BBQ Week: Tips On Cleaning Your Grill

A clean grill is a happy grill.  Or something like that.  The problem is, and I am sure some of you have experienced it…

When you clean your grill the normal way, you are left with meat and your other BBQ items sticking to your grill and that my friends… is not Good Eats.  I totally stole that.  Don’t tell.

So here is the answer to that problem.

Normally what we do is NOT clean our grill all that often in the sense of scrubbing with a wire brush and all that jazz.  I like to have a seasoned grill that is easy to cook on.  So, about every 4-6 uses of the grill I will take a brush and clean it as much as possible.  I don’t go overboard with it… just clean the top of the actual grate and enough to get it “happy” again.

I’m sure you are thinking…

Why is this dude telling me this, who doesn’t know how to clean a grill?

True.  That part is a given.  If you can brush your teeth… you can clean a grill.  At least that way you can.

Now here comes the tips and tricks that get you to the top of the top of the grilling game.  If there is such a thing.

There is a trick to keeping things from sticking to your grill… a simple trick that will save you time scraping meat off your grill.  What you do after you clean your grill thoroughly with a brush you then need to re-apply oil/grease to it.  Now what I do is take a bit of cooking oil and apply it to a napkin/paper towel/rag of sort and then apply that oil onto your grill evenly.  It shouldn’t be soaked by any means… just make sure you wipe the entire grate portion until all has been covered.  This will keep the majority of things from sticking to the grill the first time you BBQ on it again.

Pretty cool huh?  Yeah I know.  Moving on.  Now what do you do in between the big cleaning sessions?  You know, the 4-6 weeks between deep cleanings.  I learned this one from a friend of mine and so I must give him credit for this one.  Thanks Benny.

Each time you BBQ in between deep cleanings you can clean your grill with a Yellow Onion.  Yup… clean it with food.  😉  Weird huh?  What you do is get a nice fire going, so your grill is hot and getting cooled down some for your BBQ and you take one Yellow Onion and cut it in half.  After doing so, take one half of it and run, don’t walk… to your grill.  With a gloved hand, be sure it is gloved, you take the onion half and use it like a sponge all over your grill.  It will sizzle and hiss at you, and smell AWESOME.  Use this to clean your grill with throughout and it will take off some stuff (leaving your onion blackish on the bottom).  It will also knock off the majority of the nonsense into the fire that is of the bigger variety.

After that… your grill is ready to clean.  If you want to do this again with the other half… feel free.  Do it as much as you want.  If you don’t use the other half, take it and wrap it in foil and add just a tad bit of butter and leave it on the grill.  You will have a great topper for your meat products when the meal finally arrives!

Get to cleaning, only 4-5 more days until the biggest BBQ day of the year!

2 thoughts on “BBQ Week: Tips On Cleaning Your Grill”

  1. @deb – All I can do is provide the tips, you have to persuade your signif to use them. haha

    The smell alone, when you start cleaning and that onion hits that hot grill… oh man, shouldn’t take a lot of selling.

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