I am big fan of using steel wool to clean pots and pans. I don’t know if I get my pots and pans particularly dirty, being that I sometimes really badly burn food on the stove and sometimes cook over a fire, so I really need steel wool.

The thing is,
it’s hard to get steel wool any more…

Steel wool is durable, it holds up to hard scrubbing against my cast iron frying pan and my all-steel pots and pans. I like things nice and clean, my pots and pans aren’t really damaged by a little scrubbing. You really want steel wool to get burnt food and smoke off of cast iron.

Yet, few places have steel wool. You can sometimes get copper or even occasionally steel scrubbies if you search around, but non are as effective or durable as plain old steel wool. I guess most places just don’t stock steel wool as so many people use those Teflon crap, that can’t take a good scrubbin’.