How to Clean and Prepare Your Grill for Delicious Burgers
What kind of home-grilling Chef are you? For some people, the cover goes on the barbeque the minute winter weather arrives, and the grill doesn’t come back out until spring. For others, neither snow nor ice nor rain will keep them from grilling food for their family and friends, and they keep the fires roaring 365 days per year.
No matter how you use your grill for your favorite Sizzle King premium blended burgers, it’s important to routinely clean, maintain and sanitize your grill for health reasons. Not sure about what steps that involves, or the best way to clean your grill? Get some tips from our burger experts as we explain the best methods, and what ‘not to do’ when preparing for another season of outdoor fun and great food.
Pressure Washing Your Grill
A pressure washer does a great job of removing debris that may have accumulated in your barbeque grill, but there are some steps that you need to take first, to make sure that you do not damage any of the electrical or gas components. You could opt to clean your grill manually, which can take about an hour, or as little as 15 minutes when you use a pressure washer instead.
First, remove the tank from your grill and disconnect the gas lines. Then remove the cooking grates and set them on a tarp or on a clean concrete surface for separate cleaning. Spray the cooking grates with a non-toxic food grade degreaser and let them sit for about ten minutes to allow the degreasing solution to soften any hardened food particles and grit.
Use a 15° or 25° pressure washer nozzle and stand approximately three feet away from the main body of your grill. Start by pressure washing the inside cover, and then gently wash the heating elements, paying close attention to preventing damage to them (stand back!). Next, wash the exterior cover and countertop areas of your grill, followed by the base, ignition and control panel and bottom shelf.
Head back to where you placed your grills with the food-safe degreasing formula. Power wash the grills at close range (you may wish to use eye protection as an added safety precaution), until they are clean. Then allow the grills to air-dry for about 15 minutes before replacing them in your grill. Safely hook up your propane or natural gas line to your grill, and you are ready to go!
For the duration of grilling season, you can apply the food-safe degreaser to your grill plates and use a non-wire brush to remove accumulation. Learn why we don’t recommend that any uses a wire brush for cleaning their grill.
Wire Brushes and Health Hazards
Think about when you clean a frying pan or pot in the kitchen, using a wire brush. What happens? Depending on how hard you scrub, you may see the brush start to wear, or a steel pad start to fall apart. Why? Because the abrasive movement starts to release little metal fragments in the pad or brush. Which is fine, if you are thoroughly rinsing your cookware afterward. But what about your grill?
While traditionally wire brushes have been the choice to scrape and scrub off grease and food particles from the grill, recent studies have demonstrated that a percentage of small metal fragments from the brush can stick to your grill plates. If you are using a brush to clean your grill without rinsing your grill plates, those metal fragments will remain behind. You can’t see them, because they are microscopic, but the next time you put raw meat on your grill, you may be embedding those fragments in your food, which can cause significant health risks if they enter your body and blood stream.
Our advice is to avoid wire grill brushes entirely. Use a food-safe degreasing treatment and hot water and a damp cloth to clean your grills before cooking. It’s faster, easier and safer. There are also many environmentally friendly degreasers that you can try on your grill. We love the Simple Green Non-Toxic Heavy Duty Grill and Barbeque Cleaner. It is a non-toxic biodegradable and phosphate-free formula that you can also use on stovetops, slow cookers and other cookware indoors.
Kosher Salt
It is a chef level secret that many people don’t know, but once you have tried it, you will want to keep using kosher salt as your ‘secret weapon’ to grilling really amazing burgers on your grill. Kosher salt works as a natural abrasive, and you can apply it after cooking to help remove some of the accumulated debris and grease from your grill. It is non-toxic, and while we don’t really want to think about bugs getting “up in our grill” using salt can also help deter ants, wasps, and other creepy crawlies from walking over your cook service in between uses.
The other nice thing about Kosher salt is that it is ‘not too salty’. It is milder than processed table salt and it is lower sodium, so it adds a very gentle salt flavoring to any meat you put on your grill. Lastly, Kosher salt is non-toxic to humans and it can replace other non-stick cooking sprays. The large crystals of salt lift the meat slightly on the grill, allowing air to circulate better, with amazing results.
You can also experiment with other types of large granules of salt, such as Himalayan rock or pink salt. This type of salt is harvested by hand from the Himalayan Mountains of Pakistan, and most of it comes from the Khewra Salt Mine. Himalayan pink salt is a known super food – it contains 84 natural minerals and elements that are beneficial to your health. But only use a little; this salt has a bolder flavor than refined table salt and is a lot stronger when heated.
Don’t forget to clean your grill every time, before you start cooking your Sizzle King burgers. And if you have a barbeque that comes with a grease trap, remember to empty it and keep it clean to avoid fire hazards. Happy grilling burger fans!