As you might have guessed, I’m super into DIY and that includes cleaning and restoration techniques. I’m currently trying to restore an old tea kettle and I had a copper pan with a burnt-on mess that refused to come off.
Sidebar, the best way to clean copper pans is salt and vinegar. The salt scrapes off burnt junk without damaging the pan. It was a miracle worker and got that pan looking like new.
I recently bought a pair of ceramic pans to replace our old Teflon ones. I have a pressure cooker that utilizes a ceramic pot inside and am always impressed with how easily it wipes clean no matter what I cook in it. I figured this would be the way to go for day-to-day cooking.
I was right, for the most part. The bigger pan is still in near-mint condition despite being used fairly often, however, the smaller one started losing its non-stick capabilities and food/oil was burning into the pan. I mean it was literally becoming a part of the pan itself. Like, it will be assimilated and resistance is futile kind of bond.
I didn’t understand why, but I wanted to fix it so I took to the internet.
I feel like the go-to cleaning tip is always baking soda and vinegar. Oh, it just cleans everything! Use it on silver, countertops, clothes, your dog! Everything will be spotless and look brand new!
Lies.
A lot of these techniques never work for me. I follow instructions to the letter- boiling water, putting the vinegar and baking soda in, letting it soak for 15 minutes or overnight. But it never wipes clean. Maybe it works on easier messes, but as I said, this crap was so burnt into this pan that when you ran a finger over it, it was smooth. It was really frustrating.
So I had to experiment.
Cleaning your ceramic pan
As I was washing it in the sink, I had the thought to try one of those Magic Erasers (we have a pack of name-brand ones from Costco, but I’m sure the generics from Amazon work).
Lo and behold.
There was a lot of elbow grease involved, but oh my God the difference! All those stains were actually coming off!
I smooshed the sponge every which way to get in crevices and along the rim. Really experiment here. My arms were tired when I finished, but it looked almost new again.
I got it in a good place and rinsed it out. I also decided to look up how to re-season ceramic pans. It’s fairly similar to cast iron in that way. I followed these instructions.
I used grapeseed oil, spread it all over the pan, and heated it on med-low till it smoked. After it cooled a bit, I wiped it out.
That helped repair some of the non-stick coating. Admittedly, it isn’t perfect, but it’s better than where it was.
I hope this helps someone else! It can be frustrating when you think you found a solution that works for everyone, but not for you.
UPDATE 7/30/2021:
The pan got gross again- I think someone in the house uses too high of heat. I recleaned and re-oiled yesterday. Then, it was dinner time and I needed to heat up some tortillas. So, I lightly spread some more oil around, heated a tortilla on med-low, and re-oiled in between the following tortillas. This morning I re-oiled again before making eggs and there was no burnt-on mess and the little scraps that did stick easily came off. I used a wet paper towel to get any leftovers out, patted dry, and re-oiled again. This seems to be like a good technique to really get the non-stick back. Note, that I re-oil with grapeseed oil and did **not **use any other oil in the pan when making eggs.