Cleaning your grill grates

[mguerra]

 

[Syzygies]

See posts 49 and 52 in Grill Cleaning 

That's what I do between two low & slows, to get the rancid grease off. The most impressive technique I've tried is closing the grate in a contractor bag with a bowl of ammonia, and leaving the bag out in the sun for a day. I'm amazed I don't end up with a sink hole in my back yard.

[mguerra]

Oh Syz, you're so sweet! Thanks.

[tinyfish]

Time to check my auto parts store for one of those pans.

[mguerra]

It's not an auto part kind of thing. It's for a house water heater. Hardware store. Although any metal pan large enough would work so if the auto parts store have an oil change pan of the appropriate diameter that will work.

[billg71]

I just scrub mine on both sides with a wire brush before every cook, wipe 'em down with a couple of paper towels and I'm good to go. Once a year or so I'll do the oven cleaner thing in the plastic lid of my 30-gallon trash can.

[tony b]

It's called PBW (Powdered Brewers Wash); it the schizzle for cleaning your grates, drip pans, rotisserie basket, etc. 

[mguerra]

billg71

You know about the wire brush intestinal perforation and death thing, right?

[billg71]

Yeah, that's why I wipe them down.

[mguerra]

I assumed so. Good.

[mguerra]

I don't typically clean my grill grates except to scrape off big crud with my grill floss. But just to try something new I have my main grill in a water heater pan, bagged and sealed with ammonia. I'll break it out tomorrow and report. 

[mguerra]

I let it soak for 5 days and it did not do jack. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Maybe bad ammonia. Perhaps I'll buy a new bottle and try again.

[tony b]

Will be curious, Doc, to see if your results improve, but I'm sticking to PBW - it works great and only needs a couple of hours of soaking.

[bosco]

I concur with the PBW.   I tried three techniques and found PBW just peeled the black off the grates with no effort.  They look good as new 

[Gnomatic]

I wonder how putting the grates in the dishwasher would work if PBW was used as the detergent.  Might give it a go sometime.

Really though, my grill is over a year old and I may have tried to clean them once.  99% of the time though, if the grates have a loot of crud on them, I just crank the heat and burn most of it off, the rest scrapes off easy.

[tony b]

Don't know about yours, but the 23" KK grates would never fit in my dishwasher. And, PBW is best used as a soak, it would just be sprayed around in a dishwasher with minimal actual contact time, so I'm not sure how effective it would be in that application?? However, if you give it a try, please report back on how it worked. 

[mguerra]

I have a little test dose of PBW coming. But frankly I'm sure I will just revert to never cleaning the grills, other than scraping big crud off with the Grill Floss.

[tony b]

To be honest, Doc, I don't clean my grates that often either; like you, just Grill Floss. But, I do periodically soak the round drip pan in PBW to de-gunk it after a nasty cook or two. I do clean the rotisserie basket after each cook with PBW in a 5 gal bucket. Need to flip it end over end after a couple of hours, but it really does the job. Only downside of PBW is the price. But, I always have it around for the brew room cleanups anyway. I generally buy the 4# buckets at the local homebrew supply shop. 

[Tucker]

I have never used a cleaner on my grates.

I use the grill floss / grill brush majority of the time.

When they get especially gunky I run the cooker up to 600f and let it burn the load of charcoal out.  That burns everything to a white ash, which is then brushed off with wire brush.

 

[Pequod]

Well there it is. You guys had me questioning my sanity - I never clean my grates other than scraping the crud - but now y'all have fessed up! I feel better now.