This Staple Baking Ingredient Can Help You Fix Scratched Dishes

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White plates or bowls are great ways to show off your prettiest cooking, as they really bring out the food's colors. Unfortunately, they also really show off any scratches and scuffs the dishware acquires over the years. Without special chemicals or cleaning products, it can seem impossible to get your spiderwebbed dishes looking shiny and new again. Oddly enough, the quick fix for this issue is one of many vintage baking ingredients grandma always cooked with — cream of tartar.

The technique is very simple, only requiring cream of tartar, a rag, and water. Apply a liberal coating of cream of tartar to any scratched dish. Then, add some droplets of water before rubbing gently but firmly across the entire surface with a wet rag or scouring pad, turning the cream of tartar into a paste. As you do, you should begin to see the thin dark cracks disappear as if by magic. Fully wash the dish and dry it with a soft microfiber cloth, and you're set without needing to use any specialty products.

Try testing the cream of tartar on the back of a dish first to see if the surface is strong enough to withstand vigorous rubbing. This technique will help you clean vintage dishes the right way as well as keep new dishes shining.

The key to this trick is that those dark cracks you see on your dishes aren't really cracks. Instead, they're surface-level scratches that are shallow enough to polish out. Cream of tartar is a mild abrasive, so rubbing it over the plate buffs the surface layers of glaze until the scruffs no longer show. You may need to repeat the process several times to make the scratches fully invisible, or as they reappear with time. If cracks remain after trying this, you should probably throw out those cracked dishes. Deep cracks can be a breeding ground for bacteria, exposing them to any food you eat.

This technique works best on white or pale dishes, as the scratches would be more visible. The reason the scuffs look like cracks in the first place is usually because the marks are made with eating utensils, so there's a metallic residue left behind. The cream of tartar removes this residue while buffing, making any scuffs lighter and harder to see.

If you don't have any on hand, you don't actually need to buy cream of tartar to get your dishes shining again. You can apply baking soda and then proceed with the exact same steps as in the cream of tartar hack. If you do opt for a chemical option, like Bar Keepers Friend, make sure to wash the dishes thoroughly afterwards to ensure no harmful residue remains.