Put A Shine On It

I got my set of copper bottom cookware for a wedding present oh-so-many years ago, and the bottoms of the pots are now discolored and dull. Today, I experimented with cleaning the copper bottom of a pot to see what would happen.

It was an easy job to do, and required just a few ingredients. I mixed one tablespoon of salt with a cup of white vinegar and stirred it until all the salt was dissolved. Next, I soaked a rag in the solution and placed it on the copper portion of an inverted pan. I let the whole thing set for ten minutes, then checked to see if anything had happened.

Wow! Check out the difference in the picture. The pot on the left has uncleaned copper, and the one on the right is shiny. I've been so used to looking at the dirt and oxidation on the copper bottom that it now looked unnaturally clean. I used a scrubber pad to remove the last of the residue from the copper, then rinsed the pan and dried it. The bottom of the pan gleamed.

The copper is clean now, but I didn't have time to remove the heat discoloration stains above it. I'll be tackling that project, and the rest of the pans, very soon.