How to clean a grill fast and prevent food from sticking to it? If you have ever grilled, you know this feeling: when you try to put food carefully, and it sticks to the grate and cracks. The result is a mess, and the look leaves much to be desired. However, knowing a few little tips of the grill mastery, you can forget about sticking food once and for all.
The tips are surprisingly simple. There are only 3. Remember that your gas and charcoal grill must be:
– clean – food gets stuck to a dirty grill. Take it, as a rule, to clean your grill before each use;
– oiled – a small layer of vegetable oil will make it easier to remove fried food from a grill;
– hot – the grate should be well warmed up before you put food on it.
If the above rules are strictly followed, all 3 stages can be completed in a few minutes. With this method, you can even leave your grill unclean after frying and wash it right before using it next time. Let’s get into the cleaning process:
Step 1
Before you start grilling, you need to wash it well. You will need:
– vegetable oil
– paper towels
– grill brush
– long pliers
Step 2
Making it hot. The easiest way to clean a grill is to heat it up good. If you can cover the grate with something (fireproof), it is better to do that and leave it for 10-15 minutes. The food remains will get blackened and turn into ashes. The high temperature makes it easier to clean: charred pieces of food are scraped off easier, as they come off the grate better than when stuck after cooking.
Step 3
Use a grill brush to remove any residual burnt food from a grill. The most suitable option is a brush made of copper or steel wire. This brush quickly cleans your grill grate in seconds. You can forget about the sponges and hands soaked in fat.
Useful lifehack: if you don’t have a special grill brush around, you can make one yourself. This requires pliers (preferably long) and a crumpled piece of aluminum foil. Hold the foil ball with pliers and your DIY grill brush is ready!
Do not allow food leftovers to accumulate on your grill. Spend a couple of minutes heating up and cleaning the grill BEFORE cooking, and you’ll soon forget that you used to hate this process so much because it will stop taking a lot of your time and effort.
Step 4
Lubricate the grate with oil. Crumple up a paper towel and grab it with pliers. Pour some oil into the cup and soak the paper ball in it. The paper needs to be soaked in oil, but it should not drip from it. If the oil drips on a hot grill, it may burst into flames. So be careful!
Step 5
Quickly (so that the paper towel does not catch fire) slide an oil-soaked paper ball over the grill grate. This will make it shiny. The oil on the grill will also provide a nonstick coating, so the food you are going to cook will not stick.
Step 6
If possible, cover the grill with the lid and let it heat up again. After that, you can place food on the hot grill. This is also a good way to keep food, especially meat, juicy. In addition, the food cooked this way retains its shape better and does not crumble. That’s why it’s better to clean a grill just before you use it, not afterward. This allows you to heat it up thoroughly and not to bother with cleaning it after your feast.
Alternative Way
The most popular and well-known way to remove fat and soot from a grill grate is to glow it on fire. Indeed, it is enough to heat up the grate, so that food and fat residues gradually burn out and become brittle. After that, they can be easily cleaned with a metal brush.
The method is very effective, but it is difficult to vouch for its safety. Burning your hands when cleaning a hot grate or grill walls is quite easy. You can also get a face or an eye burn, as the oil residues are easily ignited when glowing. The grate durability during ignition is reduced, as well as in pans and other dishes which are heated without food. But, yes, it is possible to clean the grate this way.
However, the external and internal surfaces of your griddle for gas grill and BBQ must also be clean – both for hygienic and aesthetic reasons. Unlike the relatively light grate, they cannot glow on fire.
Useful lifehack: once the food has been placed on a well-heated grill, do not try to flip it too soon. Allow a small crust to form. If you start flipping it too early, it won’t leave the grill that well. However, if your grill hasn’t been cleaned before cooking and remains dirty, your food will still stick to the grate no matter what you do.
I hope that these simple tips will help you become a real grill master. And if you have your own secrets of magical handling of a grill, feel free to share! Have a pleasant and delicious BBQ!
Author bio: Roy Emerson is a technology enthusiast, a loving father of twins, a programmer in a custom software company, editor in chief of TheHomeDweller blog, greedy reader, and a gardener
