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How to clean All-Clad Pans - All Types


NoEggs

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I use bar keeper's friend all the time on my All Clad pots and pans. Works like a charm.

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

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I think I had the heat too hot and now there is a haze in my saute pan. The All-Clad site recommends a product called Bar Keeper’s Friend. Anybody use this or could tell me another method?

BKF has oxalic acid as its mechanism and is not abrasive, so it won't scratch. I saved an All-Clad saucepan using BKF. It was almost black in some places purple in most others due to not putting water in it prior to using under a double boiler. I wondered why the chocolate wasn't melting and that's why. Almost threw it away but now is one of my favorite pans. I would not want to try anything else since I like BKF so much.

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being relatively new to polished stainless steel pans, I have used an array of different methods. BKF is the ticket for most things. Often a soiled pan can be soaked over night in hot water. The next day most food stuff will come right off. Dawn Power Dis solver work wonders on some more baked on stuff. I typically use BKF as the finishing method. If you get a haze from hard water, a little vinegar will remove it and bring the pan back to a high luster.

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Someone recommended a product called Cameo. It may only be available on the East Coast. My in-laws sent some out to us. It works great on the inside of the pans, makes them look like new. We don't use it on the outside of the pans.

"My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne."

John Maynard Keynes

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Bar Keeper's Friend is awesome stuff. I am pretty sure my official Falk Culinair (copper pan) literature even recommends it. I've never had it do any harm, I've never had it fail to make a pot or pan look like new.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED A+++++++ WOULD CLEAN AGAIN!!

Don Moore

Nashville, TN

Peace on Earth

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What is this haze that forms on stainless pans? After breaking in my Sitram Catering sauce pan with a mustard cream sauce, I had a haze right over the copper disc, even though I had used lowish heat. I wasn't worried at all about it, but after making a vinegar mop, the haze disappeared, presumably into the mop, which I had happily used on my first smoked pork butt. I didn't notice the haze had disappeared until I washed the pan.

Yeah, so a warm apple cider vinegar wash works well to remove that!

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  • 2 months later...

I have both the powder and the liquid. The powder seems to clean better, but I couldn't tell you why!

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

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The powder has an abrasive where I don't think the liquid does. I don't use the powder on the outside of my All Clad because I think it will dull the polish.

My soup looked like an above ground pool in a bad neighborhood.

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Oxalic acid crystallizes in tiny, thin spikes that puncture the skin and are almost impossible to remove. Be careful to keep it away from your mouth or eyes, and always wear gloves. It will make your tongue swell up so badly that some people have suffocated.

It's the principal irritant in Dieffenbachia, a/k/a Dumb Cane, which is a lovely decorative plant with large striped leaves, but which should never be in a house with children (or plant-chewing dogs).

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I have both the powder and the liquid.  The powder seems to clean better, but I couldn't tell you why!

BKF is awesome. I like the powder much better. Depending on how badly the pan needs work, you can vary the amount of water. If the pan is really bad, I use just a moist sponge and lots of BKF. If it's not as bad, you can make more of a paste and for light cleanup, a watery consistency does the trick. Shine on!

-Mark-

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"If you don't want to use butter, add cream."

Julia Child

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BKF is oxalic acid which dissolves the haze. I have some copper pans that I use it on. A real thin watery coat cleans up the oxidized copper nicely, and if you dont rub hard it will not take the shine off of the copper.

Bud

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I read somewhere that the haze is caused by coagulated proteins. A little white vinegar will dissolve it instantly.

By the time we were done blackening the fish in this photo, the burnt oil you see was completely black (inside and out).

gallery_39290_3790_18606.jpg

I used BKF twice, then decided I wasn't gonna be All Clad's slave. I used a BRILLO pad inside and out. The shiny exterior is a lot more durable than you think.

I threw away the messy BKF can.

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The discoloration on stainless steel cookware commonly caused by cooking over high heat is called "heat tint." It is not caused by coagulated proteins, or anything having to do with the food that is cooked in the pan. You can, in fact, produce heat tint in a stainless steel pan by heating it on the stove with nothing in it whatsoever. At around 350C/660F and higher, the stainless steel reacts with oxygen in the air to form an oxide layer. That oxide layer is the heat tint.

Heat tint is not the same thing as the blackness that develops on a pan when fat is heated to high temperature. That is polymerized fat. It's quite durable, as efforts to remove it demonstrate, and can be relatively slick compared to other surfaces. The blackness comes from carbon that is bound up in the polymerized fat. "Seasoned" cast iron takes advantage of polymerized fat to form a less reactive and less "sticky" coating on the raw iron.

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  • 9 months later...

I have at least three All-Clad non-stick pans (8" & 10" fry pans, 12" saute) - that are from the original Master Chef line, very thick, heavy, made in the USA, etc. They have held up remarkable well, even though on occasion I am sure I've used metal utensils and been a bit rough with them.

Over time, these pans have all developed a bit of, for want of a better word, an oily surface, that I find impossible to clean back to the original state, although the oiliness has not affected their performance one iota.

I have tried various methods of scrubbing to no avail (scrubbies, doobies and various powders and pastes, along with lots of elbow grease) and was wondering if anyone has a kitchen secret that might help me restore these pans to "showroom" condition?

Mitch Weinstein aka "weinoo"

Tasty Travails - My Blog

My eGullet FoodBog - A Tale of Two Boroughs

Was it you baby...or just a Brilliant Disguise?

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Is this oily surface on the inside or the outside? I assume it's on the inside? My best guess is that it may be polymerized fat. Does the oily surface cover the entire cooking surface of the pan? If it's polymerized fat, I don't see how you'd get it off without scrubbing away the PTFE coating. If you're talking about the exterior of the pan, you might try finding an aluminum-safe pan and oven cleaner.

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How does the fat polymerize, Sam?

High heat cooking.

Have you ever cooked something at high heat in a stainless pan and when you're done there is a light brown residue (usually around the inner sides of the pan) that is tough to scour away? That is polymerized fat. Polymerized fat is also the "seasoning" that builds up on cast iron cookware.

If that's what it is, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that it's relatively easy to keep cookware free of built-up polymerized fat: just make sure you diligently clean it all away after every use. The bad news is that once it does build up, it is very difficult to clean away without resorting to chemical means. I've spent as long as 20 minutes working on the outside of a Calphalon frypan scrubbing as hard as I can with Bar Keeper's Friend and a brand new Scotch Brite pad, and still didn't get it all off. The further bad news is that, as you may imagine, the treatment I just described is not advised for a PTFE-coated surface. Indeed, the polymerized fat is harder than the PTFE coating, so there is little hope of scouring it off or dissolving it with chemicals without hurting the nonstick surface.

The moral of this story is that PTFE coated pans shouldn't be used for high heat cooking unless they are "throwaway" nonstick pans you expect to burn through and replace in a year or less.

Edited by slkinsey (log)

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