Aluminum pots, although safe to use as long as you follow relative tips (please refer to Is It Safe to Use Aluminum Pots), becomes dirty easily sometimes. After being used for a period of time, a layer of black color will be produced on the surface of some pots. If you follow usual cleaning steps for dishes and bowls, you may make great effort and still fail to remove the black color off. As a matter of fact, a rule has long been found that the more difficult to do a thing seems to be, the easier its solution turns out to be, because the nature has a surprising chasing chain.
If we want to remove the black color on the inner side of aluminum pots, we must learn how the black color has come into being. As said in another article, it’s safer to use aluminum pots for boiling water than for cooking. The water we pour into the pot, however, proves not to be so clean as we imagine. It contains lots of metal elements like Ca, Mg and Fi. The last one, also called iron, reacts easily with aluminum which is very active. In the reaction process the aluminum element is dissolved in water, which enables Fi to come out and stick to the surface of the pots. The color of iron is black. That’s how the black color comes. However, not all aluminum pots turn black after boiling water. The reaction mentioned above only happens base on three conditions. First, there must be lots of Fi element in the water. Second, the water must be boiled for a long time. Third, the pots must be new. An old pot usually has, on the surface, a protective layer which has been produced during reaction between aluminum and oxygen in the air. Then how to remove the black color off? Just pour some water on it or boil acid food for several times, and the pot will be bright again!
