NOTE: I'm recently getting back into blogging, and I have a large cache of half-written, mostly written and (like this one) fully written posts that I never got around to finishing or posting. Here's the first oldie, from about 3-4 months ago. I was VERY close to changing the cheesy title, but it is late, so enjoy:
Seriously. Until recently, I had never tried using baking soda to clean.
Between cooking in restaurants for 4 of my teenage years, being an enthusiastic cook most of my life, having two children and doing a lot of my own car maintenance over the years, I'm no stranger to cleaning all sorts of crazy messes. Over the years, I've come to think that the more caustic and chemical-laden the cleaning solution is, the better the cleaning power.
Recently, my wife has gotten into cooking with clay pots, with delicious results. However, because clay pots are porous and absorb the flavor of whatever you soak them in, you can't clean them with soap. Instead, baking soda was the prescribed cleansing agent.
I was dubious at first. Surely baking soda is much too benign and simple to have any sort of cleaning power, right? I mean, there has to be some threat of cancer to even begin to have any serious game here.
WRONG
This stuff is ridiculous. Pour a little pile of the white stuff, and mix it with small amounts of water until it becomes a paste, and it will remove the most caked crap off of any pan, dish or skillet. Forget the scrub/scour pads - you'd have to go steel wool to get even close to the amount of time this stuff saves. I'd still recommend a pre-soak with the bad stuff though.
I may be the last idiot on earth to come to this realization, but if I've helped at least one man, woman or kid clean a really dirty dish more easily, I'll be happy.
