Turn Up The Heat’s Lifehacks and Best Ways to Clean Your Barbecue
You’ve spent all spring and summer grilling on that grill of yours and the moment you’ve been dreading is here, it’s time to clean your barbecue! We know you don’t really want to, so we have come up with the best ways to clean your barbecue. Incidents over the last few years have made national headlines when it comes to properly cleaning your barbecue and we wanted to showcase some of our safe cleaning materials like the Grill Stone which has no bristles and the Ice Grill Brush from Boil King (which when either of these is used with the 100% Canadian Made Food Safe BBQ & Grill Degreaser makes life easier to complete your annual cleaning). We want to make sure that every meal is safe for all of our Turn Up The Heat community, so check out our Accessories section the next time you stop by.
If there is one thing that is very important when it comes to grilling its keeping your grill well maintained and clean. Now if you are like me and you are busy, and perhaps a tab bit lazy, this is certainly the article for you. Most of us have families, significant others and other activities that usually prevent us from cleaning our grills, it is after all on top of your to do list after cleaning your oven and windows.
Sadly, it’s here, it’s officially here, the official psychological end of summer. We have less than two weeks left before the leaves go into full fall mode and the nights are already getting nippy, for some of us this is the signaling of the end of barbecuing season, which means time to clean stuff up before the snow sets in. Depending on the use you have subjected your barbecue to you are going to either spend a little time cleaning it or you will spend a good portion of a morning or afternoon cleaning it.
After having read through numerous articles detailing the best ways to really get out all the gunk from your grill I came to the conclusion that its going to be a pain one way or another; the question is going to come down to: what have you been doing to lessen the mess up for your big end of season cleaning? Unless that is you grill all year round, then in which case this would be your mid year cleaning, or so we hope.
Avoiding cleaning your barbecue isn’t recommended for numerous reasons, gas grills for example were built with a long lifespan in mind, but its cut short if burners are clogged with grease, oil, marinades and food stuffs. These can in turn lead to mini flare ups and fires as well as to rust, which kills your cooking and eventually your grill. If you own a gas grill you should:
- Regularly check for propane leaks
- Cover your grill from the elements
- Routinely clean your grill
Most experts will tell you only need to do a real deep clean once, tops twice a year, so don’t go overboard, we want you to enjoy grilling not get turned off by it.
Useful tips always include:
- Spot cleaning after each use.
- Brushing the grates clean.
- Wiping down the exterior with a cleaning product like Windex.
- An expert tip is to turn up your grill to max for 15-20 minutes once a week, scrape off the burnt off gunk and residues and you’re good to go.
When it comes to a bigger cleaning, the only thing you need is a good grill brush like the Stainless Steel Brush from Broil King, a bucket of soapy water, another empty bucket or container for the debris, and an old sponge that you don’t ever plan on using again.
- Give the grates an extra good scrub with your brush.
- Wipe the grime off of your burners
- DO NOT REMOVE THE BURNERS
- Get rid of the nasty stuff at the bottom
- Put your grill back together without parts and pieces to spare. We don’t mean rebuild it!
Try changing your habits when you’re done cooking, give your grill or hot plate a quick scrub with your brush to remove the bigger residues (if you can remember to in the mad dash to getting the food to the table). To take an old pie tin (everyone has a few lying around for reheating stuff in a stuff), fill it with water and you place it over one of the burners. Turn on just one burner and make it only hot enough to make the water inside slowly boil, and then close the lid. Think steam cleaning here, this is working smarter not harder, we’re all about that. Don’t overdo it, as you want just enough steam to keep everything soft until you get a chance to clean it, which will be much easier because the food stuck on has been completely loosened by the steam. Be careful! Steam can cause scalding, so turn off the burner and wait a bit for the steam to dissipate before opening the lid. See how the Ice Grill Brush safely steam cleans the grill.
What our experts at Turn Up The Heat also suggest:
- We know that you may not always have the time to clean up everything but using aluminium foil to trap heat and incinerate food residue works but it is a potentially dangerous practice and we suggest against it. *Please note, for exactly that same reason, one should never cook with the grills covered in foil.
- High pressure washers can cause more problems than they solve. We don’t care if you saw a someone on YouTube doing it, its really a bad idea. Garden hoses fall into the same category. Aside from having grease flying everywhere in your backyard, and attracting ants, it can also drive grease into places, like inside the burners, where it can cause more harm than good. This can then affect the gas flow and the proper function of your barbecue. And lastly it has the chance of ruining all the great stuff you can cook by breaking your grill.
We know that we say a lot in our posts but we want to make sure you spend more time grilling than cleaning and let’s face it, cleaning isn’t ever high on most peoples to do lists, so if we can and we can, we’ll provide you with the best life hacks our experience has taught us when it comes to barbecuing and how to best ways to keep your grill clean for many seasons to come. Feel free to give us your best barbecue cleaning tips, tricks and lifehacks on any of our accounts we always want to know more from you.