Barbecue – maintenance
Barbecue maintenance can be a soul-destroying chore, especially if you’ve left the thing for several weeks and come back to find it covered in crusted detritus, unidentifiable grease and baked on clinker. A little forward planning will help avoid such horrible situations:
To help keep the grill of your barbecue clean, sandwich it between pieces of wet newspaper once you’ve finished with it and while it's still hot. The heat from the grill turns the moisture from the paper into steam and which lifts the food particles from the metal. After a couple of hours, you can simply wipe down the grill with a damp cloth and remove all the resulting gunk.
If food particles have baked onto your grill, wrap it in tinfoil, set it in place, and turn the barbecue on high for about ten minutes, before turning off the barbecue – you can now lift the foil from the grill using gloves and then roll the foil into a ball, which you use it to scour off the food particles.
To help keep the grill clean and free from rust, spray it with vegetable oil after you’ve got it clean and dry.
A brass wire brush is good for cleaning the inside of the grill.
Check any gas burners to make sure that the holes are clear. If a hole is clogged, use a toothpick or paper clip to clean it out before use, or you risk an explosion.
Barbecue maintenance photograph by Jem, used under a creative commons attribution licence.