Cleaning Your Grill

If you are a heavy user of the grill or are busy with work after weekend parties, it may not be possible to clean your grill after every meal. However, you should make it a habit to clean it thoroughly at least every two weeks. Not maintaining your grill properly will mean that your food will end up with unpleasant tastes and cause damage to the equipment.

Always spray your grill with non-stick cooking spray or brush it lightly with vegetable oil. This will prevent food from getting stuck to the grill, which if not cleaned in time can end up making the grill crusty.

If you are using a charcoal grill or hibachi at home, it is important that the charcoal be changed as frequently as possible. Similarly, it is important that the grill does not get wet. Half-burned charcoal left unused for a long time tends to get damp and starts generating potentially harmful acids.

Cleaning up the grill becomes a lot easier if you just put in some heavy-duty aluminum foil all along the cooking grates so that anything that drips or falls in can be quickly collected and disposed of.

Another good way of cleaning gas grills before use is to turn the knob on high for a few minutes and then close the cover. Any sauce stuck to the grill or cover will slowly burn off and you can quickly clean the grill.

For detailed instructions on how to clean your particular grill, always refer to the instructions contained in the manual. However, one excellent way of cleaning the cooking grates is to just soak them in warm, soapy water once you are done using them. It is a lot easier to clean them later. You could use a standard oven cleaner with steel wool pad to remove burnt food that is extra hard to remove. However, grill surfaces can be fairly sensitive so you need to be careful while cleaning with anything slightly rough.

After having carefully reviewed the equipment available, understanding how one should make a choice of equipment and finally what accessories and tools one can consider having, we now proceed to learn the actual techniques of grilling.