Bought that fancy Meyer lemon dish soap everyone raves about and my pots came out cloudy

I finally caved and bought a bottle of that Mrs. Meyer's lemon verbena dish soap after seeing it hyped online for months. First few washes smelled great, but after a week my stainless steel pans started looking all dull and streaky. Turns out the natural formula doesn't cut through polymerized oil the way Dawn does. Has anyone else had a natural soap mess up their cookware finish?

3 comments

3 Comments

kevin_dixon11d ago

Vinegar trick is legit. Had the same milky haze on my All-Clad after switching to some natural grapefruit soap. A quick wipe with white vinegar cut right through that film. The scent is nice on those natural soaps but they just don't have the muscle for real kitchen cleanup. Dawn really is the truth for greasy pans. That whole natural soap hype definitely glosses over the hard water reaction problem.

stella_baker11d ago

Fair point Kevin, but I've had decent luck with castile soaps on stainless as long as I rinse everything with hot water right after washing. The vinegar trick works for haze, but I think skipping the drying step is what really causes that film to set in.

the_hugo12d ago

That Mrs. Meyer's is actually a castile soap base, not a true detergent like Dawn. Castile soaps have a higher pH and can react with the metal on stainless steel, especially if you have hard water. Your pots are basically getting a mineral film buildup from the soap reacting with calcium in the water. A quick fix is to wipe them down with white vinegar after washing, then rinse and dry right away. But yeah, for heavy grease and baked on stuff, a synthetic detergent like Dawn or Palmolive is really the better tool. Natural soaps just don't have the surfactants to do that job well, and the hype around them is mostly about the scent, not the performance.