Scene: you’re adventurous, hungry, and a little resistant to cooking, but you’ve been itching to try a roast chicken parmesan recipe on TV. It looks good. It smells good. It tastes good. What’s not good is the mess of dishes in the kitchen.
There’s charcoal. There’s residue. There’s also a fair amount of burnt crust. Whose turn is it to wash the dishes again? Other than soaking them in soapy water overnight or getting out the steel wool, what can you do? You’d better not put the pans in the dishwasher with gooey food scraps on them, unless you want: a. a bigger mess, b. a divorce, or c. a new dishwasher.
You’re in luck. This trick demonstrated by Chopped judge (and chef) Geoffrey Zakarian really works. In the video, dryer sheets remove dirt from baking sheets. That’s right. These anti-static products are useful outside of the laundry room. Watch as they simply get the job done, and try not to get distracted by a man in a fancy suit washing a grimy baking sheet.
Take your dirty baking sheet and spread dryer sheets over the grime. It’s okay if they overlap. Pour in enough warm water to get them soaked. Lay it flat on the counter or in the sink for at least an hour or two. If you really want to make money, let them soak overnight.
Marvel at the way everything flies off your cookie sheet. You won’t have to do the dirty work of picking up burnt cheese from the cookie sheet. Good for you! Then, all you’ll have to do is scrub a little to get the sheet perfectly clean.
Watch below as Geoffrey impresses Rachael Ray with this trick. You can also use this method for pots and pans, and rumor has it that the dryer sheets used work as well. For those of you who don’t keep them at home, you now have a reason. For those of you who used them for things like dusting or smelly diaper pails, you now have another reason.
But keep in mind that it’s not clear if this trick will work on aged dross. Which is? The kind your roommate is used to, like a week’s worth of dishes in the sink, covered in dirt. Or worse, dangerous items left around the house that have developed a cottony white layer of mold. If you try it in such cases, let us know how it goes.
Cleaning up dirty pots and pans after cooking is no fun, especially when the food and burnt residue is so embedded that you need a shovel to remove it. Washing dishes is already a chore, but scrubbing the crust makes it a bit more of a chore. When you can’t outsource the job or have someone else do it, use a trick like this to make it easier.
Have you ever tried this pan cleaning tip?
What other tips do you use to get through a dishwashing marathon?
What else do you use your dryer sheets for? Tell us in the comments
