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Written by Grove Collaborative

Cleaning burnt pans: We tried grab green cookware pods.

Last Updated: October 14, 2021


Never Google “how to get burnt pans” again. Grove writer Mackenzie Sanford tried grab green Cookware and Bakeware Cleaning Pods on a few tough culinary messes, and she’s here to tell you all about it — with pictures!

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It’s the 21st century, where you can get pretty much anything you desire shipped to your doorstep in a matter of days and the answer to every question is just a Google search away. So I ask you, dear reader: Why are we still stuck scrubbing burnt food off of pans until we’re red in the face? There’s gotta be a better solution, right?


Enter grab green Cookware and Bakeware Cleaning Pods. They claim to take the dirty work out of cleaning your burnt pans, but do they work? Follow me as I test out these cute lil’ pods to see if they really get the job done.

grab green: Behind the brand

grab green is a brand of all-natural cleaning products made by busy people, for busy people. They combine cutting-edge chemistry with eco-responsible ingredients to make healthier cleaning products that really work.


From laundry pods to baby wipes to garbage disposal fresheners, grab green has it all. The best part — for me at least — is that the good folks at grab green are fellow animal lovers. Their products are vegan and have never been tested on animals — and never will be.

So, how do you get burnt food off the bottom of a pan?

According to grab green, you simply toss a pod into your burnt pan with some water, and let it do its thing for 10 minutes. When you come back, even the toastiest bits of baked-on food have been magically loosened, leaving you with effortlessly clean pans — and a lot of extra time on your hands.


The scent

Let me just say that these pods smell absolutely delightful. The scent is “tangerine with lemongrass,” and while I’m not familiar enough with lemongrass to sniff it out, the tangerine is definitely there and I love it.


grab green uses a ton of different citrus oils, including bergamot, tangerine, lime, lemongrass, and ginger essential oils to craft a seriously fresh scent that I kind of want to bathe in.


The science

How can a little pod take care of hours (okay, many minutes) worth of scrubbing? Science!


These pods contain a highly concentrated blend of naturally-derived ingredients that, when mixed with water, promise to remove stuck-on food in minutes without scrubbing or overnight soaking.


Here are the ingredients that do it:

Sodium carbonate

Better known as washing soda, sodium carbonate is derived from baking soda.


It removes greasy build up and softens water to help other cleaning ingredients work better to lift soil and stains from all sorts of surfaces.

Sodium carbonate peroxide

Sodium carbonate peroxide, aka sodium percarbonate, is a natural oxidizer, also sourced from baking soda.


It releases oxygen when mixed with water to get under stains, greasy gunk, and burnt food and literally un-stick them from your pan.

Sodium citrate

Sodium citrate is derived from citric acid, which naturally occurs in citrus fruits.


It helps other cleaners do their job more effectively so that less product is needed to remove grease and grime.

Been around a while? Then you know how much we love baking soda here at Grove. Read up on how to use baking soda to get rid of common household stains.

How to use grab green Cookware & Bakeware Pods

Step 1

Toss the pod into your greasy, gunked-up pots and pans, then fill ‘em with hot water from the tap.

Step 2

Swish the pod around with a utensil until it fully dissolves. The water will look cloudy and white, and you’ll see some semi-fizzy action from the oxygen being released in the water.

Step 3

Let your pan sit for 5 to 10 minutes, then wash as usual. Easy peasy.

If you’re thinking this sounds too easy to be a thing, prepare to be amazed. Watch this video to see just how easy grab green pods are to use.


Burnt rice not once, but twice

How to clean a burnt pot with grab green pods


Did I intentionally burn rice to test these pods out? Yes. People can say a lot of things about me, but they’ll never say that I’m not willing to go the extra mile in the name of a product review.


After diligently watching over the pan for an hour to make sure the rice was good and burned, I just tossed a grab green pod in with hot water from the sink and stared at TikTok for 10 minutes.

The verdict

I came back, rinsed the pot, and the burnt spots washed away with nary a paltry swipe of the sponge. Unbelievable.


I’ve wasted SO MUCH TIME in my life scrubbing burnt spots arduously with an SOS pad — and I’ll never get those precious minutes back.

How to clean a burnt nonstick pan and pot

Halfway through burning my rice, I decided that rice actually sounded pretty good. So I got out my tried-and-true rice cooker and made a batch for dinner.


The rice turned out great but, being the easily distracted and slightly irresponsible person that I am, I accidentally left the cooker on warm overnight.


The way the leftover rice got gunky was impressive — more impressive even than my intentionally burned rice. So I tossed another gg pod in there with water, and waited.

The verdict

Ten minutes later, and look at that! All the gunked-up rice that was stuck fast to the cooker like super glue just slid out. I didn’t even have to scrub.


I’ll be honest, the burnt rice pan wasn’t a terribly impressive culinary disaster, so I wasn’t surprised the pod worked on it — but the rice cooker? It was a glommed-on mess, and I’m pretty thrilled that the pod worked as well as it did.

Burnt oil: The bane of my existence

How to clean a burnt stainless steel pan


Next up is my stainless steel saute pan. This thing always burns like the dickens, no matter what I cook in it — tonight was veggies sauteed in olive oil.


Sounds simple enough, but cleaning this pan usually requires at least an overnight soak, if not longer. How do grab green pods hold up to burnt-on broccoli bits and seared globs of oil?

The verdict

After so much success soaking pans with grab green pods for 10 minutes, I got a little crazy and only let this one soak for 5. The result? Shiny and clean — no trace of burnt oil in sight. Five minutes, y’all!


If you’ve got a ton of stainless steel appliances, pots, and pans, check out the Clean Team’s hot tips for getting your stainless steel smudge-free and polished to a high shine.

Why Grove customers love grab green

Need more reasons to try grab green’s Cookware and Bakeware Cleaning Pods?


Members of Grove’s exclusive Facebook group, The Pantry, were kind enough to share their grab green success stories with us — because who doesn’t love a good before and after photo?

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Extra perks? Yes, please!


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Mackenzie Sanford is a writer and musician trying not to burn her house down in the Midwest.

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