Scrubbing gas grill cooking grate with a grill brush

Before breaking out the brush, you need to burn off any caramelization from leftover food on the grill grates. Close the lid with the burners on high for about 10–15 minutes. Open the lid, turn off the burners, and let the grill cool to a moderate temperature of around 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Scrape each grill grate back to front once with your grill brush, then inspect them to see if you missed any sticky spots and brush again as needed.

Though cleaning with grill brushes is simple enough, caring for them is a serious matter. Their wire bristles become loose and damaged over time, putting them at risk of breaking off, sticking to the grates, and eventually lodging themselves in your food. If ingested, the bristles can puncture internal organs and cause severe health problems.

That’s why you should check for loose bristles before each use and discard the brush if you sense even the smallest amount of give in them. How often you use the grill brush determines when you should start over with a new one, but you may want to consider a model with an interchangeable head so that’s all you have to replace.

Grill Brush Life Hack

If you’d rather not use a grill brush, try loosely wadding a few feet of foil into a ball and scrubbing it along the grates with long-handled tongs. The foil will form to the grates, so just brush back to front once on each grate as you would with a grill brush before checking to see if you need to scrub a particular spot again.

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