Strip Burnt-On Gunk From a Stainless Pan With Baking Soda and Peroxide

The Problem

A stainless pan builds up a brown, burnt-on layer — polymerized oil — that survives dish soap, soaking, and most of a scouring pad's life. Scrubbing harder mostly polishes the gunk.

The Technique

1. Mix the paste: 1 cup of baking soda, about 6 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide, and about a teaspoon of dish soap. Stir gently until it's goopy.
2. Apply it to the inside of the pan first, with a spoon or your hands, then flip and coat the outside. Some dripping is fine.
3. Leave it for about an hour.
4. Scour and rinse.

The mechanism, per the creator (a food-science educator): baking soda makes the paste alkaline, the alkaline environment activates the peroxide, and the peroxide chemically breaks down the burnt gunk and polymerized oil while the dish soap carries it away. The hour of wait is the chemistry doing the scrubbing.