You might want to give Dawn Power Dissolver a try. This stuff is incredibly powerful, but rinses as easily and thoroughly as normal dish detergent if you follow directions.
Oooh, thank you. I think that’s a product that is designed precisely for my needs. Does anyone have any objections to this one?
If not, I’ll be looking for that. It’s usually worth giving a new product of an established company a try. If it doesn’t work, I won’t be throwing good money after bad.
A couple of you have disagreed with my saying that pancakes need fairly high heat. I don’t doubt that pancakes can be cooked at a lower heat, but hotter is the way I learned it. When I was in Junior High School (early 1960s,) both boys and girls were required to take Home Economics and Shop classes.
The lady from the Gas Company who came in to teach us how to make Squirrel Pancakes* (and extol the glory of cooking on a gas stove) showed us how to tell if the pan was hot enough to cook pancakes. If you drip a little water on the surface, she said, and the drops dance on their own steam, it’s hot enough. By the way, she used a smooth metal griddle laid across two burners.
*“Squirrel pancakes” means with chopped nuts in them.
You could have said this to start with. What the hell am I supposed to do with all these squirrels now?
Well, of course! She was from the gas company. The higher the heat, the more gas you’re using. 
Seriously, I learned the water dancing bit as well but it was relative to stir frying which requires a much higher heat than pancakes. Actually, I don’t think it was water, but oil. The water dancing was for eggs.
What I know about pancakes is that if the pancake bubbles around the edges it’s cooking properly, but if it’s bubbling in the center soon after you pour the pancake on the griddle, the heat is too high and the outside will darken before the inside has a chance to cook, making for a soggy pancake and spottiness on the skin of the pancake as opposed to a cakey pancake with uniform skin color.
Here’s what works well for me:
As soon as your done cooking, pour off the excess oil into a cup for cooking again later…or brewing up some biodiesel or whatever…and immediately pour some dish detergent on the hot pan (I use Joy or Palmolive, but any liquid soap will work). The soap will immediately boil/foam up, and you add some tap water to continue the scouring action of boiling soapy water. Swish the boiling foam around the entire pan until the pan cools enough to cease boiling/foaming. Let sit to loosen up hard baked-on deposits. Wipe up with a pot scrubbie and rinse.