Cleaning Pans?

[Larry]

Pan cleaning thoughts anyone?

My welded pans are just 3 years old now. Getting them spotless clean seems to be more challenging every year. I just finished cleaning them with vinegar, scotch brite pads and LOTS of elbow grease and they look great. Always exploring, I have a couple of questions on the pan cleaning theme:

1. What's the best way to clean the baked on black on the outside of the pans? A buddy claims that oven cleaner works great. Another says leave them out in the rain for awhile and it’ll soften up.

2. Has anyone ever tried filling the pans with sap and letting it sit until July? I have had several folks tell me that this works better than anything. Apparently, the slightly acidic soup eats up all of the spots, niter, & white flake and brightens up the pans like new.

3. Any other magic recipes for labor saving pan cleaning?

Thanks in advance.

Larry

[davey]

My brother is a sandblaster and we are going to try blasting them clean with sodium bicarbonate. It will remove anything and not touch the stainless at all. I'll post the results.

[mountainvan]

I use the powdered pan cleaner from cdl. I did try vinager on one of my crossflow pans and it worked well. As for leaving the sap in the pans. I would recommend not doing it, especially if you're in the building when it's getting funky, cause it smells bad. Plus the sour sap smell lingers in pans, in my one year of trying it.

[Pete33Vt]

The rig I leased this year had sap in it till about July, yep pretty rank but man did they shine. No smell or after taste. As far as the outside good ole SOS pads worked for me. This year inside of pans we used bulk tank acid. Fill them up just as full as you can dump in a quart of acid and star a good fire get it boiling, leave it for the night then drain and rise the next moring. Had to scrub a very little bit. Good as New

[tapper]

As far as the bottom of the pans the guys at Leader told me to brush them off the best you can and leave them go at that. They claim getting the soot wet will create lye and may attack the stainless. Although, the evaporator I had before this one was 20 years old I pressure washed and used oven cleaner on the bottom of those pans for 10 of the 20 years. I never witnessed any harm to them whatsoever. Maybe the stainless was better back then? The oven cleaner worked good but it was still a lot of work.

[maple flats]

When I had smaller rigs I removed the pans and stood them on end, then hosed them off, let them dry in the sun and then put them in the sugarhouse. This did remove most of the black. With my current rig I am not doing the botton, just wiping the sides and using vinegar inside after doing a few hours of brushing warm pans with plain water. I heat the water to mild hot, brush and then use the water to clean other equipment, when everything else is clean I drain the pand and add white vinegar, warm it, let sit a couple hours , brush leghtly and drain, then rinse and let dry. Then I cover them to keep them clean.

[brookledge]

lye is made from ashes and water. it is very caustic and will eat certain metals. As far as whether it will eat stainless or not I don't know. but anyhow I never wash the soot off my pans. I brush them during and after the season and that keeps the soot to a minimum.
Keith