Grill Maintenance and Care

No matter the season, it’s important to take care of your grill. To deep clean your gas grill, start by turning off the propane. Then, carefully detach the burner, tubes, and grates. If using ceramic briquettes, remove them as well. Wash the pieces with warm, soapy water and use toothpicks to clean out any gunk. Scrub the interior and exterior of the grill with a stiff-wire grill brush. After towel drying the pieces, put them back into place and turn the propane back on.

For your charcoal grill, start by removing the smoke and debris build-up from the underside of your lid with soapy water. Then, toss out anything left in the kettle bowl and scrub it clean with a steel and wool pad. Whether your grill is charcoal or gas, make sure you brush it off and preheat it completely to disinfect it before using it and when you’re done cooking, turn the heat up all the way to burn off any of the grease or drippings. Once it’s cool, put the grill cover back on.

Grilling Seasonally

When you’re grilling year-round, you’re going to want to prepare a wider variety of foods, and not just burgers and brats. Try buying and grilling local, in-season produce. This keeps the menu rotating, the food fresh, and cooking less expensive. When you buy in-season, fresh meat and veggies taste better and the combinations can provide lots of interesting options. It’s typically less expensive to buy food that’s in the season because there’s an abundance of it. As you put your meals together, think traditional corn and barbecue chicken in summer, pumpkins, duck, and turkey in fall, ham and asparagus in winter, and turnips, cauliflower, and lamb chops in spring. Clean the grill after every use and do a deep clean at least once a month, or after every ten uses.

Cold Weather Grilling

An important part of grilling year-round is getting ready for winter grilling. Since it gets dark early, make sure you have a light that won’t turn off on you. It’s never safe to grill inside, even in the garage, because it releases carbon monoxide, which is deadly. Also, keep the grill away from anything that could catch fire, and be very aware of your proximity to nearby structures. You want to keep the grill out of the winter wind, which can throw off cooking time, but not so close as to be hazardous.

During the winter, putting on the lid is extra important for two reasons. It saves you time from having to brush snow and ice off the grill because you can just raise the lid and the snow slides off. The lid also keeps the temperature up while the food is cooking. If you don’t have anything you can put the grill under that’s not flammable, consider purchasing a grill cover. Apart from that, clean off the grill grates every time you grill so the air can move easily and give the grill extra time to preheat. Also, increasing the cooking time by a few minutes or using a remote thermometer to check the temperature can ensure the food is all the way cooked. Some other things that will help with grilling in winter include bundling up appropriately and wearing heat-proof grilling gloves that are still flexible.