How To Clean Inside Of Old Oven

In addition to eating healthier, the start of a new twelvemonth is a great excuse for decluttering, spiffing up, and organizing your workspace. All week long, nosotros'll be giving you tips for making sense of the most important room of the house: the kitchen. Welcome to Clean Sweep.

Dutch ovens are winter workhorses: braising meat for hours, stewing stews, and turning bits and bobs from way dorsum in our fridges and pantries into cozy soups that tin can last usa a full week. They're an investment, too: those enameled cast fe Dutch ovens fabricated past Staub, Le Creuset, and the like will cost you a few hundred dollars, easy. If y'all treat them right, though, they'll terminal decades. (Warning: Your kids might starting time to think of them every bit inheritance. They tin can go their own.)

Cleaning your Dutch oven correctly is super important, as y'all don't want to scratch that precious enamel that evenly sears your meats and perfectly caramelizes your onions. And you don't desire leftover scraps of last nighttime's dinner getting swirled into this evening's caramel sauce. The good news is, that enamel is pretty resilient—unlike with cast iron, crusty $.25 are less likely to attach to information technology with an unrelenting grip. But at that place still may come up a time when you demand to deep clean your Dutch, like say, the showtime of a new year. Hither'south how it'south done.

A succulent way to become your pot muddied: Steamed Mussels with Tomato and Chorizo Goop. Photo: Alex Lau

Linda Xiao

Tackle the exterior first

Did your tomato sauce chimera over? Did a baste of caramel escape? Did some sort of splatter appear on the outside of your pot and you have no idea where information technology came from, but you'd similar it to exist gone? Food director Carla Lalli Music recommends making a paste from blistering soda and water, and scrubbing information technology onto the pot with a Scotch-Brite pad—not steel wool!—to remove pesky spills and crud.

Be gentle with the interior

The enameled inside of your pot shouldn't demand much scrubbing, Music says; "it'south basically nonstick." If you've made polenta or oatmeal or something else that has adhered itself to the bottom of your pot, just let it soak with hot water and a bit of soap or blistering soda overnight; it should come up right off with a sponge after that. If you, like some editors here who will go unnamed, have burned something into the pan—say, a pot of beans you forgot about before taking a nap—endeavour boiling water (plenty to cover the crud) in the pot with a pinch of blistering soda, and so letting information technology soak. Bar Keepers Friend pulverization is too quite handy if you have burns that simply don't seem to budge—mix it with a tiny fleck of water, and scrub away. But remember to avert that steel wool.

BA's Best Ratatouille is calling for your Dutch oven. Photo: Alex Lau.

Alex Lau

Beware of cracks

Cracks and chips in enamel shouldn't exist ignored—they can seriously interfere with your cooking. Many cookware companies—like Staub and Le Creuset—have lifetime warranties, which you should most definitely have advantage of if something goes amiss. A pot that works is of much more use to y'all than the nostalgia of a few years of cooking.

Now that it's clean, get cooking with these great recipes for Dutch ovens.