I've had my 22" kettle since December, when I started on this BBQ journey. Nearly ten months of grease build up finally got to me. I opened my kettle the other day and it smelled like last week's cook, or perhaps an agglomeration of months of last week's cooks.
I try to keep the food grate clean by brushing it after every cook before it cools down, but my brush doesn't get under the grate well. Furthermore, I keep forgetting drip pans/foil so the charcoal grate has a lot of goop on it, plus the bottom on the kettle and the ash cleaning blades.
So this afternoon I had had enough and took the grates out and covered them liberally with oven-cleaning spray. I then used a plastic putty knife to gentle scrape the interior of the kettle and the blades. (Surprisingly, this was quite easy to get all of the goop off as well as some crusted on ash on the blades.)
In some cleaning videos, people get the interior of their kettles back to showroom new. I might do this when it gets cooler, but right now, I just don't want it to, as I keep saying, smell like last week's cook. As I said, it didn't take much to get the interior smell-free, which meant the majority of my smell was coming from the grates.
I bought a galvanized steel wash basin from Home Depot, filled it with water and Dawn, and went to work on the charcoal grate. The large parts of dunk came off easily and I did some scrubbing with a soft pad to attack the rest. It isn't perfect -- there still are some carbonized lumps and, to my surprise, quite a bit of surface rust -- but it is the charcoal grate after all so I didn't go too crazy with it.
I really attacked the food grate and nearly got it back to its shiny stainless steel self. Again, a bit of surface rust, but minor and it came off easily. There is some discoloration, but that is essentially just over the part of the grate that is always over the slow n' sear.
I'm quite happy with the better conditions of the grates and best of all -- no smell! I am never going to allow it to get this bad again. Yuck. (And especially not let it get this bad so I am having to do this in 96 degree-heat-index-weather!)
Things are now drying....by having a chimney of charcoal go to work; seemed appropriate.
I try to keep the food grate clean by brushing it after every cook before it cools down, but my brush doesn't get under the grate well. Furthermore, I keep forgetting drip pans/foil so the charcoal grate has a lot of goop on it, plus the bottom on the kettle and the ash cleaning blades.
So this afternoon I had had enough and took the grates out and covered them liberally with oven-cleaning spray. I then used a plastic putty knife to gentle scrape the interior of the kettle and the blades. (Surprisingly, this was quite easy to get all of the goop off as well as some crusted on ash on the blades.)
In some cleaning videos, people get the interior of their kettles back to showroom new. I might do this when it gets cooler, but right now, I just don't want it to, as I keep saying, smell like last week's cook. As I said, it didn't take much to get the interior smell-free, which meant the majority of my smell was coming from the grates.
I bought a galvanized steel wash basin from Home Depot, filled it with water and Dawn, and went to work on the charcoal grate. The large parts of dunk came off easily and I did some scrubbing with a soft pad to attack the rest. It isn't perfect -- there still are some carbonized lumps and, to my surprise, quite a bit of surface rust -- but it is the charcoal grate after all so I didn't go too crazy with it.
I really attacked the food grate and nearly got it back to its shiny stainless steel self. Again, a bit of surface rust, but minor and it came off easily. There is some discoloration, but that is essentially just over the part of the grate that is always over the slow n' sear.
I'm quite happy with the better conditions of the grates and best of all -- no smell! I am never going to allow it to get this bad again. Yuck. (And especially not let it get this bad so I am having to do this in 96 degree-heat-index-weather!)
Things are now drying....by having a chimney of charcoal go to work; seemed appropriate.
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