Brillo Pads

I have a love-hate relationship with Brillo pads. I absolutely love them -- they get my pots and pans so clean with so little effort. But then again... they are expencive, and they are certainly not eco-friendly. But, so far I have trudged on buying them because what else can you do? Nothing gets 5-day-old burned-on food off like they do -- or do they? Well, I recently ran out of Brillo pads and haven't been to Wal-Mart or Target so I haven't had some for a few days. Since then I've been cooking as usual and it finally got to where I could stand the pile no longer, so I tried to use normal dishsoap to no avail. I then added some baking soda. It seemed to make it work a bit better. And then.. eurika! I added salt to act like the steel pad part and it worked brilliantly. The first time, and on the absolutely worse pan, I used my hand and it came off really fast. Then I thought about the blog and that most people wouldn't like using their hands so I used a washcloth. It absorbed some on the mix but still worked really well. You know the brown gunk that comes off the pot when you clean it with a Brillo pad? The same kind of stuff came off of the pots with my clean method. I really didn't measure I just eyeballed it. I probably used too much. I made a paste with the baking soda, salt and dishwashing liquid to rub against the pot and it came off really easy. With the salt I used plain idonized salt. I don't ever eat it but it's much cheaper than sea salt for cleaners and crafts. You can get off brand for less than a dollar. Sometimes much less.

I'll break it down for you.

All ingrediants are dependant on your pan size

> 1/2 tsp baking soda
>1/4 tsp salt
>1/4 tsp dish soap (just enough to make a paste)

Mix right in the pan and rub about it vigorously just like a Brillo pad and bring to a sparkling shine :)