Kitchen cloth stuck on hot pan

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TSS

Assistant Cook
Joined
Jul 23, 2021
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5
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Koh Samui
Hi, I have a De buyer carbon steel frying pan. I’m still seasoning it as I use.

I’ve been using it to cook all sorts of dishes and I love the result. However sadly, tonight was my saddest night of cleaning.

After dinner I rinsed the pan and normally dry it on the stove. The heat will evaporate the water. On most days I just let the heat from the stove dry the pan completely then lightly oil it before storing it. At times, I’d use Scott disposable kitchen towels to wipe any remaining water off the pan before oiling it. Tonight, instead of the disposable, I grabbed the cotton kitchen cloth to wipe off specks of water.

As the pan is extremely hot, material from the kitchen cloth got stuck to the pan. The kitchen cloth has some sort of rabbit design on it which is made of rubber. That rubber, along with the lint from the cloth, was singed and stuck to the bottom of my pan.

Though the pan was not well seasoned yet, but it’s truly non stick and served me well.

My desperate plea for help here is - has anyone ever encountered such incident and able to remove the burnt on cloth on my pan? Or does anyone have any idea how I can remove that cloth burn on my pan?

Was thinking of scrubbing with steel pad/wool.

Appreciate your wise input and experience.
 

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Fill pan with some water and put on burner. heat it up and then allow to cool down. It most likely comes loose. A bit of dish detergent will be an added bonus.
If this does not work, get out a putty knife or similar and manually remove it. You really cannot hurt a steel pan.
Then of course dry and oil.
 
Hi, thank you for writing. Do you mean to add dish detergent along with the water in pan then boil?
 
While the water and detergent might work, it isn't going to get all that hot. I would try using frying oil. Not only will it allow you to heat to a higher temp, the oil may serve as a lubricant to help separate the melted on material.
 
Fill pan with some water and put on burner. heat it up and then allow to cool down. It most likely comes loose. A bit of dish detergent will be an added bonus.
If this does not work, get out a putty knife or similar and manually remove it. You really cannot hurt a steel pan.
Then of course dry and oil.

The boiling of water in pan with a little dish detergent, sadly, did not work ???
 

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While the water and detergent might work, it isn't going to get all that hot. I would try using frying oil. Not only will it allow you to heat to a higher temp, the oil may serve as a lubricant to help separate the melted on material.

So I heat up the pan and once hot, add frying oil and let heat up further? Anything else I need to do? Would you also know how long do I heat up oil in the pan for?
 
I would just put the empty pan on a burner and let the flame burn off the towel residue. Some of the seasoning may burn off.
 
I'd put the oil in the pan first, then heat it up to frying temp (350°F to 390°F). When it gets to be 350, use a putty knife or metal spatula to see if you can loosen those bits. If not, let it go higher and try again.

Another thought (if you have a propane torch) would be to use it to just burn it… then let cool and use sandpaper or steel wool to remove the ash.
 
I would scrape as much off as I could with a clean putty knife, ten use Barkeeper's friend and a moist kitchen towel to scrub off any remaining residue. The comments about not being able to hurt a steel pan is not true. Abrasive scouring powders can create micro scratches on the pan surface, which can have an adverse effect on the non-stick qualities of the pan, as can steel wool. I found that out the hard way. If worse comes to work, a Dremel tool with a polishing wheel, and jeweler's rouge will restore the mirror polish.

Another option to try is to pour ammonia into a glass bowl, and place it, and the pan into a plastic trash bag, then close the bag, and let sit outside overnight. This method is great for removing lots of stuck on stuff. Not sure if it would work for this, but might be an easy fix for your problem.

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
Wow! Thanks guys for all the tips. I’ll try them in order of which comes first and I’ll update. I’m hoping one of it works really well.
 
As I think about this, I had a meta; shop class in high school. One of the things we made was a hammer. We had to heat temper the steel, and the hammers looked pretty rough. We cleaned them up with cross-cut file, then, as a final touch, we use a polishing wheel with jewelers rouge to bring them to a mirror finish. If you have a cloth polishing wheel for a grinder, or drill, and some jewelers rouge, this might be the fastest way to get everything clean. A bead blaster would also work, but I only had access to that kind of gear while I worked for Lockheed.

Buffing wheels for drills and grinders are available at most hardware shops.

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
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stick it in the oven on self clean.
that'll turn everything organic to ash.
 
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