Cleaning is the least fun part of cooking but it has to be done.
We have had our good cast iron pots for almost 2 years now and after a while they started getting a weird grey/brown-ish colour on the inside. We were washing them and thoroughly drying them, but it still stuck.
Then we didn’t do much about it other than washing them with soap after use, until we came across the wonderful use of baking soda!
We actually started using it for the bathroom tiles together with vinegar to clean between the tiles where that icky mold tends to grow. It work wonders! Everything looks brand new again, so we keep a bottle of diluted vinegar to spray in the shower after use and that helps keep the tiles nice and shiny!
So after having used baking soda and vinegar in the bathroom for a while, we thought, why not use it in the kitchen too?
It is really very simple, all you do is rinse the sink with water. Then drizzle baking soda all over the sink and pour vinegar over it and watch it bubble and fizzle for a short while. Then you can start scrubbing with a brush or sponge. It is a good idea to wear gloves!
You can literally see the miracle happen before your eyes. Our sink that we thought was clean, because we wash it with soap a couple times a week, got so much shinier and super clean, it is almost blinding.
So back to the pots with the grey/brown-ish coating on the inside.
We weren’t sure if we could use the baking soda for that, but since we used it on so many other surfaces we thought we would give it a try.
WOW!!!
As you can see on the before and after pictures, there is a huge difference. It almost looks like one of those commercials where you spray once with some sort of miracle spray and wipe once and the dirt is gone. (By the way, when we have tried products like that, it doesn’t really work that way + most of them are pretty toxic, so stay clear of those).
So all we did with the pot was rinse it with water. Sprinkle a few tablespoons of baking soda in the bottom of the pot and then started scrubbing with a regular dish brush. No soap, no vinegar! Just plain baking soda.
After a minutes or two we could see a significant difference. Depending on the amount of dirt it might take longer or shorter time to clean it all out. But to be honest with you, it is actually pretty cool to clean this way because you can see the dirt disappearing before your eyes 🙂
Then we just cleaned the, now brownish, water out from the pot and washed it with soap.
Ta da!!!
So after having discovered what some households have been doing for many decades now, we are never going back to using those toxic chemical cleaners, because we can use products to clean with that we can also use in our cooking. So if you can eat it, it is also safe to clean with.
-Enjoy!