How To Clean Grills With A BBQ Grill Brush

Everyone loves a BBQ, but practically no one likes cleaning the grates afterwards.

However, it’s a necessary task. If you leave oils and grease on your grates, they can get rancid and will vaporize when heated, which will affect the taste of your foods the next time you grill.

And burnt on black crusts left on the grates (mostly made of carbon) will give a burnt toast taste to foods – not nice (and my partner’s pet hate!)

Here’s how to clean grates quickly and efficiently, so you can get back to enjoying your time with family and friends:

• Leave the grill on for a while after cooking to help the cleaning process

If you have a charcoal grill, allow the charcoal to burn itself out after grilling food. This allows the charcoal to carbonize any leftover food residue, which is then easier to clean off.

Even if you have a gas, pellet, electric or other type of grill, the heat will help cut the scrubbing time.

With non-charcoal grills, always use a timer so you are alerted after an hour or so. You can easily burn through a big bag of pellets, or a whole bottle of propane, if you forget!

• Use a BBQ grill brush with stainless steel bristles that are woven into the head

There are lots of inferior grill brushes out there that use cheap brass bristles, and / or bristles not woven directly into the head of the brush.

Bristles can fall out. Do you want to be chewing away on food and then feel a sharp metal bristle stuck in your throat? I thought not!

You could even unwittingly swallow bristles and they end up causing havoc in your digestive system.

I would never forgive myself anything like that happened to my young daughter. There have even been reports of people dying from choking!

I’ve even seen some brushes that have no actual ‘head’, and the head is just ‘T-shaped’ mass of wire.

With these tools, the bristles aren’t glued in. Instead, they are held together in twists. Once one falls out, the whole thing can unravel.

Always look for a grill brush where the bristles are glued into a heat-resistant plastic head, and that the bristles are made from hardwearing stainless steel.

• Dip the grill brush in water, and the clean your grates while they are still hot to create steam

By creating steam, you are halving the amount of effort it takes for your to scrub off reside. You’ll find even burnt-on gunk is much more easily removed.

Make sure your grill brush has a heat-resistant head. If you are using inferior brushes, you need to skip this step as, instead of creating steam to reduce the scrubbing effort, you’ll be adding melted plastic to the dirty grates!

• Use a damp cloth to pick up leftover chunks, greasy residue and dust

I like using several cloths, one after the other, until I see there is no residue getting picked up by a cloth.

• Reverse your grates, if your grill allows it, to stop gunk building up on the underside

Some grills have reversible grates. My grill allows me to do this, so I flip over the grates in between BBQ sessions to stop a buildup of residue underneath.

• If you’ve forgotten to clean the grates previously, close the grill hood and heat for 15 minutes

Get your grates really hot and wait for the smoke to subside. This smoke isn’t the nice smoke that gives BBQ foods their smoky flavor. This is smoke from leftover grease, which only coats food with acrid, horrible soot.

The heat will burn off the grease, and turn any sauce, gunk and food bits into carbon.

Then, wipe over the grates with a damp cloth.

It’s not as good as cleaning the grates properly after barbecuing, but it’s a good, quick fix for when you’ve forgotten to clean after a previous BBQ session.

• Never use the dishwasher to clean removable grates

Yes, I know no one likes scrubbing. But the grease that collects on a BBQ grill is horrible stuff!

When I thought I was being clever by putting my grates through the dishwasher, the grease managed to coat everything in there! Needless to say, I was not happy.

Instead, invest in a good BBQ grill brush.

Why not grab yourself the Chef Remi BBQ Grill Brush right now?

It’s currently on offer at only $16.95! But you can get a further 15% OFF your entire order today! (Limited Offer).