In the course of time in my kitchen, a few of my stainless steel pots and pans have picked up some baked-on spots and patches of discoloration. It’s normal, but not very pretty and it can gradually worsen over time. One pot in particular was becoming fairly stained, and a friend suggested I try a product called Bar Keepers Friend.
I found a little gold can of Bar Keepers Friend in the cleaning supply section of my grocery store. It is considered a “mild abrasive” and contains oxalic acid, which I assume is the primary reactive agent. The can set me back about $2.00. For that price, I thought it was worth a shot.
There are two ways to use Bar Keepers Friend, according to the directions on the canister. You can wet a washcloth and sprinkle the powder on the cloth before starting your cleaning. Or for heavier stains, you can make a paste with a little water, rub it into the surface you want to clean, and let this sit for a few minutes.
For my stained stainless steel, I opted for the later option. I put the pan in the sink and dribbled a little warm water in the bottom. A sprinkled on a generous portion of Bar Keepers Friend and used an old cleaning sponge to mix it together and wash it up the sides. This was a little more watery than the “paste” recommended by the directions, but it still seemed to do the trick.
Ten minutes of intensive scrubbing later, my pan was clean. This definitely took more elbow grease than I’d been expecting, but since no amount of elbow grease (or natural cleaners) had done anything before, I’m not complaining. There are still a few little flecks of discoloration here and there on the sides, but overall I am very pleased with this afternoon’s labor!
Besides stainless steel pots, apparently you can use Bar Keepers Friend to clean tiles, imitation marble, chrome, porcelain, ceramic, and copper. It’s also supposed to remove rust spots, which my husband is eager to try on his bike. I used barely an eighth of the can on my three pots, so there’s plenty left for more cleaning experiments.
Have you ever used this product? How do you like it?
Related: Home Hacks: How to Clean a Cast Iron Skillet
(Images: Emma Christensen)
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It's good stuff. I use it with a ScotchBrite pad.
This thing cleans and takes stains off of EVERYTHING... even my third wife! HAHA! Thanks, I'll be here all night.
My mom taught me to clean stainless steel sinks and faucets with barkeeps friend. I also use it on bathroom sinks and vanities. Since it is 'mild,' it won't scratch the surfaces but leaves them shiny and spotless. Makes it easy to pick up stuff you'd have to really scrub with the spray cleaners.
This stuff is great! Just rememer...wear gloves!!! :)
BKF is great. I use it mostly on stainless steel, but have also used it on some badly tarnished copper (in particular, copper-plated register covers in our home shortly after moving in-- I don't think the prior owners even knew that they were copper!). I've also seen spray-bottle versions (I think at Bed Bath & Beyond), but I stick with the powder since it's cheaper and I know it works.
It's great on Le Creuset & other enamel cook ware too.
I too learned of this stuff from my mom as a kid. I've never been without it. It's great in the bathroom too - anything metal.
I've used it for years on stainless, copper, brass and whatever else is tough to clean. It really works.
Not kitchen related, a note for your husband:
Be very careful using this on a bike! If your bike is rusty it could be eating through the frame which could lead to failure while you're riding or way more damage than normal in a collision. Also, using even a mild abrasive can further damage your bike's paint. If the cleanser gets into any moving parts it can remove the grease that keeps the bike functioning well and prevents rust.
Grew up with this as well, except the container we had was called Bon Ami. Great for cleaning your sink, as well as cheap jewelry that starts to look dull.
Besides the uses in the kitchen, it's one of the few things that really gets my ancient porcelain tub clean.
Where can you buy this stuff? Looked for it recently at Safeway and couldn't find it...
We recently started using this stuff and LOVE it as well. We used it to clean our All-Clad stainless steel pots and pans (all 3, haha). We used it to clean the hard water spots off our water fixtures. We also used it to clean our brand new Emile Henry pizza stone after our first attempt at using it resulted in pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese burned onto the 500F heated stone.
BKF is the best!! I've been using it for years in the kitchen on everything from the porcelain sink to the stainless steel appliances and it works perfectly every time!
I used this for years before I discovered (accidentally) that it works wonders on copper. It seems to be readily available almost everywhere - grocery store, home improvement store, Bed Bath & Beyond, etc.
This is also the recommended cleaner for Heath Ceramics
http://www.heathceramics.com/go/heath/tableware/quality-care/
my mother has always used barkeeper's friend, and gave me a can way back when i got my first teakettle. they sell the liquid (which is thick, like cooktop cleaner) at williams sonoma, it's good stuff too.
My parents have a stainless steel sink as well as stainless steel counters and shelves in their kitchen, barkeepers friend is the best thing to get all of them clean.
@matikin9---DO not use BKF or any other soap on your pizza stones if they are unglazed. The soap/chemicals will seep into the unglazed clay, and the next time you use it, will leach back out into your pizza crusts or bread.
If your Emile Henry stone is glazed (I'm not familiar with these stones) you're probably OK, since the glaze protects and seals the clay. But any unglazed stones, which most of them are, and any clay tiles you get from the pottery/hardware/garden stores must never be cleaned with anything but water.
You can scrape off the big crud, and scour it down once the stone is cool with a scrubbie or a stiff brush, but staining on unglazed clay/terra cotta is inevitable. When mine gets really gross, I leave it in my oven when I run the cleaning cycle. The high heat will not hurt it, but the soap/chemicals most certainly will. As will a drastic temperature change (don't put a hot stone in cold water....I speak from experience on this one).
Other than that BKF is fabulous for all the above uses, and I've even used it with great sucess on my andonized aluminum Calphalon. It gets rid of the fine surface scratches, but doesn't damage the finish.
Do any of the Australian readers know if this is what we call Ajax?
I was actually a little grossed out by how well BKF worked on the grout on our tile floor. Which is to say - we discovered that the grout was white, not gray!
@RosieGreenie, I think they're similar, but the active ingredient in BKF is oxalic acid, and I have no idea what the active ingredient in Ajax is. That is all from Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of cleanser.
Will try this on the grout in our bathrooms!
I've got a great chicago metallic half sheet pan that gets used a lot to roast and otherwise delishify things under high heat. Thus, it is brown and spotty and looks war-torn, not sparkly new and clean like it used to.
I've been able to mitigate some spots with the BKF, but not all. Any hints for truly cleaning this pan? Steel wool? Bad idea?
I have never used BKF, but I am tempted....I recently discovered that my ancient range hood is a totally different color. It's caked in decades of grease! Would BKF be good to cut vintage grease and get my old vent-a-hood back to gold?
Yes. I've used it on Stainless steel saute pan with cooper. I actually leave it for a while in which time I clean up other things. It makes the scrubbing less labor intensive. It doesn't damage it at all if left for about 20-30 minutes. Great recovery job!
@RosieGreenie
No- ajax can be used on tubes, floors, sinks, tiles, etc, but not in food prep items such as pots/pans.
that would be TUBS not TUBES
I found mine at Target & also at Wal-Mart.
Any such name, BKF works alot better than Bon ami...well, at least on stainless steel pots.
I read somewhere that BKF is bad for you.
Does anybody know about this?
I looked up both BKF and Bon Ami. Bar Keeper's Friend uses Oxalic Acid - it does not say what concentration, but OA was originally developed as a pesticide... sort of weird (this is all from the MSDS/EPA R.E.D. info on the BKF website). It suggests you not inhale it, etc. Can be an eye/skin irritant. BKF does not list the ingredients on the website.
Bon Ami is another story altogether: They list their ingredients, tell you where they source them, and how they use each one in the products. They recycle/reuse and have a more "earth friendly" feeling than BKF. (IMO) I appreciate the transparency of Bon Ami. If BKF gave more information, I would be more inclined to consider using it.
I use Bon Ami, I think b/c I saw someone comment on it here in the past, but I also found out my mom had used it when I was little, much after the fact.
In my grocery stores: Bon Ami is ~$1 for a can and BKF runs over $2. I'm sure Bon Ami is bad for you if inhaled, eye irritant, etc, but it is made of mostly natural ingredients. I feel better using Bon Ami overall. (It cleans my S/S sink just fine....) but I don't have S/S pots and pans.
Be careful with using BKF on non-stick pans because it can ruin the surfaces of them. Other than that I use BFK for all of my stainless steel pots, my glass stovetop and all sorts of other stains that wont go away. I introduced to my mom who told my aunt and now it is a staple in all of our homes.
Regarding oxalic acid being unnatural, Wikipedia tells me that it occurs naturally in rhubarb leaves, among other places. And any particulate matter is not typically recommended for inhalation.
Does anyone know if this is available in Australia?
A little late, but I also use this to clean my knives. I bought a cheapish set of knives on sale at Macys...not terrible, but I'm not weilding beautiful german steel here, either...it works wonders cleaning off any dried on water spots and the occassional rust spot that happens if any water gets left on my knives. They look brand new! Also, the bottom of my pots and pans tend to 'brown' over time, and I've found the powder BKF works wonders on shining them back up. They still have stains but they're not brown anymore, and I'm content with that. The only time i've used it on a non-stick surface was on a baking pan that I used recently to roast with, it was a last ditch effort before i tossed the pan (it was that bad). It worked, though I really had to put some effort into it. The pan isn't spotless again, but at least its lacking those gigantic black tarry spots. I've found this stuff at the occasional dollar store, but I usually pick it up at Bed Bath & Beyond with my 20% coupon.
We bought some to clean the dip pans on the stove (which are beyond help). It ended up sitting under the sink for about a year. A couple of weekends ago, I pulled it out after realizing how dingy the sink looked. I used some dish soap, bar keepers friend, and scrub brush and man did that sink look awesome!!
Besides the uses in the kitchen, it's one of the few things that really gets my ancient porcelain tub clean.
bar sinks
I use Bar Keepers Friend on my stainless steel pots and to clean my stainless steel sink. It works great,and doesn't require a lot of elbow grease. As far as I know, Bon Ami is a completely different product, and so is Ajax.