Mary asks: "Can you tell me the quickest way to remove years of burned on grease on the bottom of my flat pan."

"I've used Awesome, Scrub Free, and Dawn Dish Detergent (the one used for cleaning oil from the birds during Valdez oil tanker that ran aground in Alaska)."

"With the combination of the three, some has come off with hard elbow grease, but would like to use one product that would make it easier."

Tawra: I am the queen of burning things. One time I even melted the tea kettle to the burner! No kidding, Mike and mom still tease me about it. I have tried over the years many things to save my pots and pans. Here's what I do.

I wasn't clear if you meant the bottom of the inside of a pan or the outside, so I'll address both.

If you mean the inside of the pan, these two things work the best:

• Place a generous amount of baking soda (about 1/2 cup) in the bottom of your pan. Make sure it covers the bottom of your pan. Fill with water and then simmer for an hour or so. Most of the burned of stuff should come right off. You can do this more than once if needed.
  
  
• If it doesn't all come off with the first method then I take a razor blade and scrape off the last of the burned on food. I scrub with an SOS pad and after that the pans are usually good as new!
  
  

If the burned on grease is on the outside bottom of the pan, then go straight to the SOS pad and scrub hard. Unfortunately, the only easier way we have found to deal with this is to buy a new pan, which was the first thing Mike recommended when he noticed "quickest" and "easy" in your question ;-).