Comment by AStellersSeaCow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AStellersSeaCow | Hacker News Reader

AStellersSeaCow

When this news first came out, I tried practically all the alternatives. My personal experiences:

Wadded up aluminum foil: really does not work well. It gets loose grime off, but anything at all burnt on will take very vigorous scrubbing and possibly result in shredded foil everywhere. Also feels like a huge waste of foil.

Wooden scraper: works ok, since it's not flexible doesn't get between the slats well, need to put a lot of elbow grease in to get stuck-on stuff, and if you leave it outside in my high humidity region - even under a cover - it will get disgusting fast

Abrasive pads/steel wool - work surprisingly well, but need to be replaced constantly and it's fairly disgusting work (you will feel like you need a shower afterwards) because you are basically in the grill

Nylon brush - did literally nothing.

The solution I'm currently on is a wire brush that is continuous spirals of wire rather than bristles. Available from your preferred online merchant, etc. Does not work nearly as well as a traditional wire brush: have to use quite a bit more force, and very awkward to maneuver it between the slats. That said, it gets the job done very well and it's durable.

Take a cheap onion. Cut it in half. Flame up the grill real hot. Take an oven glove and rub the onion really hard on the grill. It will sizzle. Mmm. Amazing all the way around.

(Surgeons are super cocky and for them to explain "man this is tricky to fix" ---> I am out).

I was at a birthday party at a park on Sunday (ended up getting rained out and we had to move to another location), and one of the guys manning the grill was doing this on the public-use grill. It seemed to work pretty well.

I was a little skeptical of this advice, so I did some online searching. There are a bunch of articles with anecdotes about this working, but here's an article that seems to have a bit more substance about this method:

https://www.tastingtable.com/cook/national/how-to-clean-a-gr...

Substance? All I see is "Onions have natural antibacterial properties, which is why this works," which doesn't relate at all to the function IMO.

> a cheap onion

Not my top shelf, special occasion onion?

Not the organic, gluten-free, free range, cageless red onion.

You want to use the GMO round-up ready, depleted soil/less nutritious [0] factory farm, antibiotic, growth horomone, pesticide laced, persistent organic pollutant laden yellow onions.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-an...

Cleaning vinegar and a wad of paper (not toweling as it leaves fluff) on the hot grill works well.

You'll also see a lot of guys using a splash of beer and newspaper on the public grill - depending on what you have on hand.

Here's what I've always done with my grills (propane this is easier, with charcoal you need to add extra fuel):

1) After done grilling, while you setup the table etc.. and get ready to eat, turn it on the highest setting and cover the grill. Should be done for at least 5-10 minutes.

2) Next time, turn the grill on to the highest setting to warm it up. Again at least 5-10 minutes.

If there's anything at all left it'll quickly be gone with any kind of brush... very easily. or even your spatula.

If you want to pump up the jams, try a scotch-brite wheel on an angle grinder. Done in seconds, don't wear clothes you like.

I'd been looking for other uses for my angle grinder, and this is way better than the other ideas I had.

Decided to clumsily make a video of doing this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtHnI1K6ICk

Diamond turbo blade = recover old used brick with the mortar still attached, very little if any chipping.

Source: currently working on an older home with very unique (peach/salmon) brick, need to recover and reuse all I can find.

I'm a huge fan of the Pumie Scouring Stick [1]. It works on a bunch of different surfaces, and I've used it to clean things that seemed baked-on beyond repair (like my ceramic pizza stone).

1: https://www.amazon.com/Pumie-Scouring-Stick-HDW-12T-4PK/dp/B...

FYI - seen at 99-cent stores for much less than Amazon....

The GrillFloss works pretty well:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000PAV28E/

Scraping with a metal spatula does a good job at getting a lot of the gunk off. Then, rubbing half an onion on the grill when hot cleans off the rest (and leaves a nice onion flavor).

I still use a wire brush sometimes, but it's a different type with longer stiffer bristles. There's no way one of these bristles is going to get accidentally lodged in your food. These bristles just don't fall out and if they did you would see it pretty easily. You have to use it a bit more perpendicular to the grates, but it works. http://a.co/gyIkCeK

I have used a steel brush from a hardware store that has inch-long bristles. These bristles are a lot longer and thicker than the little ones in the video of the article. A lot harder to miss visually and if you had one in your food I think you'd notice it on the first (painful) bite. However I think the 5 minutes of heating after cooking is finished would be a better option.

In Japan they use brushes made with broom bristles (search for エニシダ根のブラシ). They are very hard and great for scraping. At that point, though, I'm not sure how much better it would be if you swallowed a piece.

I wonder if there is a non mechanical way of cleaning it and instead a chemical reaction like oven cleaner. Ideally it would be something that wasn’t seemingly related to a chemical weapon but maybe that’s what it takes.

Fire, man. Just let the fire clean it. Never saw the point of wire brushes unless you're leaving food on the grill when you're done with it.

I think a lot of people don’t let their grill get hot enough. I know I have problems with cleaning my smoker racks (and my wife won’t let me run them through the dish washer) so I have to throw them on my charcoal grill when I’m heating it up.

Yeah, probably. Charred food is not good for you really, but it's going to be on there anyway after you cook on a grill no matter what (unless it's like, a George Foreman...?). I can't imagine the bit of carbon on the grill from the last session would ever cause more harm than normal charcoal!

OxiClean (or other clean-in-place products) should do a good job if you have a way of submerging the grill top. Brewers use this to clean fermenters and other equipment.

Hot concentrated sodium hydroxide will do it. Or oven cleaner, if you can't get chemicals. It won't damage steel, but will dissolve aluminum. Ammonia works too, but not as effectively.

Haven't tried, but I bet vinegar would wipe it down pretty well.

Wiping with vinegar will cause rust. You want to go the other way - alkalis will convert grease into soluble compounds without damaging the steel.

So say something like a solution of baking soda and water?

Yes, but it'd be very slow. Lye would be much more effective. But any solution strong enough to saponify the grease will be strong enough to damage your skin, so use gloves.

I usually just burn it off.

If you could get the grill to heat over 700°C, organic gunk would gasify.

Would it be safe/feasible to use a butane or propane torch for that? Would there be an issue of carcinogenic residue? If not, then a handheld torch is cheap and easy to use, and goes well last 700 degrees.

There are wads of coiled wire that you can use with a long pair of tongs. Basically steel wool with much thicker wire. This works pretty well and stands up to use.

I just use solder flux.

/s

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