How To Deep Clean Your BBQ

April 11, 2024

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h the BBQ. The man's domain. The grill. Meat. Fire. As I sit here chuckling at the man's man BBQer who opened this blog post (aka me with a deep, gruff voice), I need you to know that our household is pretty proactive on the equality of men and women. We are, however, humans who are still learning and are failing miserably at having defined gender roles in certain aspects of our lives. One of those things is the BBQ. On occasion, you will find me barbequing something. Desperate times, as they say. However, most of the time, it will be McGregor. The perk of this being a designated blue job is that I am not the deep cleaner of the BBQ. That does not fall under my purview. This time around, however, I helped (watched) McGregor clean this beast over the weekend and, ya gross. I'm happy to never help on that one again. So, if you're so inclined, pass this post along to your partner and off we go.

Why Clean your Barbeque?

I mean it’s like saying why clean your oven. Just do it. Trust me it’ll look so much better. At a bare minimum, clean your barbeque once a year. If you use your barbeque often, it should probably be twice a year. We BBQ frequently, and we get around to this clean about once a year. No one is giving us any over-achiever awards here. Also don’t wait until the beginning the season where all your old food can sit and soak in for longer. Do it at the end of a season – make your life a little easier.

… we waited and ew. I mean even the outside (pictured below). Very ew.

Preparing to Deep Clean your BBQ

First of all, our BBQ grates are stainless steel. Love you but go find another post if you’re working with cast iron – I do not take responsibility for any damage that may happen. This is what works for our BBQ, after years of trial and error and testing. Don’t wreck your grates etc. mmmk.

To prep for a good old-fashioned BBQ clean, you need a few things:

Dishwasher pods – like the super-star non-environmentally friendly grease removal pods
Dawn dish soap – we didn’t have Dawn Power Wash otherwise we would have tried it
A Scrub Daddy – legit worth the hype
A putty knife or something suitable for scraping gunk (technical term)
A bowl or bucket
Rubber Gloves
A trash bag
An empty sink that will be unusable for a few hours (a larger Rubbermaid would work too – it is just a place to soak your grates)
Time

materials needed to deep clean a bbq - scrub daddy dawn dish soap and a bowl

How to Deep Clean Your BBQ

With your putty knife, scrape off as much gunk as you can from your stainless steel grates and heat shields. Once you’ve scraped all you can, pop the grates into the sink, plug it, run hot water and add 2-3 dishwasher pods. Let them soak for an hour or so and work their magic.

Deep cleaning a bbq by placing the stainless steel grates in the sink and letting them soak with dishwasher pods

While the grates are soaking, you get the pleasure of tackling the rest of the BBQ. Using your putty knife again, scrape any burnt old food off the sides and bottom of your barbeque. If it’s easy enough to remove your burner tubes, I (McGregor) would do this as well. If not, work around them (but ignore the getting things wet part because rinsing those would be a pain in the tush). Now, back to scraping your life away. Keep going until there’s nothing left to scrape away. There will probably be a nice collected pile of burnt food.

Deep cleaning a bbq by scrubbing off excess gunk jusing a putty knife

The tray at the bottom with your collection of past dinners may be removable. If it is, remove it and dump the residual food in your trash bag. If not, start scooping and keep going until everything is out.

Now, if you removed the burner tubes, you can use dawn dish soap, your scrub daddy, and some hot water to scrub the inside clean. You don’t need to. At this stage, it’s mostly a vanity thing; you’ve already gotten rid of the gross stuff. When finished rinse with water and let it dry out.

cleaner bbq inside without any grates back in

Don’t forget to clean out the grease trap. It’s gross, real gross. That is why blue jobs still exist.

Don’t forget the outside of your grill. Hot water and dawn worked great. Any stainless steel-friendly cleaner would work.

Your grates should have had a good soak at this point. Most of the gunk should slide right off but if you waited too long to tackle this, it may be more challenging. Feel free to use your scrub daddy or grab an SOS pad to get the rest of the old flavour off.