Death of a pot

Have you ever smoked a pot? No, no, not pot; I mean a pot, a saucepan. I have recently had the misfortune to do so. It’s a bad smell. And I’ve been here before.

How on earth have I managed to do it twice? Yes, about 30 years ago, I burnt a pot. The same brand as this one. A VERY expensive brand. The type of kit you know your children will pounce on once you pop your clogs. Why couldn’t I have stuffed up a ‘free’ supermarket saucepan, one of those ‘Gift with a thousand dollars of groceries’ pots? Why was it my favourite saucepan that has simmered hundreds and hundreds of sauces, steamed hundreds and hundreds of vegetables, sautéed, stewed and sizzled countless ingredients to perfection?

I lost the plot

I was all set to watch Grand Designs to perve on houses I will never own. I like that programme. I like the way the presenter doesn’t ever tell anyone they are mad or stupid, though you know he’s clocked that. I was assembling dinner with everything from the garden: beans, potatoes, tomatoes, rocket, basil, tarragon, mint, garlic. The olive oil was local. The salt from across the shore. The lemon from the tree, someone’s tree (the neighbour’s!). It’s my idea of summer perfection.

I was steaming the potatoes in the pot that was about to die. It didn’t know it, nor did I. I was going to cook the beans separately but decided to throw them into the top steamer with the few larger potatoes that needed a bit more cooking. It’ll save on water and cooking fuel. Good thinking, Batman, etc. As the smaller potatoes were ready, I removed them from the steamer and wrapped them in paper towels. It improves the flavour and texture and dries them, too. All was well. I poured myself a large glass of 100% alcohol wine, topped up with sparkling soda and a few sliced strawberries. Oops, I mean alcohol-free wine, and I state this so you know that alcohol can’t be blamed. The beans were scarlet runners, some a little mature, though I had thinly sliced them. They’re delicious beans but take longer to cook than skinny green jobs. I had 3-4 minutes to kill while the beans cooked, so I checked out the pot plants on the deck, dead-heading and fussing around with them. When I came back into the kitchen, I could smell burnt mint. Curious, I thought. Oh, the potatoes and beans, I remembered. Too late. I lifted the lid. The beans were dehydrated. Smoked. The pot below the steamer was bone dry, black, smoky and smelly. I quickly put the lid on the pot. Swore, as you do, then I put the pot outside on the deck, on a cork mat, so it wouldn’t burn the deck. I’m not that stupid.

I put the pot outside on the deck, on a cork mat, so it wouldn’t burn the deck.

The smell of burnt pot is disgusting. The whole house reeked of it. My bedroom was like an unaired teenage boy’s den with top notes of burnt bark, steamed hay and other unmentionables. The kitchen was worse with dreadful smells of scorched mint and smoked potato skin that combined to smell like singed cat hair. It was dusk, mossie time, but I had to open every orifice in the house to blow the stink out. 

A burnt pot is like a death in the family: My pot died, and I needed a hug. I slunk out to the bean plants, apologised for wasting their time, and asked them to apologise to the bees for all their wasted work. They’d pollinated the flowers, as I’d asked them to do, the plants had grown the beans, I’d picked them, and they were going to bypass me and go straight into the compost. That wasn’t the arrangement.

I looked at my dinner offering, now shrunk in size. I couldn’t sit there smugly thinking I’ve grown everything on this plate, woo-hoo. I just sat there. Eventually, I ate cold potatoes, tomatoes, and salad. The pot was looking at me while I was eating. I knew I had to deal with it. 

Don’t add water

Experience had taught me not to throw water into a burning pot. You will want to do that, but you must not. It could warp the pot, and then it will have to go to landfill. I tackled the cooled pot with a trusted Goldilocks pot scourer and generous sprinkles of Bar Keepers Friend (no, no, not a typo, there is no comma in the product’s name), a white powder that promises, ‘BFK will make your pots and pans shine like new.’ I scratched away. The water was black, but when I rinsed the pot, it was just about new. Near enough. I had been lucky, very lucky. The pot lives, brought back from the brink. The landfill tip was calling, and two minutes more on the dry inferno, and that’s where it would have ended up. Thank you, pot, or someone, or something.

The lesson? If you deviate from your plan (mine was to steam potatoes, and I had enough water in the pot below the steamer insert), check first that you are equipped for the changes you want to make. All I had to do was lift the steamer basket to eyeball the water level. Instead, I just threw the beans in the pot and walked off.