I bought a 2 pack of plastic scrapers from Lodge. They seem to work well.
for some reason I feel the answer here is more bacon...Any hints on carbon steel? I bought a couple carbon steel pans thinking they would be super durable and non-stick for the price, but basically they chemically bond to every thing that touches their surface while cooking. I did the bake-in-the-oven-with-a-thin-coat-of-oil thing, then the next day I did the oil+salt+potato skins thing. Then I cooked bacon in them and I think there is still a layer of bacon on the surface that no natural form of scrubbing can release.
People fry/deep fry all the time in cast iron. I don’t think the oil ever gets hot enough to burn off and make the molecules crosslink into a polymer like coating. Well maybe if some spills out and drips toward the outside bottom.for some reason I feel the answer here is more bacon...
I've wondered what doing something like deep fat frying would do to a cast iron pan also...