How to Clean Really Dirty Grate

[addicted-to-smoke]

A greasy grate is fine to cook on. No germs and no mold can live with the heat from a hot grill. It's the same situation with all of that grease and whatnot on the walls of the grill, charcoal or gas ...

Heat the grate, and scrape the largest pieces off. Then the food goes on. Anything much more than that, and it rapidly becomes work you can never finish.

@Schaefd2 you guys aren't wrong. Oil and water do not mix, after all. By the way, my GBS grate has rust showing whenever it's not sufficiently greased. Unavoidable since it's not SS. But since it's my daily 22 grate, the rust doesn't actually "take hold."

[Jules V.]

I just bought one of these got a used performer grate horrible wife does not do rust.  Its 201 not 301 but for the price and I am not the only one who bought this on another forum also but joined because of the beautiful kettles you guys do so wanted to be a member.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...8LPLMC/tvwb-20

Broken link perhaps?

[Firemunkee]

Sent from my iPhone using Weber Kettle Club

Haha love this!! Did that really work? I have 3 bottles of lighter fluids that came with kettles I've picked up and I have some grates that need cleaning.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Weber Kettle Club mobile app

[Brian ATL]

Sorry here is the correct link my bad.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0798LPLMC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[cnmg432]

So I cleaned it up and burgers tasted great.   I was getting tired of the black specks getting on my meat.   Grate seems to have lost some of it's season on one side.   Maybe the side over the Slow n Sear?

[addicted-to-smoke]

Well sure, the area right over the heat will be "cleanest" (and therefore, rust soonest from lack of grease ... ). Maybe this is just semantics, but these sorts of nickel-plated steel grates can not get "seasoned" in the way raw iron (cast iron) or raw steel (carbon steel) get and need to be seasoned.

With these nickel plated grates (where the nickel plating never lasts ...) keeping grease (or veggie oil, or whatever) on them is critical.

So, then:

1) Rotate the grate with subsequent uses so that the same section isn't always over the heat. That'll help it from rusting there. And toss a little oil on it.

2) A metal scraper of some kind, as Gummi suggested, will clean the crud from the tops of the grate tines so that flecks don't get on food.

[ZebraZoo]

When I need to clean my grate, I run two chimneys worth of coal through and that burns everything off

[MacEggs]

My method:

http://weberkettleclub.com/forums/grilling-bbqing/occasionally-i-will-clean-my-grates/

[Tionoel]

I can not.will not cook on a dirty grate...there is just no need for it...buy a good scrape brush and as soon as  u pull the last meat from the grill that 30 seconds and clean the darn grate...