How often should you deep-clean your grill?

Why bother

Caked grease flares up and blocked burners hide leaks. A thorough-tier job. Skippable when life's busy, worth it when it isn't.

Why it's a range

Heavy or year-round grilling wants it every month or two in season.

What the job involves

1. With the grill stone cold and the gas off, lift out the cooking grates and the flame tamers (the bars that sit over the burners) and scrape the loose crust off both, letting it fall into the firebox.
2. Drop the grates and flame tamers into hot soapy water, a little baking soda in with it, and leave them an hour. Then scrub with a brush or steel wool, rinse, and dry.
3. Give the burner tubes a light scrape where they sit, and poke any clogged gas ports clear with a paperclip or a thin drill bit so the flames burn even. Brush the grease and muck off the interior walls down into the firebox.
4. Scrape and wash the drip tray, swap the disposable liner if the grill has one, put it all back together, and run the burners hot for 10 to 15 minutes to burn off what's left.

Do it yourself, or pay someone?

Yourself, for most grills. It's an afternoon with a grill brush, a putty knife, gloves, dish soap, and two bins of water, no gas work beyond clearing the ports. Pay a pro ($130 to $325, median around $169) only for a badly neglected grill, a built-in (those start nearer $269 to $289, plus about $49 a burner), or when you can't be doing with the mess.

What skipping it costs

$130 to $325 for the pro deep-clean you keep putting off, and that's the cheap end. The grease and fat that pool under the burners, on the flame tamers, and in the drip tray are a second fuel sitting in waiting. Shut the lid and a gas grill can pass 500F in minutes, and that residue can catch. Failure to clean is the leading contributing factor in grill structure fires: NFPA's 2020-2024 data puts grill fires at around 12,141 a year, about $241 million in property damage, roughly $20,000 a structure fire. One that reaches the deck, the siding, or the house runs into the thousands. The afternoon with a brush is the cheap end of all that.

Signs it's overdue

• Grease is pooling in the drip pan, or the disposable liner is full, with a film of residue coating the flame tamers and the interior walls.
• Flare-ups every time you cook, or yellow, uneven flames where you want steady blue ones. That's grease blocking the burner ports.
• It's been a season, or 10 to 15 cooks of fatty food, since the last proper clean, and there's visible carbon and grease crust building up inside.

When to start thinking about it

A few days' warning does it. Grumpty grumbles 5 days out, then leaves you alone. Mark it done and Grumpty sets the next one, every 6 months, so you can go back to forgetting it exists.

Questions people ask