ruin the pots/pans. We thought we’d somehow scratched the heck out of the small saucepot, but it turned out to be dried starch from the last time we made rice. Whew!

    I have become a huge fan of the air-fryer. We use that for almost every meat – pork chops, salmon, chicken, roasts, even steak!

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    2. Hi Liz: Oh my goodness, Revere ware–that’s what it was called! I was trying to think of the name of it all summer. Grew up with the copper-bottomed pans. Thank you! And it sounds like you have the perfect tools now. (We swapped out an entire drawer of old spatulas and spoons made of who-knows-what for one small box of silicone ones, and so far we like them. I especially like not having to rummage through the whole clanky mess to get a spatula!)

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      3. Revee-wah and Cohnin’-wah–I still have them! And the castiron skillets, of course, the older the better. I can personally disclaim that Corningware is unbreakable–it ends up in millions and zillions of teensy glass shards.

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  6. This made me laugh. We switched to stainless last year, and I didn’t read anything about its care, probably because I’m old enough to have used them early in my marriage. Good to know about the vinegar tip! But I have to ask, what the heck did you cook on it that stuck so hard?

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  8. That’s so cool, Cynthia for the tip. Science rocks! I recently learned that Dawn Dish soap is great for treating greasy stains on clothing. Hit that shirt with a dose of Dawn, rub it in, and run the shirt in the laundry as normal. Which comes in handy for someone who isn’t the neatest eater ever.

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    5. I use Dawn a lot, too–because I still remember the ad where they got the oil off of baby ducks with it. (Also, I used it once to clean a client’s filthy tub before an open house when I was a realtor. It was so bad I was afraid the house wouldn’t sell otherwise, ha.)

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  9. Vinegar has a lot of uses..we use part vinegar and part water to make our natural ant repellent – it worked quite well initially but now I think the ants kinda get used to it (this is what I thought) and it’s not so effective – but we still use it whenever we see one or two or three.. Emily

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    1. Hi Emily: That is very interesting! Between the pan magic and the other uses around the house, a bottle of vinegar is quite a useful and affordable investment, seems like. I wonder why the ants get used to it…maybe like how humans can acquire a taste for broccoli. (Is that a weird comparison? Maybe I need coffee.) Anyway, thank you!

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  10. i’ve been using stainless steel for a decade. I love them, except for my husband does not know how to clean them very well. I might try that vinegar trick, possibly with the outside of the pans where grease tends together. I love my stainless steel. I was immediately thinking barkeeper’s friend, then you said you didn’t have any of that. I keep that for the stainless steel as well as my glass stove top. Best thing to use, as far as utensils, is wood utensils, followed by things that are made out of rubber or silicone.

    just remember, don’t put stainless steel on high heat. It will start coloring it. You just have to wait longer for things to get to a boil.

    another tip, is when you put things like chicken in there. Don’t try to flip them if they don’t immediately come up. That means it’s not finished cooking. Wait till it comes up without any tugging on it, then it should be coming up rather easily, and it will be cooked through

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  11. I love my cast iron skillets (two of which were my grandmothers, so they’re VERY seasoned). But they’re heavy, so I suppose one of these days I’ll have to switch them for something lighter.

    I was gifted a ceramic pan a few years ago, but after about a year it lost all of its non-stick ability.

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  12. That’s a good tip! We just went stainless a couple months ago so this is timely information. Also: You know about black plastic spoons and spatulas, right? (Spoiler: They’re made out of recycled electronics!!)

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  13. I tend to rotate between my cast iron (my fave), stainless steel skillet, and wok. Though I still have a newer nonstick somewhere; I think it’s supposed to be reformulated?

    For stainless, I haven’t done the vinegar trick. I tend not to do vinegar a lot because of the smell. Even though it has, like, a hundred uses!

    On my stainless steelware, I’ll sometimes use crumpled up aluminum foil and dish soap to get off stubborn food.

    As for a science hack: Besides Bar Keepers Friend or Bon Ami, I’ve started doing this baking soda scrub & soaked hydrogen peroxide towels over my porcelain sink to get it whiter.

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  15. Fun (and highly useful) post, Cynthia! Clearly you’ve hit on a culinary/cleaning nerve. The only thing I can add to all of the amazing tips is that the aforementioned Dawn is also available in a super-powerful spray that removes stuff immediately. It’s not the safe-for-adorable-oil-slicked-ducks formula, I suspect. I just have one tip for laundry stains: rub area with a bar of Ivory soap. Gone. (Who remembers Ivory Snow and Lux Flakes?)

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