Burnt Sugar.

I usually soak it in hot, soapy water and use a scrubber (oops, I meant "scouring pad") on it until it comes off. If that does not work, then I try putting dish soap and water in the pan and boiling it, and then letting it sit to cool down and loosen the burnt part. I have also heard that lemon and vinegar works to dissolve the burned sugar, but I have not tried that. It might do the trick, though, especially since it is a citrus product that caused the residue in the first place.

I think if you put a Paypal donation button on your profile we can all contribute to a new one and you can throw that one away

I remember reading some time ago about using Hydrogen Peroxide to dissolve burnt sugar on pans. You use it full strength and boil it. I can't remember if you try to chip it off at the same time or not though but I don't think it would hurt. Good luck!

If you haven't got the mess out by now then bin it.

Seems to me if should have come off by now. Usually just soaking it in regular water will dissolve the sugar, burnt or not. Hmm. If you have a good-quality pan, try putting that sucker on uber-high heat without anything in it and burning that stuff off completely. If that doesn't work, I don't think there's another fix. It doesn't make that much sense. Sugar shouldn't be so hard to remove. Maybe take a butter knife and scrape every last bit off.

Hi thea09! I too have a pan that has a burnt sugar design at the bottom. But I have long given up on it. I just think that it adds character to my tools. It looks like some kind of map. So now I just use it through whatever I am cooking. Surprisingly, I haven't noticed any sweetness or burnt flavor added to the dishes I've prepared.

We used barbecue sauce at work. It eats the black off of pans. I would cover the bottom of the pan with it and leave it overnight. Makes you wonder what it does to our stomach.

Wow Thea how did you manage to do that I would have said the same as Sandra as that normally works I hope someone can give you an Idea as I really can not think of any other way

My mom hates that, and she will complain to me sometimes of the mess at the bottom too. It can be from burnt sugar, burnt anything; in fact. I have a perfect solution. I told her to go get a new pan. And she told me; so every-time her pan gets soaked with black soot, she has to go buy a new one? She's gleaming.. and I was already thinking how many pans she would need just for one year, LOL. Short story at its best. How's that. A true story, but a short one..

hi thea I had the same thing happen to me when I was cooking rice and the pan burned dry. I knew my son was going to have a fit if he saw that expensive stainless steel pan so I soaked it in water,some came off but not much. then I got the container of scouring powder and a scrubee and after about an hour or so of hard scrubbing I loosened the crap little by little and finally got it all off. but wow what an afternoon and all my son said was wow that pot's sure shiny.well darned right it should have been as long as I had been scrubbing the darned thing. He gave me that set of stainless for Christmas one year. well now its all in storage and I dont even get to cook anything.

Yassou niece, When i pull something like that i do what my bigmama told me to do a long time ago. Pour vinegar in the pan & heat it. It will not smell good but usually works well. U may have to do it more than once. I hate it when i do things like that. Good luck.

you have tried wire wool i take it? chipping it off with a hammer and chisel?

...Hi thea, Not sure this will work, but worth trying. Get a bottle of vinegar, pour it in the pan with some water and boil, few treatments of vinegar and water boiled down might just do it. You'll know if it is working from the first time effort you make. I used to make candy with sugar, vinegar and water and it would seem that the vinegar would be able tp loosen up the hard sugar. Good luck, report back if you would. Thanks, take it easy.

Hi Thea, everywhere I looked, it pretty much said the same as everyone responded, boiling, baking soda, etc. Although, one website suggested freezing the pan and the black stuff is supposed to come off due to the difference in material freezing? I have never heard of doing that before but thought I'd let you know what I found. Hmmm, well, what the heck give it a try if all else fails.

The 'blackened mess' is mostly carbon (with some darkened sugar). The sugar/caramel will still dissolve in water but the carbon wont. My advice would be to try CocaCola (neat and gently warmed) first. Allow it to soak for several hours and see what, if anything, it has softened or dissolved. Once that has done its job, rinse the pan and use oven cleaner. Follow the instructions on the can (warming the pan first, perhaps, if it says that). Oven cleaner is caustic, of course, so you should use rubber gloves when shifting the softened deposit with a nylon pan scourer or wire wool. Once you have the metal clean again, polish it with the very finest wire wool you can find, rinse it and season it with oil. Even stainless steel gets an invisible oxidation coating when in contact with air. Seasoning with oil (heated to smoking point and then wiped clean) causes some molecules to bind to the steel so that, effectively, the steel now has a molecular layer of oil molecules bound to steel. It should then be more 'non-stick' than before (though it's never as non-stick as a Teflon coating.

I found this for stainless steel pan: The 3% hydrogen peroxide was amazing and effortless chemistry did all the work! I had the thick crusty blackened caramel stuck to my new stainless steel pot which I had from placing inside a pressure cooker (next time I'll also use the base plate in the pressure cooker to insure avoiding any possible direct contact with the bottom of the pressure cooker) for making flan (the 1st time I used the pressure cooker method). I filled the pot with hydrogen peroxide and after bringing to to boil, lowered heat to medium, then used a wooden spoon to clean the pot absolutely spotless! It took about 30 minutes to clean my pot. I was worried about fumes, so kept the stove ventilator on, and also heeded another reader"s advice to avoid too much contact with the steam. This tip will be passed along with my flan recipe which uses the pressure cooker method. Applied chemistry is awesome! Note: I didn't try any of the other methods, but since the 3% HP is cheap, and it worked, I'm shttp://www.thriftyfun.com/tf56651419.tip.htmlatisfied with this method.

about the only thing you can do is keep soaking it with hot water,scrape it, do it again.it will come off eventually. we used to do this when i worked in a hotel kitchen-the one cook would just immolate beef bones in the big pots,and all you could do is just that..it took up to 2 weeks to get all the black out.

Boil it with baking soda in the water......or vinegar....both should help release the black from the bottom of the pan...

Hi theo... Baking soda is what you need. Pour baking soda into a pan...at least 1/4 c. depending on how bad the mess is. Add water and boil. Then let set for a couple of hours.....it should clean up real well. If not...repeat the process. I've used this for burnt on mac & cheese....toughest mess you can get. It works great and is cheap.

i once had the same problem (blame it on caramel custard). i used an aluminum scrubber to remove it. it took me several sessions of scrubbing before i finally got rid of it. hope you will be able to get rid of it too.....good luck.