I’ve been practicing a kitchen-clean-up trick I learned years ago when former Cook’n author, Jeanne Wolfley, and I were developing recipes for a magazine (Cook’n, owned and published by the creators of the scrapbooking tool CRICUT), that we were asked to create.

I remember it well. We’d done a LOT of cooking to prep several dishes for the day’s photo shoot. Ham and Vegetable Chowder, Red Velvet Cheesecake, Deep Chocolate Cherry Muffins, Turkey and Mashed Potato Croquettes, Prime Rib Deluxe, and Celebration Baked Ham, to name a few things. The professional kitchen we were working in looked like a bomb had gone off. Dirty dishes everywhere. But the most overwhelming issue was the roaster pan that held the baked ham.

And that’s when I discovered a quick-quick way to clean a roaster pan with baked (almost glued) on aluminum foil. (If you already know this, please be patient. I’d been cooking for over 50 years and I didn’t know this trick, so I’m guessing there are others out there that may not know it as well.)

I was just so sure that lining the ham pan with heavy-duty aluminum foil for would cleverly all but eliminate any pan scrubbing, making our after-baking clean up very quick and easy. In theory it’s a great idea. In practice, it just didn’t go well.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure it was the brown sugar glaze that I rubbed into the scored ham. It must have somehow seeped under the foil and not only baked onto the pan but sealed the aluminum foil to the pan. What a mess!

I soaked the pan in hot sudsy water for about an hour. When I went back to it, thinking I could simply lift off the baked-on foil and scrub the pan clean, I found a stubborn mess. That foil wasn’t going anywhere.

So here’s what I did, that you will be glad to know about: I drained the existing sudsy water (no foil went anywhere, remember). I squirted a heavy layer of Palmolive dish detergent all over the pan bottom, with extra emphasis given the stuck-on foil spots. I added hot water to the pan—maybe 2 inches-worth. Then I set the entire thing on the biggest stove burner and turned it on to HIGH. I let it sit there until the water came to a boil; I let the water boil for about 3 minutes—until the detergent came to a thick, almost overflowing mass of suds.

I turned off the heat and went after that ornery foil with a fork, firmly pushing the tines under the foil. After about 30 seconds the foil just peeled away and I could easily lift it out.

I carried the pan to the sink, dumped the soapy water, and voila! All the baked-on everything was gone. I rinsed the pan well and wiped it dry. It looked like new!

This little trick probably saved me over an hour of scrubby-scrubbing. Next time you have baked-on foil plaguing a pan, give this solution a try. You can thank me later.