I've acquired two pieces of Griswold enameled cast iron that is stained. One piece seems to have a burned on stain and the other maybe just stained. Doing a search online for how to clean these two pieces I came across seven different methods for getting rid of stains on enameled cast iron. Wanting to clean the two pieces for sale, I don't need these two pieces for my own kitchen and don't see a reason to add them to my "collection".
I thought this might be interesting to see if any of these cleaning methods work. The experiment could be cut short if one of the methods actually work. I'm a bit dubious that any of the cleaning methods that I have found so far will actually work. So here goes, starting with what I thought would be the best way to clean my enameled Griswold.
Denture cleanser made a lot of sense to me as the best method of cleaning enameled cookware. It would seem that dentures and enameled cookware are made from very similar material so why wouldn't it work? Shopping for denture cleanser, a product I've never bought and know nothing about, took much more time then I had anticipated. The different brands, different ingredients, different cleaning times and the obvious different prices.
I decided to go with the store brand denture cleanser, price being the major factor because any of the remaining product will probably never be used. Most of the store brands I have ever purchased have been of high quality, some in fact I prefer to the name brand. I bought the one with baking soda and a 15 minute cleaning time.
The cleaning was done using the directions on the box. The two pots were nested one inside the other, the large pot being about two quarts and the smaller being about 1 1/2 cups, so the small pot easily fit inside the larger. Figuring that my two pots are a little larger than a set of dentures, I used four tablets leaving the pots to clean for the 15 minutes or a little longer.
The result of the cleaning was nothing that I could see. So I tried another cleaning, doubling up the amount of tablets used to 8. In addition to using double the amount of cleanser, I increased the cleaning time to several hours. There was no difference, no cleaning took place that I can see. Would there have been a difference had I used the name brand, doubt it but I'll most likely never know because can't see myself using this method again.
Upon reflection there would seem to be one big obvious difference between enameled cast iron and dentures. Dentures are hardly ever heated to burn food onto them! Six cleaning methods to go unless one happens to work.
I thought this might be interesting to see if any of these cleaning methods work. The experiment could be cut short if one of the methods actually work. I'm a bit dubious that any of the cleaning methods that I have found so far will actually work. So here goes, starting with what I thought would be the best way to clean my enameled Griswold.
Denture cleanser made a lot of sense to me as the best method of cleaning enameled cookware. It would seem that dentures and enameled cookware are made from very similar material so why wouldn't it work? Shopping for denture cleanser, a product I've never bought and know nothing about, took much more time then I had anticipated. The different brands, different ingredients, different cleaning times and the obvious different prices.
I decided to go with the store brand denture cleanser, price being the major factor because any of the remaining product will probably never be used. Most of the store brands I have ever purchased have been of high quality, some in fact I prefer to the name brand. I bought the one with baking soda and a 15 minute cleaning time.
The cleaning was done using the directions on the box. The two pots were nested one inside the other, the large pot being about two quarts and the smaller being about 1 1/2 cups, so the small pot easily fit inside the larger. Figuring that my two pots are a little larger than a set of dentures, I used four tablets leaving the pots to clean for the 15 minutes or a little longer.
The result of the cleaning was nothing that I could see. So I tried another cleaning, doubling up the amount of tablets used to 8. In addition to using double the amount of cleanser, I increased the cleaning time to several hours. There was no difference, no cleaning took place that I can see. Would there have been a difference had I used the name brand, doubt it but I'll most likely never know because can't see myself using this method again.
Upon reflection there would seem to be one big obvious difference between enameled cast iron and dentures. Dentures are hardly ever heated to burn food onto them! Six cleaning methods to go unless one happens to work.
