This Cleaning Powder Was Invented in the 1880s. It Still Keeps My Kitchen Gear Looking New.
By Christine Cyr Clisset - Published February 22, 2024 - New York Times
"Bar Keepers Friend: A staff-favorite cleaner that brings out the shine
This mildly abrasive cleaner brightens metal, removes rust, and cleans all kinds of tough stains and gunk with help from a plant-derived acid. Just don’t use it on delicate surfaces..."
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/bar-keepers-friend-cleaner/
In a time-honored tradition, marriage gave me a life partner and my first good kitchen gear—including two shiny All-Clad skillets.
During that first year of marriage, between hosting dinner parties and cooking extravagant meals for two, I’d admire the glimmering skillets, which seemed to symbolize, in a small way, adulthood.
Sure, I was hitched. But heck yeah, I’d finally gotten heirloom-quality cookware!
Inevitably, though, the gleam faded.
Just as my husband and I passed from the honeymoon phase into the complexity of learning to live together, the skillets developed a patina, acquiring a yellow cast, baked-on oil, and scorch marks. Scrubby pads failed to get the gunk off.
Then a good friend tipped me off to Bar Keepers Friend—aka BKF, for those in the know. It was, she assured me, the way to clean stainless steel.
She was right. The mildly abrasive powder quickly restored the glimmer to my cookware.
I’ve since learned that this powder, developed in the 1880s no less, shines up a lot more than just skillets.
It polishes stainless steel beautifully:
Sinks. Faucets. Stove-burner drip pans. I’ve shined them all with Bar Keepers Friend.
Just a sprinkle of powder and a brisk scrub with a sponge removes much of the dulling grime that accumulates on stainless steel in the kitchen and bathroom.
Oxalic acid is Bar Keepers Friend’s secret sauce. This compound, which naturally occurs in many fruits and vegetables, works wonders, shining up metal and removing rust.
Of course, you can find other abrasives that are good cleaners. Wirecutter’s kitchen team highly recommends baking soda for stained pots and pans, for example.
But Bar Keepers Friend is what they recommend for tougher chores such as cleaning ovens and removing the seasoning from a baking sheet.
How to clean with Bar Keepers Friend:
The instructions recommend that you sprinkle the powder on a wet surface and then gently rub with a wet sponge or cloth. Most crucially, you’re supposed to wipe or rinse off the mixture no more than a minute after applying it. Otherwise, it may cause
discoloration or scratch the surface.
I generally follow those rules, but I go rogue when cleaning especially dirty pans. Wirecutter’s kitchen team and I have both found that it takes a lot more scrubbing to thoroughly remove baked-on oil and scorch marks.
We have yet to encounter any damage, likely because we’re using cookware made from high-quality stainless steel. But don’t worry if your stainless steel isn’t as durable—as long as you’re following the directions, Bar Keepers Friend will still
work wonders. The company has tips for handling really scorched pans, too. (BKF also sells a specialized cookware powder for removing stains and burnt-on food, but we haven’t tested it.)
For any surface that you’re cleaning, the company recommends testing an inconspicuous spot first and wearing gloves when working, as the oxalic acid can irritate skin.
The gentle rub that the container recommends might seem counterintuitive when you’re cleaning a really dirty surface, but I’ve found that light, quick scrubbing is often more effective than applying a ton of pressure.
In a recent test, senior editor Marguerite Preston and updates writer Abigail Bailey pitted baking soda against Bar Keepers Friend and found that the latter was far more effective at removing baked-on oil and scorch marks.
And although both abrasive cleaners can scrub off stains and scratches, our kitchen team found that baking soda failed to lift off the yellow patina that stainless steel develops from high heat.
Bar Keepers Friend, on the other hand, restored our test pan to its shiny silver color.
It makes old look new again:
Bar Keepers Friend is particularly adept at giving new life to old things.
I was reminded of this two summers ago when I found an abandoned enameled Le Creuset omelet pan coated in baked-on oil and burn marks. Bar Keepers Friend made it look virtually new, allowing me to gloat that I’d scored a $175 pan off a neighborhood
giveaway table.
A co-worker, supervising editor Joshua Lyon, achieved a similar result cleaning porcelain in a 1924 cabin that he and his husband bought in 2011.
“The kitchen’s porcelain farmhouse sink gave off dead-tooth vibes thanks to an overall grayish tone and dark streaks that wouldn’t come out no matter how hard I scrubbed with kitchen cleaners or baking soda,” he told me. “I considered replacing
it until we tried Bar Keepers Friend, which easily returned the sink to a gleaming white after only one application.”
Joshua’s second “BKF miracle” happened in his new house. Previous owners had covered a circa-1930s porcelain-tile bathroom floor with carpet, which left dark adhesive stains.
“The tiles and grout aren’t glazed and are much more fragile than our old sink, so I’d always been concerned about using anything too abrasive,” he said.
He decided to put BKF up against baking-soda paste on a small section of the floor, and the results were immediate. “There’s now a square of white in a sea of grunge,” he said. “Finishing the project will be a big chore, because I’ll need to
work in small sections due to how old the tile is and BKF’s one-minute rule. But it’ll be worth it.”
Bar Keepers Friend’s corporate administrator, Janet McKinley, who has worked at the company for 47 years, told Wirecutter associate staff writer Ellen Airhart that she uses the powder to whiten the soles of tennis shoes and remove the “green yuck”
off vinyl siding.
But it’s not magic, and you shouldn’t use it on everything:
Despite all the success, this is not fairy dust.
You shouldn’t use Bar Keepers Friend on delicate surfaces, such as marble, wood, cast iron, nonstick pans, painted surfaces, and other things that scratch easily. This Reddit thread chronicles some mishaps, along with a company response as to what
surfaces you should avoid.
Also, don’t use it on yourself.
McKinley recalled someone once asking her about using the cleanser on their false teeth. Not recommended!
“You don’t want our product in your mouth,” she emphasized.
It sometimes takes work, but it’s worth the effort:
I’ve found that for particularly stained cookware, BKF still requires putting my back and arms into the scrub.
I recently tested BKF on one of my skillets, which I’d been neglecting. Rubbing off the scorches and baked-on oil from half of the bottom of the pan took a good 15 minutes. My triceps ached.
I may have added a few more scratches with all of that scrubbing, and I’m okay with that. I’ve scratched many stainless steel pans while cleaning them over the years, but the scratches give them character.
And hey, my two All-Clad skillets are still going strong after 14 years. So is my marriage.
With proper care, all three should last a lifetime..."
Ellen Airhart, Marguerite Preston, and Abigail Bailey contributed reporting. This article was edited by Joshua Lyon and Catherine Kast.
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