Grill Cleaning – Yuck

Now I want to make this perfectly clear, cleaning a grill is not turning it on and letting the fire burn off leftover food! While that is certainly done and necessary, and even a brush over the grates are helpful this does not constitute grill cleaning!

Only a freakin male would design the “guts” of a gas grill where stuff drops, piles up and has its own design but is damn near impossible for a human hand to reach for cleaning purposes. So you have these piles and you want them gone, maybe men don’t see such stuff?

You got these –I’ll call them pipes which when ignited, flare up and provide heat to the racks above them, okay? However, stuff does collect under these pipes and its damn near impossible to reach this junk. Sorry, I do not own a $400 gas grill, mine is a simple, Sears gas grill that set me back about $200. I also have a charcoal grill which I also enjoy using and after this gas grill cleansing number, may use charcoal from now on!

Okay, you can and should remove the racks; it makes it much easier to clean both sides once they are out of the grill itself. And there is usually some kind of metal tent to help distribute heat, which also need to removed and clean, because once again, stuff falls through the racks. Perhaps you prefer the word “grate?” Either one it’s what you cook the stuff on, did that help the mental picture?

This is the easy part and I have a good grill spray that you apply, it foams up and you wait and then, eventually hose off and it sparkles (well, it’s clean, how’s that). It’s the damn inside of the grill, where the gas flows thru those pipes that are causing me considerable grief. I want that clean too. I mean, you can brush, scrape and using a damn rag remove considerable droppings but it’s not nearly enough –there are still lots more that should be gone. You could spend hours slowly scraping, wiping, brushing and removing this stuff OR you could do what I did.

Oh ya, you can see it coming, can’t ya? I sprayed the inside, let it foam up and waited and then, grabbed the garden hose and sprayed the living hell out of the inside of that grill! Man, did stuff fly out, thru bottom openings, the sides, up in my face, onto my clothes and so on, but it was out of the grill and that was the plan [yes, now I had to wash the patio – at least it didn’t fly onto the deck or I’d of been washing that too].

Did it work? Well, the sucker is clean but whether or not it’ll fire up remains to be tested. I gotta let it dry thoroughly and then, fire it up. I truly believe grills need this kind of thorough cleaning a couple times during the grilling season, so be prepared to get dirty and spend some quality time cleaning that bloody damn grill.

Now I’m ready for some beer –oops, Beer Can Chicken grilling! If the gas grill won’t work, I’ll use charcoal. I’m gonna design my own gas grill real soon and everything will be dishwasher friendly – save a lot of time cleaning the sucker!

P.S.: I came back to let you know the gas grill is working fine, water did not hurt those pipes and now all I need do is add some oil to the racks/grates and I'm good to go -- clean grill - hurrah! And for the male who designed this grill, you cannot use this cleaning method, you figure out a way to get your hand under those pipes and clean all that yuck out!