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Summerizing Your Grill
sum�mer�ize v. ized, izing, izes. To prepare or equip for summer, as in a lake cabin or BBQ grill.
Yeah, I made summerizing up, but you understood right away what I was talking about. Summer is coming and you know that you just shut the lid on your grill and walked away all those months back, leaving not just a season's worth of carbonized crud down in the bowels of your grill, but a grate clogged with that last thing you cooked (sticky sweet teriyaki chicken I'll bet).
Why go to the trouble of a good preseason cleaning? Because a grease and crud laden grill is going to bath your food in acrid smoke every time you fire it up.
What's more, the accumulated gunk down below the grate is going to block the uniform flow of heat up from the burners (as well as clogging some of the burner holes themselves), resulting in hot and cold spots throughout the grill.
Cleaning your BBQ is a homerun waiting to happen, just consider the following:
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It takes about a half hour
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It requires a cold beer to do properly
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When you're done you can fire it up and make your dinner, a really good dinner
The first thing I consider when I take up this project is what I want to grill when I'm done, something quick and tasty for instant gratification. I'm making grilled chicken quesadillas so before I start cleaning, I'm going to get my chicken brining and make sure I've got tortillas, cheese, salsa and the like on hand.
The essential cleaning tools you'll need include a good, stiff wire brush (not the mashed down, grease laden thing you used last year) and a bucket of soapy water.
When I talk about grill cleaning, I'm not talking about the meticulous effort you bring to washing and cleaning your car, trying to make it like new again. No, I treat my grill like the tool that it is. I'm not working for pretty, I'm working for performance (and I'm lazy).
This approach simplifies the job to four tasks:
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Use the wire brush and scrub down the grates so they're clean and debris free. This should be done every time before you start cooking
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Remove and scrub off the heat distribution system - the ceramic briquettes, lava rocks or "flavorizer bars". Get rid of the accumulated ash, and burned on crud. Also, if you have lava rocks or ceramic briquettes, take the time to rearrange them into a uniform layer, with uniform spacing, so the heat is spread across the grill surface, uniformly
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Clean the burners by scrubbing them with your brush. The goal is get all the crud off and get the holes clean and clear so they all fire (more heat, fewer "cold" spots)
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Clean the bottom pan of the mounds of ash and grease laden carbonized crispies, that smoke and burn every time you fire it up. You can line the pan with foil if you want (it looks shiny and clean but by the time you clean it again, the foil has pretty much disintegrated)
Reassemble the grill and wash your hands in the bucket of soapy water (and if you want to wash the outside when you're done, have at it).
Now let's get grilling.
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