Boat Galley: Cleaning Pans On Board

Secrets from The Boat Galley for cleaning stubborn pans on your boat...

Tips From The Boat Galley

By Carolyn Shearlock, author of The Boat Galley, with over 350 FREE articles to get the most out of your boat kitchen with galley tips, insights & equipment recommendations. A few recipes, too - plus an active Facebook community to ask questions and share tips with other readers! The Boat Galley Cookbook, written with Jan Irons, is now available at Amazon and other retailers.

This week Carolyn Shearlock of The Boat Galley shares her secret for cleaning pans that just won't come clean - on or off the boat...
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Got a pan that you just can't get clean? Yeah, I was taking pictures as I was cooking and let a tortilla get just a "little" blackened in that pan. The photo on the left shows the pan after washing it, soaking it and scrubbing it first with baking soda, then with cleanser. That's the same pan on the right, the next morning. So how’d I do it without spending all day scrubbing?

Cleaning Pans

WARNING:  Use this tip only on stainless or Pyrex pans - do not try it on nonstick or aluminum pans. It could damage them.

Now for the solution - after you've done the typical soaking and scraping, apply some oven cleaner and put the pan in a plastic bag overnight. The plastic bag keeps it from drying out. The oven cleaner may not take the burnt or baked-on crud off totally, but it will loosen it up to the point where the remainder will scrub off fairly easily.

You can get several different types of oven cleaner. In Mexico, I could still get the paste type that you brush on and frankly, it worked the best of any type I used. It's probably a good thing that I didn't know what chemicals were in it but with it being a thick liquid it was easy to just dab it on where it was needed and since I wasn't spraying it the fumes weren't too noxious.

In the US, you can now get a fume-free foam that sprays on. The fume-free part is good if you're in an enclosed space but I find it doesn't provide as much cleaning power as the regular spray. And then there's the heavy duty spray foam, which is the best of the sprays.

Take your pick based on your tolerance for working with chemicals and be sure to wash and rinse the pan well after using the oven cleaner on it!


About the Author

Carolyn Shearlock is author of The Boat Galley, with over 350 FREE articles to get the most out of your boat kitchen with galley tips, insights & equipment recommendations. A few recipes, too - plus an active Facebook community to ask questions and share tips with other readers! The print edition of The Boat Galley Cookbook, written with Jan Irons, is now available from Amazon and other retailers - electronic editions are coming but slightly delayed.


Photo by Carolyn Shearlock.

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