The Magic of Baking Soda

I have a tiny human that rules our house, so there is a lot of uncontrollable chaos that comes with the otherwise joys of having a toddler. But while I know how to cook, I am absolutely useless when it comes to interruptions and not great at multi-tasking, so mistakes happen (a bit too often).

But errors can be fixed. There is a little trick in this tale that will hopefully save some pennies and valuable kitchen equipment....

I was cooking up some popcorn for my son as an afternoon snack (old school on the stove), when my son's little buddy comes knocking at the back door wanting to play. Next minute they are off down the back stairs (assistance required as they are sketchy as hell concrete stairs), and the popcorn is forgotten! I'm now chatting with my girlfriend in the back yard (the mother of my son’s buddy) when the mental lightbulb switches on and I race back upstairs to the most awful smell and a kitchen that's starting to fill with smoke.

The popcorn isn't just burnt……its looks like molten lava or even volcanic rock is more accurate - the aftermath of lava.

Ordinarily, I think most people would assume this beautiful stainless steel pot would be going straight in the bin, right? Nope! It's a great pot and it was expensive.

So if or when you find you have done something similar........

Scrape it out as best you can while it's still warm, cover it with about half a cup of bicarbonate soda and fill with water to just above your burn line. Pop back on the stove and bring up to the boil. I then boil it for another 2 minutes and then turn off and leave to sit for a few hours.

What you should find is that the burn pulls away and you can now clean as usual with a scourer. In really, really bad cases like this though you may need to repeat the process a couple of times. If it is a good stainless steel pot, then fingers crossed it should eventually come back.

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