A Review: Cascade vs. Electrosol

After we were married, Dawson and I lived in a one bedroom apartment that did not have a dishwasher. Sometimes we were really good at keeping up with washing the dishes, but there were times when we were lazy (I guess!) and the dishes would pile up, and the only way to get the dishes clean was to wash them by hand...however, one time we carted them over to my mom and dad's house to use their dishwasher! Washing dishes in a small kitchen without any windows was just not very fun - washing dishes is usually not very fun...unless you simply load the dishwasher, put in the detergent and press start.

Now that we are living in a house, we really enjoy that we have a dishwasher that does most of the dishwashing for us. I still (usually) wash my pots, pans and Cutco knives by hand, but thankfully it is not as much as washing ALL of the dishes by hand!

I was recently asked if I would do a review comparing Cascade Complete (liquid) with Electrasol (liquid). I agreed to do it and I decided that I would try to do it in the following manner: I did a total of 3 loads of dishes for each detergent, I followed the directions that they had on the container, and then I looked at the dishes afterwards to see if the dishes were clean and there were no spots left on the glasses and plastic.

What did I think?

The Cascade Complete said that no prerinsing was necessary and to fill each well up with the detergent. What I found was that it was not able to get all of the egg off of the pan that I cooked with that morning and there were spots remaining on the glasses. The rest of the dishes looked clean, but I did not particularly like the spots on the glasses. I also felt that it was false advertising - I really should have prewashed the pan!

The Electrasol container said to pretreat food with the detergent and to fill both wells with the liquid. I had one pan that had some baked on barbeque sauce, so instead of scrubbing it off, I decided to do the pretreating that the bottle suggested. The result was very strange - most of the burnt part came off, and then some of it was still left behind. When I touched the part that was left behind it flaked off easily, but obviously it was not clean! Another thing that did not please me was that my glasses were not only spotty, but there was a white residue that was left behind on them.

I have to say that I was not happy with either of these products and will go back to using the dishwashing detergent that I had been using - which is Cascade (original) powder. I do prerinse if something is stuck on to the pan, but I do not rinse every dish before putting them in the dishwasher - that is the job of my dishwasher! My dishes have come out looking just fine with using this! However, if I had to choose one of these products or go back to washing dishes by hand, I would choose the Cascade Complete - I could live with the spots better than white grime on my glasses...however, I would rather not have the spots either!

One of my friends uses vinegar as her rinse aid in the dishwasher. I have not tried that yet - has anyone else? I would be interested to know your thoughts on that too!