The Lazy Mom Way To Never Scrub Another Pan!

Almost every morning, I get up and make an egg of some sort for breakfast.

The problem is, years ago Lazy Dad and I ditched our non-stick, Teflon coated pans and got us a nice set of stainless steel pans.

Mainly because things still got stuck to the non-stick pan and to scrub it off usually scrubbed off some of the coating. Then that coating was possibly being cooked into our food the next time we used the pan. No thanks!

I wanted a pan I could scrub the dickens out of with a scouring pad and not damage the pan in the process.

But okay, I don’t always feel like scrubbing a pan clean with my scouring pad…. Frying up a quick egg, I don’t mind. But scrubbing the pan later that day, I do mind! So what’s a lazy mom to do?!

Here’s a quick Lazy Mom Tip for you that I actually picked up in part from Lazy Dad!

As soon as you have finished cooking and you notice a cooked on mess lingering behind in your stainless steel pan like this:

That’s when you take action!

Take that hot pan off the stove and very carefully put water from your faucet into the pan to where it just covers the bottom of the pan. Be careful! It will smoke a little when you do this! Then place the pan back on the still warm burner.

Now, this is where Lazy Dad usually stops his cleaning process, but no! Don’t stop! This is where the magic happens!!!

Take your spatula that you just used to cook with and gently scrape the bottom of the pan with it. (Doesn’t have to be a spatula, that’s just what I am usually using.)

Yes, scrape up all those little bits of cooking debris just like you are deglazing a pan in a recipe — if you ever do that and know what that means!

I say be gentle, not because you shouldn’t use pressure when you scrape, but because you don’t want to slosh the water out of the pan! However, you will find that you don’t even have to apply that much pressure because the food will practically come right off!

But for those bits of food that are more cooked on, you can use more pressure if you need to (it’s a stainless steel pan after all!). Just scrape until there are no more bits of cooked on food on the bottom of your pan!

Then dump the water and scraped up bits down your disposal and violá! Your pan is mostly clean!