Much as we love a backyard barbecue in the summertime, when the hot weather subsides, very few people rush to clean their barbecues. Many people scrub their grills with an assortment of abrasive pads, brushes and liquids to remove layers of grease and build up. Yet these methods are not only time-consuming but some could impact your family’s health if the cleaning products are potentially toxic.

Steam uses 100 per cent pure water and it offers an easy way to rid your grill of pieces of charbroiled meat and fish that have accumulated over the summer months. Most top-notch steam cleaners have a micro-switch for steam control, a temperature pressure gauge, and come with a range of accessories that make it easy to clean your barbecue. However, many don’t think of steam cleaning when it comes to barbecues. 

“We have a steam cleaner and I often use it to give the patio furniture next to our grill a quick once-over, but it never occurred to me to use it on the grill itself,” says Walter Glenn of Lifehacker.com.

Quality home steam cleaners remove food remnants, and also bacteria because the temperature of the water can rise to 320°F. Most bacteria do not survive above 120 °F. The process of steam cleaning your grill is less trouble than removing the grills and scrubbing them down.

Even when we clean our barbecue each time we use it, there’s bound to be some build up of grease and food particles. No matter how good a job we do wiping down our grills, food remnants form on the grill each time we use it. That’s one reason that steam-cleaning attachments are your friends when cleaning barbecue grills. 

High quality steam cleaning models come with a detachable steam hose and a range of accessories for cleaning almost anything. Nylon, stainless steel and brass brushes give you the backup you need to bring your barbecue back to its former luster. Steam loosens debris and breaks down the grease while the brushes scrub it away.

Barbecue grill, burners, interior hood and wall can all be brought up to a level of polish you’re proud of with a long nozzle with aluminum tip or metal tip for accessing those hard-to-reach areas. Use the nozzle accessory to steam around each of the knobs on your barbecue panel to loosen grease build up.

Steam your interior hood and walls with the same accessory and use the brushes to scrape off excess grease and stains. You can even clean the grease tray with steam by removing it from underneath and steaming it on a washable, non-porous surface. And, doing a complete clean of your barbecue every so often doesn’t take very long at all.

“I deep clean the grill once each year and brush the grill when I use it, but it still gets pretty gunky,” says Glenn. “It’s nice to know a few minutes with a steam cleaner is all it takes.”

At Reliable, we do what we love, and we take pride in doing it right. Quality, functionality, design and customer service play an equally important part in delivering what’s right for you. From irons to steam cleaners to sewing machines, you can count on us to be right there with you. That’s the Reliable Way.