Never do this with your hot pan
It’s incredibly tempting to take a pan from which you’ve just transferred all your carefully baked or cooked goodies to your plate or another fun object and toss it straight into the sink. Squeeze in some dish soap, turn on the tap, give it a bit of a scrub, done. No. Don’t! Read here why you really need to be patient with your trusty little pans.
Shock. Aaaarrgh!
Your pan isn’t Finnish. It doesn’t want to jump straight from a hot sauna into an ice hole. Even if you don’t pour cold water over it, tap water generally isn’t as hot as the 200 degrees your pan may easily have reached. So prevent thermal shock, as it causes warping and tiny cracks in the metal that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Metal expands ever so slightly when heated and contracts again as it cools. You need to let this happen muy tranquilo, naturally.
How to keep your pans clean
Very simple. Let them cool quietly to room temperature. Just eat first. Your pan will then have returned to its normal state, after which you can give it a little care in lukewarm water. For stainless-steel pans: wash with some soapy water and a sponge, and, if necessary, loosen baked-on residue with a wooden spatula. A non-stick pan: same story, and of course don’t use a scouring pad. With a cast-iron pan, leave out the dish soap entirely; using only a dish brush and warm water will keep its lovely layer of seasoning intact.
And what you should never do:
• Leave your pan on the heat for a long time without anything in it. Sounds logical, and with a simple saucepan you’ll quickly notice that this is not the intention at all. A cast-iron pan that has previously been well greased can take a bit more, but many people leave a non-stick pan or, for example, a Le Creuset on the heat for quite a while before adding butter or oil. Bad idea.
• Add salt to the water before it boils. Undissolved salt crystals sink to the bottom and damage the pan there. You remember that the water you cook pasta in should taste as salty as the sea, right? But do wait until the water is boiling vigorously before throwing in that handful of salt. For water used to cook vegetables/potatoes/rice, be less generous—start with around a quarter of a teaspoon.
• Use metal cookware in non-stick pans. Unless you buy one that specifically says you can stir in it with metal utensils, never take the risk of damaging the non-stick coating.
Read also:
- How to: pan-fry fish skin-side down
- How to: deep-fry without a deep fryer
- Hack: cleaning the microwave
