How Often Should You Be Cleaning Your Grill?

Grilling is one of the most fun summer culinary activities you can do, up there with making colorful cocktails and eating hot dogs at baseball games. But just like any other cooking appliance, your grill needs to be cleaned regularly — and that's a step many people neglect when it comes to their backyard BBQ experience. Many are the buyers of a used Weber who discover their thrift store pickup hasn't been cleaned since the Nixon administration.

But cleaning your grill is a lot more critical than most people realize. It's not just about the general importance of keeping things tidy; making your grill clean (or at least clean enough) significantly affects the food it can produce and makes the grilling process a lot safer. So how often should you be cleaning all up in that bad boy? Here's the bad news: you're probably not cleaning your grill enough.

You don't have to thoroughly clean the grates after every use, but a quick scrub-down with a wire brush (on cast iron, anyway; you'll want something gentler on stainless steel so it doesn't scratch) is still a good idea. Likewise, if you're grilling once a week, you should pull your grates and thoroughly clean them. And twice per summer, you should dive into the guts of the grill and clean it from top to bottom.

The reason for this is several-fold. First, it looks nice. This much is self-explanatory since a clean, shiny grill looks better than a dingy, crusted one. Second, a well-maintained grill will — like any appliance — last longer. Third, your food will taste better; while a light char flavor can make for a pleasant dining experience, a long-carbonized one is, to say the least, less than ideal.

Fourth, and maybe most importantly, cooking with a clean grill is much safer. Those carbon deposits don't just taste bad: they can also be a home for bacteria clinging to grease and sugar-based substances like BBQ sauce. Needless to say, an unintentional bacterial breeding ground is a bad time in any culinary situation.

As far as the best ways to clean a grill, there are a lot of options, and searching for how to do it online can lead to conflicting information, but it's simpler than you might think. Using the grill's natural heat to burn off any parts that can be will jumpstart the process, and from there, that brush is your friend.

From there, you shouldn't be using heavy cleaning chemicals on the grill's interior (and especially not on the grates themselves): the really heavy-duty stuff can cling to the grill in particulate form, and nobody wants a bleach-flavored ribeye steak. Instead, you can use water, kitchen soap, and a combination of either baking soda and vinegar or lemon juice and dish detergent. A mixture of water and kitchen soap applied with the wire brush will take care of most of the caked-on mess. The more stubborn stuff is why you brought the baking soda and vinegar: a thick goop made from the other combination will get that right off once it sets. The rest of the grill can be cleaned the same way (just make sure to dump out the charcoal briquettes if you have them).

Everybody wants to have a fun and safe grilling experience, and cleaning your grill regularly will do more than anything to get you there. Sure, it's a bit of a pain, but the result is worth it.