When compared to other grills, I would say flat top grills are easier to clean and so you can have your cleaning schedules as frequent as you can. Now apart from guaranteeing the hygiene of your food, cleaning your grill also improves on its durability. However, as you try to minimize the chances of replacing the appliance any time sooner, you should also minimize amount of money spent on buying expensive cleaning products. That’s why in this article, I’ll show you two different methods on how to clean a flat top grill using either lemon juice or vinegar in four simple steps.
How To Clean A Flat Top Grill Using Lemon Juice
- Heat-up your grill
Heating the grill before you start cleaning helps with softening the dirt, making cleaning effortless. However, if yours is fairly clean, you can skip this step. At the same time, it’s advisable to protect your hands when handling a hot grill to avoid injuries.
- Scrape off the residues
You should watch out for the tools you use on the grill surface, and for scraping, a triangular heavy-duty scrapper is a great option. It also gets to the corners with much ease, ensuring that every residue is removed. When scrapping, do it gently to avoid leaving trails of scratches on the grill, which could make it ineffective.
- Soak the surface
For this step, you’ll need a mixture of water, lemon juice and soda water and probably a spray container. Bringing in soda water is to help the solution dissolve through the entire grill surface. With this, the residues will easily peel off and you’ll only have to wait for 5 minutes or less.
- Scrub the grill
Having softened up, all you need is a mild scouring pad and soapy water, which is optional. You also have to consider the rest of the grill parts like the grease catcher, which needs scrubbing as well. Ideally, you should scrub in circular motions and also gently in order to have the cleaning done and also keep the surface safe. If you used soapy water, rinse it off and afterwards, use a clean rag or paper towels to wipe the surfaces dry.
How to clean a flat top grill using vinegar
Before getting into the cleaning process, one thing to note is that vinegar also protects steel from rusting, so using it is an added advantage. Well, let’s get the cleaning started:
- Make a mixture
Mix the vinegar with clean water in a bucket and put a fraction of the mixture in a spray bottle. The quantities to use here depends on how big or dirty your flat top grill is. However, for the spray bottle, you’ll only need enough to fill your bottle, so you can save the rest for refill in case you have a smaller bottle. The whole essence of insisting on using a spray bottle is to make the next step easier.
- Spray the grill surface
Spray the entire grill surface with generous amounts of the mixture to soak up the grease and food residues. This should take approximately 5 minutes before you scrub off the layers of residues. For scrubbing, use a grill brush to ensure that you get rid of all the dirt and also keep your grill surface safe.
Again, how much to spray and how long you’re going to wait for the layers to soften up will depend on the layers of dirt you have to deal with. As I had previously hinted, you can use a spray bottle or sprinkle the mixture with your hands
- Wipe the grill with a rag
Here, you’ll need the leftover mixture in the bucket. Using the same, soak up your rag and use it to clean the remaining dirt, not forgetting other parts of the grill which might be dirty as well. This should be easier because you’ll have minimal wiping to do. If you’re going to do this frequently, remember to replace or clean the rags afterwards, to avoid contamination when doing your next cleaning.
- Season the grill surface
One of the ways to chances of food sticking on the grill surfaces when grilling is to season the surface with vegetable or any other cooking oil you have. You can do this using a dry rag or brush to ensure the oil is evenly spread out. This makes cleaning easier, especially when you plan to store it afterwards
I picked these home-made cleaners to highlight for you how to clean flat top grills because of how affordable and readily available they are. However, you can still substitute the two with grill cleaners and still get the job done perfectly well. A cleaning hack that always come in handy for me is cleaning my grill before keeping it away, because I’m one of those who only do seasonal grilling.
This ensures that it doesn’t gather additional dirt over the usual grease and food residues as it sits unused, making the stains more stubborn. You can also try this out by first allowing the grill cool down to heat levels that you can handle after use, then cleaning it the usual way.