How do I rescue a pot with burnt jam on the bottom

[DidEinsteinsMum]

Or more precisely charcoaled jam stuck to the bottom.

How on earth can I get the jam to lift?

Tried boiling with very very salty water but only a little of the charcoal has been removed. I need to retrieve pot as it is the bottom of a 3tier steaming pot

Help please!

It took me (and my mum) about a week of twice a day scraping and soaking. Good luck.

This is my EX-mils trick and though it pains me to admit this it DOES work - might take a couple of goes though

Get some dishwasher powder/tablets - the sort you put in the machine.

Put in bottom of saucepan and cover to about 3-4 inches with water - you need a decent amount of water to make this work.

put on hob and boil.

and boil.

and boil.

watch it though, coz it will boil away but it will lift any crap.

Stinks unfortunately, so if you have an extractor fan, get it on!!

Thankyou will give it a go tomo when I can open the windows too. And after the latest bit of salt boiling finishes. Pot still boiling away atm.

Add bicarbonate of soda to the water once boiling, that should do the trick.

Use astonish household paste and a spontex brilliant scourer. That combination has rescued several pots, the grill pan, etc

I get the paste from semi-chem and the scourer from the supermarket

I sprinkle the charcoal with baking powder, fill the pan with a little water (maybe an inch), bring to the boil and let sit over night. then scrub and repeat as long as neccessary.

all you need is washing powder salt alone is no good, not too much, and to boil it for a while. It does come off easily, then just a bit of a scrubbing should finish it.
Just saved a burnt pan last week with this method.

Soaking in Soda Crystals (and quite a bit of scrubbing) has always worked for me

You could also try some of the Lakeland oven cleaner - it is amazing at lifting burnt on yuk.

Have also heard that boiling biological washing powder is good though

bicarb and has reduced some more. soaking in coke didnt work. will try the bio powder tomo. it has improved and the bare metal is very very clean.

Ammonia shifts the carbon from our old burner so might work on your pan? You have to do it outside though as it really stinks.

Dishwasher tablet. Put in pan with 3cm of water. Bring to boil then simmer for 15 mins (will be smelly btw) on a low temp. Seems to work better with economy d/w tablets rather than Finish ime.

old credit card to scrape it off

Wow! Thanks very much for this tip. It really worked. Had to do process twice but pan now clean and it had loads of rock hard strawberry jam stuck to it.

Hi Gmf7! Great but WHICH tip was it that you used? I desperately need to use it to remove my charcoal strawberry jam.

Just a note about the cola tip - you need to boil it, not just soak it.

I'm an Australian and so is my wife Michelle. We live on the Gold Coast in Queensland.
I was making strawberry jam and forgot pot was on stove. The burnt jam was about 1/4 inch thick and as hard as a rock. Michelle told me that cloudy ammonia would fix it. Full of disbelief I covered it with about a quarter inch of the ammonia and put it outside because the ammonia smells like very old, very powerful animal urine.
Three days later I tried to see what had happened. I tried to scrape it and that didn't work so then I hit it with the scraper and it broke out in chunks leaving the steel shiny clean! Here and there were tiny spots which the dishwasher cleaned up.
So there you are - cloudy ammonia and a few days wait.
Regards, John

I've just tried the dishwasher tabs trick and rescued my maslin pan in about ten minutes after an hour of hopeless scrubbing. Just thought you'd like to know!

I was making 6 litres of chilli jam in a Maslin pan. Took my eye off the boil for a few mins .... result burnt and bitter and an cm of rock hard charcoal! I was convinced it was destined for the BIN.Thanks for the great tip. It took quite a few hours and a bit of elbow grease, spontex wire scourer and good old brillo pads .... but wow I now have a shiny pan again.

Sex lube and a fish slice should do it.

But more seriously had this once with apples and bunged in some Oven Pride oven cleaner - a couple of hours later it just rinsed out.

Disapponting. I genuinely thought this thread was about 'how do I rescue a PET with burnt jam on the bottom'.

Soak for 24 hours with biological washing powder. Start it off with boiling water and a good scoop bio washing powder then just leave it for 24 hours.

I’ve just used the dishwasher tablet trick; half filled the pan with water, dropped in a Smol and left it boiling with the lid on for maybe half an hour. All the charcoal had lifted off and the pan was shiny again! Don’t know if it makes a difference, but I got in there quickly - it hadn’t fully cooled from my damson disappointment before I started cleaning it.

Try boiling hydrogen peroxide init.

Biological washing powder rescues all my burnt pans. Warm water and a generous scoop of powder and soak as long as needed.