Sunday, May 18, 2008

Gas Grill Cleaning 101


As Memorial Day approaches, its time to start getting ready for the summer. First step: clean the grill. Rather than sit there with a wire brush and a sweaty hand, why not let your gas grill clean itself? Simply clean out any obvious gunk within a gas grill, cover the grates with tinfoil, cover and place on "high" until the smoke stops. Then rub the grates with Crisco to season it. And you are done.

The photos above are from my grill on Fire Island: no brushes or any other cleaning devices were used in the making of this photo. The only thing is to remove the excess gunk beforehand or you will end up with a heck of a grease fire! Thanks to Saul and Dan for this tip.

ADD ON NOTE 6/4/08 --> PLEASE LOOK AT Dan's comment for some more tips on this technique. If you own a cheap grill, its important!!!

2 comments:

dubno said...

Thanks for sharing this approach. Heavyweight aluminum foil is needed because the lighter "normal" stuff, being thin, tends to melt on the grill when you create the extraordinary high heat that removes all the grease. But it should be noted that when you use aluminum foil to concentrate the heat on the grill... you end up taking the temperature inside the grill well above 700 degrees F... not sure exactly how hot it gets..... but it does likely exceed the safe parameters many cheaper grills are designed for. So, if you have a shoody grill, one that is constructed in a flimsy way, even though the heat-concentrator method turns grill grime to ash, I advise NOT using it on such grills. Also, watch the grill carefully... it should take about 10 minutes to clean off the muck... you should see a somewhat smokey exhaust for about a minute or so usually about 5 minutes into the process... then when the residual grease and muck has incinerated away... the smoke becomes less obvious. Turn off the gas... and come back 20 minutes later when the grill has cooled down...scrape off the ash.. and spray some PAM on the grill to protect the surface from rust and corrosion etc.

Ira.B said...

I will add an addendum to the original post telling people to look at your comment. thanks

MM