How to restore discolored stainless steel cookware

A. First, I would boil water in this pot and loosen any burnt on debris (scrape with metal spatula while boiling). Then I would make a paste with cream of tartar and vinegar and try to remove any remaining baked on stain. Use a coarse steel wool ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] pad. Finally to brighten the pot soak tomato juice, sauce, puree, ketchup, any tomato acid base. Hope that works for you!

Zud Cleanser

on eBay or

Amazon

(affil links)

A. To clean our stainless cookware of such 'accidents', my wife uses a scouring powder containing oxalic acid (chemical formula C2H2O4) as the active ingredient. Some brands here in the States are Barkeepers Friend ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] , Bon Ami ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] , and Zud #8680;
Also, products sold for bleaching wood often use oxalic acid; they are found here in marine supply stores. If all else fails, you could try making an extract from the leaves of the rhubarb plant (they contain a fair bit of the acid) and mixing it with your scouring powder. Have Fun!

A. I burnt my best stainless steel saucepan really badly but managed to restore it by first soaking the burnt food off with enzyme washing powder for a couple of hours. After removing the remaining particles of food with a scourer I cleaned it with Astonish ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] paste and the result is perfect, good as new.

A. Hi, Victor. It may be a model number or a run number for that brand of pan. But if I found a pan somewhere with no history I don't think I'd be comfortable using it. More like "Eww, who knows where it's been" than concern about metals leaching out of it :-)

Regards,

A. "10188". This is the quality of the stainless steel used in the manufacturing of the pans. 10188 is not as high a quality as 101810.

? Hi Robert. You seem to be saying that a pan stamped 10188 is made of 18/8 (18% chrome / 8% nickel) stainless steel; and that a pan made of 18/10 stainless steel might be marked 101810. Do you know the origin of such a stamping code, and what the "10" at the front means?

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi, Beverly. I'm not sure that a solid stainless steel pan ever becomes unsafe to use. But if chemical cleaners and scotchbrite can't polish it, it needs to be mechanically polished with an abrasive polish and a buffing-polishing machine (which may be too powerful for the inexperienced), or at least a buffing pad in a cordless drill. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi, Duffy. The answer to your question is probably exactly the same. Try a good made-to-purpose stainless steel cleaner like Barkeepers Friend ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] , and if it doesn't work then mechanical polishing is required. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Luis. When a pan is manufactured, all sorts of strong and dangerous materials are used, from cutting oils to polishing compounds to highly concentrated acids. So it's not a case of whether those materials and metal polishes in your food are innocuous, they're not; what is relevant is whether you can 100% trust yourself to remove any traces of it before cooking in that pan :-)

Generally a consumer grade "metal polish" removes tarnish to make a surface shinier, but unless you scrub with it for hours and hours, it's probably not going to remove significant scratches.

To understand polishing, imagine trying to dig the foundation for a skyscraper with a teaspoon. It can theoretically be done but would take the best part of eternity. Instead, a huge derrick removes the bulk of the soil, then smaller earth-moving machines level things up and clean up the edges, and finally workers will use a shovel for fine adjustments as they set the concrete forms. Polishing is like that: you can't get to a smooth shiny finish unless the final abrasive is extremely fine, equivalent to the teaspoon; but if it is, its power to actually move enough metal to polish out scratches is very limited. When raw metal is taken to a mirror finish, this usually involves 5 to 7 steps with ever finer abrasive. So your metal polish dissolves and removes tarnish, but its abrasive power to remove scratches is very limited.

Regards,

A. Hi Myra. Sorry but there are so many potential ways to construct a pan that I don't think anyone could hazard a guess as to whether yours had a stainless skin over aluminum (which I think some do) or over copper (which I think some might) or was perhaps a "clad" stainless with a very high grade interior skin for corrosion resistance but a lower grade 'magnetic' stainless to make it useable on induction burners. Apologies: I think only the manufacturer can tell you how the pan was made; but I don't think I'd use a pan where a layer of metal came off of :-(

Regards,

A. Hi Fern. People disagree on what is safe even when they know what something is; sorry, but you'll certainly not get agreement that some unknown film on a pot of unknown metal is nothing to be concerned about :-(

But I'd guess the bleach or the caustic soda in it oxidized some film of oil on the pot and that neither that film of food nor the remnants of disinfecting bleach is hazardous. If a 00 steel wool pad ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] isn't showing progress you can go up to coarse steel wool ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] . Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi again. Stainless steel is solid, not coated, so pitted stainless per se isn't dangerous. But if you can't reliably clean it, and you can't polish it back in shape ...

Luck & Regards,


Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey