How To Clean Your Outdoor Gas Grill In Less Than 30 Minutes

Regardless of your hometown's climate, outdoor gas grill cooking can be a four-season endeavor. Just remembe to keep your grill clean.

According to Weber's annual GrillWatch Survey, less than 40% of grill owners clean their equipment with any bit of frequency, and 6 percent admit they've never cleaned their grill at all.

There are three main reasons to keep a clean grill. The first is that a clean, well-maintained grill will have a longer useful life than a dirty, sloppy one. Grills can be expensive and it's often less costly to maintain them than to replace them.

The second reason to keep a clean grill is for sanitary reasons. Over time -- especially when exposed to the elements -- a grill's finish can deteriorate and/or retained cooked foodstuffs. This can create a breeding ground for germs and disease.

And, lastly, a clean grill helps cooked foods taste better.

So, whether you've cleaned your equipment recently or never at all, it's always a good time to freshen up your grill. Here's how to do it, quickly :

1. Remove the grates. Soak them in soapy water. Scrub foodstuffs using a wire brush. Allow to dry.
2. Remove loose debris from bottom of grill.
3. Using soapy solution, scrub grill's surfaces, grill pans, and grease trays. Don't forget the lid.
4. Clean outside of grill with mild soap solution, treating rust areas with cooking oil.
5. Look for broken, cracked or faulty equipment, specifically burners and ignitors. Replace as necessary.

Then, as a last step, re-assemble your grill and turn its burners to high for 10 minutes. This will burn off excess water in the grill and help to sanitize it.

Cleaning a gas grill is a 20-30 minute process. The results, however, are long-lasting. 

Use An Automatic Stirrer To Keep Foods From Burning And Pots From Scorching

It doesn't take much effort to stand over a pot and "stir continuously", as called for in some recipes. It can be tedious, though, and once a chef stops stirring or leaves a pot unattended, the recipe is sure to ruin.

Enter the automatic stirrer.

With its self-adjusting, self-centering blades, the Ardenté Gourmet Stirrer latches on to the side of most kitchen bowls, and does that stirring for you. The machine's constant blade-turning protects your milk-based recipes from burning; your sauce-based recipes from charring; and your temperate-sensitive sugars from caramelizing.

While it does its job, you're freed up to tend to other tasks in the kitchen, or to spend time with family around the house.

It protects your pots from scorching, too.

The Ardenté Gourmet Stirrer runs on 4 C batteries and can be run continuously, or intermittently. Its blades run at different heights to promote consistency, and are dishwasher-safe for easy clean-up.

You can buy the automatic stirrer in white or black on Ardenté's website, or on Amazon. It retails for $59.95.