Friday’s Kitchen Trick — Behold the Power of Baking Soda

Lots of us use baking soda in our refrigerators to combat the stench of those blossoming mold-farms growing on last month’s potato salad that’s _still there,_ forgotten in the back of the ‘fridge. Some of us buy laundry detergent with baking soda in it, hoping that it will make our work-out clothes smell better. Many even buy toothpaste with baking soda in it because it does such a great job polishing our teeth. Occasionally we even use it in baking.

Baking soda has so many uses that it’s hard to find one more. It’s marketed in so many different ways, included in other products, and used so much. I know of another way to use it, one that actually saves a little bit of cash, some muscle energy, and doesn’t bring yet another toxic chemical into the house. I’ll elaborate with a story.

Last year at Christmas, my parents gave us a beautiful set of all-clad pots and pans. I love them, but the transition from non-stick to all-clad was a little rocky at first, namely because cleaning wasn’t as easy as it had been with our trusty Calphalon pans. Food stuck, the pans took forever to scrub, and clean-up was frustrating. I thought about getting some of that pan polishing stuff (like ajax or comet, but marketed as something a bit more gentle), but I always seemed to forget it when I was at the store.

Then, a few weeks into the whole clean-up fiasco, I found a little webpage that had “green” tips for the home (I can’t find it now–it’s been so long, but if I do I will post it in the links section) that listed baking soda as a scouring powder. I tried it, and it actually works. Use it like a paste–pour enough baking soda in the pan, on the counter, in the sink… wherever you need to clean. Then use enough water to make the paste and rub with a sponge or a dishrag. It actually removes stuck on dirt without as much effort. It also makes that nasty smell in the kitchen sink go away, which is always a plus for slackers like me.