This Is the Best Way to Clean a Grill Without Soap and Water
As the official season for cooking outdoors, summer is often when home chefs become well acquainted with grills. Maybe you’ve come up with a “secret” for getting a strong flame that doesn’t sear seafood too quickly. Perhaps you’ve figured out exactly when to flip a burger, and how to give vegetables a delectable smoky flavor. But if there’s one thing that many backyard chefs fail to perfect during this time of careful study, it’s this: cleaning.
“I think most home chefs have given up on properly cleaning their grills from day one,” says Luis Cuadra, the executive chef of District in Los Angeles.
Since a grilled feast is so often celebrated for the well-honed techniques behind its success, Luis knows that most home chefs focus their attention on tweaking those details rather than scrubbing their grates. But that’s a mistake. A dirty grill doesn’t just affect the flavor of whatever its cooking, but it can also lead to a fire hazard if ignored for too long.
To make sure that you know how to clean as well as you cook, Cuadra and Paul Gregory, the executive chef of LA’s Double Take, are providing their tips on how to clean a grill with more than soap and water. Follow their advice on the tools and tricks you need to know, and you won’t just be well acquainted with grilling by the end of summer—you might just become a grill master, too.
The Best Way to Clean A Grill:
First, cover your cooking area with foil.
While you may have already learned to let your food “rest” under foil after cooking, which helps it regain moisture, you might not know that foil is also a clever way to keep a grill clean. “As soon as I finish grilling, I put a double-ply layer of foil over the whole cooking area and leave it on there for about 10 to 15 minutes while the grill is still on,” Cuadra says. “This trick actually helps insulate and increase the temperature of the grill, which makes it easier for the caked-on stuff to become more brittle or simply burn and fall off.”
After enough time has passed, Cuadra turns the grill off and lets the foil cool for about 20 minutes—or until he’s done eating. “The grill will be cool enough that I won’t get burned from the heat, and then I use a strong grill brush to break off any caked-on items like sauce,” he adds. “I also leave this foil on the grill when it is not in use. The next time I want to grill, I turn on the grill with this same foil, which allows the grill to reach very high temperatures. I reuse it a handful of times so it doesn’t go to waste.”
Then use the foil to clean the grill, too.
Another way Cuadra ensures that the foil he rolls out for grilling doesn’t go to waste is by keeping it on hand for cleaning. “Once I am done reusing those sheets of foil to insulate my grill, I loosely roll them into balls—usually a little larger than a baseball—and use them as an abrasive surface to clean hard-to-reach places,” he notes. “If I don’t have a brush, then this will do the trick of removing any particles still stuck on the grill.”
Make good friends with a wire brush.
Gregory thinks that a wire brush is an essential grilling tool, and it should be used before and after cooking. “Let most of the gunk cook off while the grill heats up, then brush the grates with a wire brush before grilling,” he says. “After each use, make sure to brush the surface again before it cools down and any new gunk can form.”
Clean your grates separately when needed.
The grease and burnt pieces on your grates can accumulate to a point of no return, and when that happens, it doesn’t matter how clean your wire brush is. “If your grates build up too much junk for your brush to scrape off, soak it in a garbage bag with two cups of vinegar and one cup of baking soda,” Gregory adds. “Be careful not to spill, because it will make a mess if you do.”
Your grill should look like new—but not too perfect, either.
Much like a cast-iron skillet, Cuadra says that a grill should develop a “seasoning” over time. So it’s fine if the grill looks like it’s been a cornerstone of your cooking, it just shouldn’t look dirty.
“Something to remember is how shiny and clean the grill looked the first time it was used, and with more use, the grill will naturally begin to get ‘seasoned’ and develop tiny layers of buildup each time you cook on it,” he says. “A bit of seasoning is good, because it prevents food from sticking. You will never be able to get it to look like it did on the first day, but the mindset of trying to get it there will make a world of difference. Well, that and a great grill brush.”
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