Life Hack: Is there an easy way to clean burnt marks from the base of a pot or pan?

Testing a TikTok method for getting pots and pans spick and span

Wok and roll: how to get those burn marks out of a pot or pan

We all have one: that old pot of much-used frying pan that is showing its age and popularity with its blackened base.

Scrub all you want. Often, there’s just no shifting it. Many a sponge, cloth or bristled pad has been tossed aside in despair after attempting such an impossible task.

In recent weeks, however, a new trick to tackle this exact issue has been doing the rounds on social media. From TikTok to Twitter, people are going wild for a quick and easy solution and, enamored by a scrub-free cleaning trick, I decided to test it on a fairly weather-beaten wok in my kitchen.

The steps involved are fairly straightforward. First, cover the base of the pan in salt. Next, sprinkle baking soda over it. Drizzle washing up liquid on top and mix the three ingredients together on the surface.
Cover the mixture with a sheet or two of tissue paper and pour vinegar over the lot.

I followed the above steps as best I can: there are no measurements given (and I start to run out of Fairy Liquid as I forgot the bottle was almost empty) nor a time specified to let the mixture sit on the pan. I leave it for a few minutes, assuming the vinegar and baking soda are bubbling away happily beneath the tissue.

In the videos online, when the tissue is swept off the (admittedly much dirtier) pans, the black marks left from being burned seem to melt away and are easily wiped off the pan.

My wok had one or two marks on it so I expected those to be instantly gone once unveiled. I was mistaken.

I gathered the tissue and wiped the pan as I removed it but saw some marks remained. I gave those a quick scrub with the tissue and while some came off with the extra persuasion, there was no satisfying feeling as the black marks dripped away. In fact, there were no melting marks at all.

I gave the wok a final wipe down for good measure and rinsed it under the tap. After drying and examining it, I noticed it was definitely looking cleaner (it would want to after the unexpected scrubbing) and some of the dullness it had developed from time and use had changed to a shinier surface.

While it wasn’t an overall successful hack, I can’t write it off completely. As I mentioned above, there were no measurements or times given, so perhaps I needed an extra teaspoon of salt or the mixture needed to sit for 30 minutes to effectively clear the burnt bits. Plus, aside from the disappointment that black liquid didn’t drip down the sides when the tissue was removed, it did clear some stubborn marks from the wok.

Overall, I’d give it a 5/10.