How to Clean a Burnt Pot (Easily and Naturally) (December 2024)

Is there anything worse than having burnt food on the bottom of a pan? Not only does your food get wrecked, but you’re left with having to know how to clean burnt food off the bottom of a pan. We recently cooked rice and I’ll admit I had the temperature too high. The result? No rice and a burnt pan that had food stuck on like cement and was not coming off. Luckily I figure out a homemade cleaning idea to get the pot clean.

Here is what I did to clean a burnt pot.

Before I should have this method I want to tell you what I did before that didn’t work. We tried scrubbing it with a scouring pad and had no luck. so naturally we thought maybe we need to just let it sit overnight in some water with Blue Dawn in it and it should be okay. The next morning it look like this…

Obviously the letting it soak method wasn’t effective. I did my best and scrape it off but there was nothing coming off.

There has to be an easy way to clean a burnt pot

Like all cleaning tips, if there’s a way to do it that is easier I want to find it. This was by far the easiest way to clean a burnt pot. Lately I’ve been amazed at what vinegar can do as far as household cleaning. We’ve used it to improve the flushing power of our toilet, remove limescale from our taps, and clean an electric kettle. Plus it goes good with fries. Here is what we did to clean our burnt pot with minimal effort.

How to clean a burnt pot

First rinse out any excess food in the pot.

You will want the pot free of any food so throw out the food, rice in my case, and give it a rinse.

Add vinegar and water

Next, add equal parts half water and half vinegar to the pot. In my situation I did half a cup of vinegar and half a cup of water. You may need to do more depending on the size of the pot.

Bring to a boil

Next, return the pot to the stovetop and bring the water vinegar mixture to a boil. If you just burnt your food, that should be fairly easy and quick as the stovetop will be warm already. I turned on the range hood fan to keep our house from smelling like vinegar.

Let it simmer for 10 minutes

Once the water and vinegar mixture comes to a boil reduce heat to a medium low and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove and scrape off food

Next, remove the pot from the heat and scrape the bottom of the pot, I used a metal spatula, as to make sure I didn’t burn my hand. In our example everything came off with relative ease. You can see how the food came off easily below.

Last, rinse and wash normally

Rinse out the water and vinegar mixture and clean the pot as you normally would.

There you go an easy way to clean burnt food off the bottom of a pot and it can be done while you eat your food ready for you to go with dinner is done and you are doing the rest of the dishes.