5 ways for a barbecue maker to easily clean the grate after barbecue

Washing your inventory after a pleasant dinner is the most difficult procedure. As a rule, barbecue is prepared outdoors, so it is not possible to immediately wash the grates and skewers. Wiping them is not enough, and when the company returns home, the burnt fat will completely harden and will not allow itself to be washed off without the use of tricks and special means.

What to do in nature?

If you have the opportunity to immediately wash dishes or equipment, you need to take advantage of it, even if you cannot do it well enough, you will remove the main contaminants, and the remains will be easier to wash at home. To wash off uncured fat, warm water and a soft sponge are enough; you can use paper. It is enough to take a bottle or thermos with you. If necessary, you can heat some water in a saucepan over a fire and use it, but this option will need to be planned in advance; you don’t always prepare thoroughly for a camping trip and take something other than a disposable barbecue.

Rapid clean-in-place offers the following benefits:

• Minimum investment of time and effort.
• There is no need to take dirty dishes home, which could stain bags and the interior of the car.
• Contaminants are removed more efficiently.

You can use a brush; it will help remove stuck pieces of meat or fat without harming the aluminum coating.There are not only coarse metal brushes on sale, the use of which is not recommended, as they damage the protective coating of the grilles, but also plastic, universal ones. They have fairly stiff bristles, but are not able to tear off chrome or stainless steel coating.

The disadvantage of this method is that it is labor intensive and not very effective. It will be quite difficult to get to the tortuous places of the lattice, bends, and clean the moving wire. Using this method without special cleaning agents is unlikely to show any positive results, especially if you use it after the fat has hardened and quite a lot of time has passed.

In some cases, if you have a large container, fill it with water or add detergent to the water, leave the grill in it overnight, and it will be much easier to clean it in the morning.

There is one trick: if you want to clean the grate right away, remove the meat from it, then place the grate on the grill and warm it up. Once the grease becomes liquid again, it can be removed with a dry cloth, napkins or newspaper.

How to remove fat?

Solidified fat, after it has dried well on equipment that was not immediately cleaned, is quite difficult to remove. In particularly advanced cases, detergents may not help, because the equipment was forgotten, not washed right away, and the trapped moisture reacted with the metal, causing rust to form, and dust sticking to the grease. In some cases, it is easier to throw away such a grille, but if you want to revive it, you can try.
There is no need to wash off dried dirt with a brush, even on metal; a sponge will also be useless. The product will again need to be pre-wiped from dust and then warmed up.It is better to do this over an open fire, but you can also do it at home, for example, in an oven, but you should be careful with the wooden handles: it is better to either remove them, or open the oven and hold the grill there for a while. You don't need it to get hot, just heat it to 50-70 degrees to force the fat to change consistency.

You can just use very hot tap water if you have it. But this will take a little longer, since the grate is quite narrow and not continuous, so the water will only touch some of its areas.

You can also heat it up using a fire, and at the same time warm up the tea if the kettle is metal.

What do experienced barbecue makers advise?

For opponents of household chemicals and those who like to save money and experiment, we can offer various folk remedies, which in some cases help no worse than advertised expensive chemical analogues.

You can use the following options:

• Heat the grate and gradually scrape off the grease using a dish sponge. You can take a special hard version that can effectively clean heavy dirt. After heating the grate, the fats will begin to break down, and the dirt will become looser, but when it gets into the water it will be viscous and sticky. If you heat the grill very high, some of the residue will turn into coals and fall off on its own; the remaining burnt residue from the grill can be cleaned off manually, using a stiff brush, for example, a metal dish brush. If you don't have a metal or plastic brush, you can use foil. You can get rid of the remains of burnt onions, meat and lard.
  
• Using an ammonia solution. To use this method, you will need to go to the pharmacy and buy regular ammonia. You will need to pour it into a bag and place the grill there. Make sure that the liquid completely covers the metal. You will need to leave the grill like this overnight. By morning, the substance will corrode the deposits, and you can wash it off with warm water along with pieces of dirt that will quickly fall off.
  
• Vinegar and soda. They will need to be mixed in a one to one ratio. Then put the used equipment in a bag and fill it with the resulting solution. The bag will need to be tightened quite tightly. It is enough to keep the dishes in this form for 2-3 hours, after which the metal should be wiped with a damp sponge.
  
• A soap solution is a fairly simple and cheap way to quickly remove dirt without causing damage to the coating. To do this, you will need to have a large container, which you fill with water and grate laundry soap into it using a grater. You will need to put the pan on the fire and wait until the resulting solution boils. After this, immerse the product with the contaminated surface there and boil it for about 30 minutes. After this, turn off the heat and wash the grate under running water.
  
• Coca-Cola is not just a tasty drink, but also an excellent remedy for shallow rust. In addition, it can cope with carbon deposits just as well as a detergent. To do this, use a large container that can accommodate the contaminated equipment, fill it with Coca-Cola and wait for some time, from an hour to 8 hours, depending on how dirty the product is. After this, wash the grill with a hard sponge.You can use citric acid alone or together with cola; this is also a fairly aggressive food additive that can effectively fight fat at high concentrations.

You don’t need to buy most of the products; the same soda and vinegar are available in most homes.

Should you use a dishwasher?

Not everyone has this luxury, but if you do have a dishwashing machine, you can’t help but want to wash heavily soiled utensils in it. Yes, indeed, this method is effective, but it does not always help, because most grills are large and simply do not fit inside a household appliance. If the size of the appliance is not an issue, you will have a clean grill, and you can restore the shine by using a dry towel to immediately wipe the grill.

The best chemicals

Chemicals available at any hardware store can help remove tough stains. Standard products cannot remove heavy stains; at most they will help clean off the top layer of fat, but will not remove it to the base. You need to choose them carefully: some can harm the product.

Fairy works well with fat, especially if you add it to warm water.

You can use other gels and sprays that give a similar effect.

Other means:

• Shamanite. It is highly effective, easily removes grease and carbon deposits, and does not take much time to soak. Simply apply to the grill and wait less than five minutes, then rinse the product with water. The product is aggressive, so you should use rubber gloves.
• Top House – this is the most modern tool, which is positioned as the development of the latest technologies.It is designed specifically for metal products and can have a bad effect on plastic, so you need to use it with caution if your equipment has a combined structure, for example, a plastic handle. This product removes dirt, grease and carbon deposits really well. After this, the metal is covered with a harmless film, which gives it an attractive shine and repels dirt.
• Fairy - an effective and relatively mild product that can break down fat even in cold water; if you use warm water, the process will go much faster. The detergent will quickly deal with the problem and will not harm the metal or the surface being cleaned. It is affordable and removes dirt from the surface in a few minutes, after which it is enough to rinse with water. Fairy foams well, so it’s pleasant to work with, it doesn’t corrode the skin, and you don’t need to use gloves.

You can choose any cleaning method from those suggested above, all of them are effective to one degree or another and will help keep the grill and skewers clean.