Stupidly sealing some Lamb shanks I let them burn the bottom of the pan. Have tried everything I can think of, dishwasher tablets (simmered 3 times!) Bicarb & lemon juice. most of the 'black'has come off but the enamel looks very grey and stained. Is there anything any ones knows I can do? Very sad as it was a wedding present.

You have tried the conservative solutions that I would normally come up with.

I think you have got to the stage where you may actually cause more damage by trying to do good if you use more aggressive methods.

What usually happens with enameled cooking pots is that after a while the glaze on the enamel wears thin which exposes the underlying enamel surface which has a degree of porosity.

As an analogy, imagine the pores in your skin and think of getting a strong ink on your hand that stains deeply. You can scrub and scrub, but after a while you are left with a stain that just won't shift because the ink has penetrated down into the pores of your skin. That's where the apology ends, because as you are a living organism and your skin will almost certainly rejuvenate, whereas things are not so straightfoward with your pot.

What has happened with your pot is that the carbon created by the process of burning the food has filtered down into the pores of the enamel on your pot.

Getting that carbon out is difficult, and you could easily do more harm than good by trying to get the surface to look good.

One thing that comes to mind is making a paste out of bicarb and smearing it over the affected surface and leaving it to dry out over night - you may need to repeat that process a number of times; it might just draw the carbon out.

Another approach would be to bleach the carbon so that it doesn't show - you could try using ordinary household bleach to do that, but it will just be an aesthetic solution as opposed to anything else.

When you have a porous surface in a cooking pot, the best practical approach is to get oil/fat into the pores - which is what seasoning is about.

However, what happens when you try to clean the surface to make it look good is that you tend to strip out every last gram of oil or fat.

The bottom line is that if you can live with the staining and carry on using your pot that is probably the best way forward.

You may find that after a while it fades anyway.

I have an old casserole that I sometimes get frustrated with and I boil a solution of vinegar and bicarb in it and then leave to soak overnight - it's a powerful way of stripping the enamel and it looks nice and clean again, but to be honest it's not an approach I could recommend for a treasured pot.

The best advice I can give you is to keep using your casserole and don't get too aggressive with the cleaning process. An efficient working tool doesn't always look like it belongs in a magazine.

Hope this helps.

Thank you so much, have tried bleach but to no avail.! wil try your sugestions or alternatively leave the lid on so I can't see the damage that I have very stupidy done! Won't make same mistake again! Thank you

This may or may not help as i have never tried it on a cooking pot but here goes, i'm in the RAF and when we get a rifle which is covered and i'm talking up to 2mm thick in carbon from firering we soak the parts in malt vinegar, it disolves the cabon and makes it easy to clean away, ok it does smell like a bag of chips for a while but it doesn't damage the metal or its coating, maybe it will work for your pot as well!

Thanks! Will give it a go, here's hoping Good job I like chips!!!!!!

le Creuset alao do their own brand of enamel cleaner- most department stores that stock the cookware normally stock it but if they dont try an indepent cookware shop in cheltenham called cheltenham kitcheners who stock it and they'll send it to you. They're also the oldest and first cookware shop in the uk. The cleaner is very effective!!