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how can I clean my cast-iron grill?


barcelonabites

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Hi,

If the grill has a porcelain coating, I may be cleaned by a nice long soak. In that case, I'd use a grill cleaner or ammonia and place it in a garbage bag for a few hours.

If the grill is natural cast iron, heating on high with aluminum foil topping the grate will burn the carbonized food off.

Tim

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You can either heat it crazy hot and burn it off, or scrub it with some steel wool or strong wire brush.

If you scrub it you will have to season the pan again.

I clean mine and re-season every couple uses, just depends what you cook on it.

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Put it in your self cleaning oven and run a cycle. It will have to be re-seasoned.

The Philip Mahl Community teaching kitchen is now open. Check it out. "Philip Mahl Memorial Kitchen" on Facebook. Website coming soon.

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My Weber Silver gas grill came with bare cast iron grates. I followed their instructions for initial seasoning.

The instructions said to leave residual food on the grates and that when you reheat the grill that the oils in the food will help to re-season the grates. With their other grates they suggest you burn off old food residue at the end of cooking. No matter which way you do it, if you heat the grill to the level to burn off any food residue you will burn off the seasoning. I use to keep a small tub of Crisco handy and after a high heat preheating and good wire scrub down I would rub some Crisco on the grates before adding food. I think it was the rusting factor in between use that finally lead me to replace the grates.

I ended up getting stainless grates which I just rub with oil after preheating before adding food. If and when I replace these I will most likely try the porcelain coated cast iron.

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I have a Chargriller that I bought used with cast iron grids. The moron I bought it from preferred gas and didn't know what to do with a charcoal grill so he loaded it with a ton of coals and created this over-kill of burned on, store bought bbq sauce goo on virgin cast iron grids.

I soaked them in super hot water for a couple of hours and used a brillo pad to get the gunk off. After proper use and eventually seasoning, the hot water bath got easier and easier to make cleaning the grids a snap.

Last Fall, I bought a Royal Oak grill with ceramic coated cast iron grids and they are wonderful. They still get the hot water bath, but the gunk just slides off with very little scrubbing.

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I got a cheap (about $35US on a promo) steam cleaner, made by Wagner and marketed for wallpaper removal, removing carpet stains, and grease stains from concrete. It lives under a counter in the kitchen, and I drag it out to clean my outdoor charcoal grill, my Bradley smoker, my deep fryer, and the cast iron burners and grates on my range. It works well, and is reasonably neat to use. If I'm trying to clean my smokehouse, I'll do that outside, so the goo can drip all over the place, but for cleaning the range parts or a metal grill, just sticking them in the kitchen sink and working there is OK. There's really very little liquid water coming out of the nozzle; it's almost entirely steam, which doesn't have a great tendency to splash around. The steam and a brass-bristled brush have gotten some really ugly stuff off.

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