How to clean stainless pan...

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snoman701

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Oct 8, 2016
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Location
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Ok, lets say you had a stainless catering pan that had been used for the most vile thing you can think of. Chemical or biologic.

How would you clean it so that you would be comfortable using it to boil down sap to maple syrup? As an added challenge, you are then going to feed this maple syrup to your 2 year old daughter.

I struggle wit this a lot. It sounds goofy, but mixing labware and food ware would be really nice once in a while...but i have to be confident that it's clean.

For example, right now I'm trying to develop a candy idea of my daughters...and being able to do it in the lab would be SOOO nice. To have things like precision glassware, temperature controllers, etc.
 
Thank you Dave! I don't feel so self conscious now!!

Snoman, what if you cleaned and cleaned and thought OK good enough. Could you live with yourself if you had to take your kids for chelation therapy?

It sounds drastic, because it is. The dissolved metals we deal with contaminate everything. There is no safe way to make it 'clean' once it's contaminated. Just don't do it!

Pfew! Stepping down from the soap box now! No ill intent meant man, just whole hearted concern.
 
So are you saying that if you were doing food grade work, you would only use brand new bright and shiny labware?
 
UncleBenBen said:
Pfew! Stepping down from the soap box now! No ill intent meant man, just whole hearted concern.

Not at all....I have forever had this concern. I know certain food establishment owners that pick up catering pans and such from the scrap yard all the time...it weirds me out, because I know what I do in some of those pans. I have a cast iron dutch oven that I've melted lead in. I won't sell it or scrap it without breaking it in half first, because it's a griswold.

I've got the buckets at the trees right now, collecting sap. I won't use anything other than food grade buckets, brand new. I figure if anything, the fact that you boil off 95% of the "solvent" makes it that much more important to use food grade wares. It concentrates it!

And all of this, and the syrup needs, got me thinkin...I could really use a big stainless catering pan right now. Have I just been being stupid paranoid all my life? If I am, at least I'm in good company. :)

Thank you!

Although, I will admit, In college I used my corning hot plate & a thrift store cast iron pan to generate applewood smoke for my cardboard box smoker. I'd probably do it again. lol
 
Thank you, snoman. You had my blood pressure up ready to hunt you down!

Just never, ever, ever, mix labware with food. College is a little different. I starved while I was there and ate a lot I probably shouldn't have!!

Edit; wouldn't mind a pint of that good syrup though!!
 
UncleBenBen said:
Just never, ever, ever, mix labware with food.

lol...i really want to reuse the gallon jug i brought my distilled water home in, for sap....but i can't bring myself to do it because it's been in the lab. i can't remember doing anything bad with it, but i have also been living in a new house for four months and can't remember the street address. or the zip code.
 
snoman701 said:
UncleBenBen said:
Just never, ever, ever, mix labware with food.

lol...i really want to reuse the gallon jug i brought my distilled water home in, for sap....but i can't bring myself to do it because it's been in the lab. i can't remember doing anything bad with it, but i have also been living in a new house for four months and can't remember the street address. or the zip code.


Like I said! If it's been in the lab. It's off limits for food!

I scrambled my brain drinking ammonia by accident. But with enough study you will regain your faculties!! :lol:
 
Geo said:
Get a 30 quart turkey fryer. It should hold at least five gallons at a time.

I had considered it, but it's too tall....you want low walls. Keep the area spread out so it collects lots of heat and lets off lots of steam, then doesn't condense on the walls.

Lots of guys use a big ole barrel stove, then weld (or drop in) in a pan of their own creation. There's still some lead seamed tin work out there.

Prolly just use a nesco baking pan, that way I can hook a temperature controller up to it to keep it from burning.

This is my first time, if I like it, I'll fab up a proper boiler for next year.
 
Go to a thrift store and find a corning pyroceram quiche pan or pie pan.

They have plenty of surface area for evaporating quickly.

I love corning. It's a godsend.0301171206-1.jpg

I found the quiche pan on the left for $1.99
The pie pan on the right was $3.99

These ones are my houseware. All of the ones that have went out to the lab, stay out there.. Even if I just took it out of the cabinet, put ice in it, and took it to the shop. It stays. Paranoid? Over cautious? Probably. But, I'd rather be safe than sorry.
 
Topher_osAUrus said:
Go to a thrift store and find a corning pyroceram quiche pan or pie pan.

Topher - that's not going to work for cooking maple sap down to maple syrup - you need MUCH more capacity as well as MUCH more surface area for cooking sap down to syrup --- it takes MANY GALLONS of sap to get a gallon of syrup

Its been a couple years now since the last time I cooked syrup - but the last time I did it was a banner year for the sap run & the sugar content of the sap was higher then normal --- we were pulling about 600 - 800 gallons of sap "per day" for something like 2 & a half to 3 weeks (so literally thousands of gallons of sap) If I remember right our net syrup at the end of cooking was about 130 - 140 gallons - there was 3 of us working it & each of us keep 25 - 28 gallons for personal & we sold a 55 gallon drum to a wholesale buyer

Here are some pics - in the last pic you see most of the steam being vented out the back of the sugar shack which was assisted with a high speed high volume fan - & even the steam would sometimes build up so think in the sugar shack so thick you could hardly see the cooking pans

Kurt
 

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Holy cow.

I had NO idea it was that intensive of a process. Thats incredible.
Thank you for sharing Kurt (and setting me straight).

Sounds like it must be a labor of love.
 
Here are some pics of our sap collection set up - the last of our trees (end of the line) was about a 1,000 yards back off the road - so we had 3 - 55 gallon barrels we would dump the sap in - then seal the barrel & put compressed air to it to push the sap out to a 450 gallon tote in the back of the truck
 

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The cooking pans - in these pics the pan are just "starting" to heat up so there is not a lot of steam being produced yet

the pans are 7 foot long by 3 & a half foot wide
 

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You've got my mouth watering, Kurt!! :p :p

You just can't beat some real maple syrup! Come to think of it, we haven't had any in a while. Going to have to plan a road trip to visit with Mennonites and stock up on some stuff!!
 
We were traveling last week (by car) and always stop to eat at Cracker Barrel. I had pancakes and their maple syrup, which looked a bit thin. Now it is called all natural syrup, 60% Maple 40% corn. All natural, true but not natural Maple syrup.

Damn you have to read all the labels these days!
 
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