How To Clean A Pellet Grill - Tips & Tricks (2024)

it's finally starting to warm up and you know what that means it's almost grilling season and if you're like me you probably put your grill away dirty so today i'm going to show you what it takes to clean a pellet grill we're going to go over all of the components and i'm going to show you how to clean them properly so stick around see how we do it if you're new here i'm here to show you the backyard barbecue can be fun and easy so be sure to subscribe to my channel and ring that notification bell be sure to like the video and write me a comment let me know what you think now let's get started now today we're on location i'm going to be cleaning my dad's camp chef woodwind wi-fi 24 but everything that we go over today can apply to any pellet grill because those major components are pretty much the same across the board so we are going to do a top to bottom cleaning on everything inside the grill and everything that you need to be aware of for this next grilling season so let's get into it now when you go to the hardware store you're going to see an entire shelf full of different grill cleaners and i want to let you know now that they're not all created the same so i brought four of my grill cleaners with me today i've got my simple green heavy duty barbecue i've got my goo gone oven and grill cleaner i've got my citrus safe and i've got some parker and bailey barbecue and grill cleaner the reason why i brought these is to show you how they're different for example goo gone oven and grill cleaner it says right on here surf is safe but you have to be aware that it's not safe for all surfaces if you read the back of the bottle on any of these bottles you'll see that there are certain materials that you shouldn't use this on and that's because there's harsh chemicals in there that can harm the surface for example this goo gone says do not use on painted surfaces if you're familiar with the camp chef woodwind wi-fi you'd know that more than 50 percent of this grill is a painted surface so we have to be careful what we use this on that's why i brought citrus safe and that's why i brought the simple green why because these don't contain the harsh chemicals and they're not going to hurt these painted surfaces i also brought the parker and bailey because i've used it before back in the day when i used to cook on a stainless steel gas grill and it did such a great job at cleaning up those stainless steel components because this is a woodwind wi-fi 24 and we've got that stainless steel lid i wanted to make sure that it was shined up and ready for this spring all right i'm going to take you for a little trip here on this woodwind wi-fi we've got that stainless steel lid and as you can see it's kind of gunked up a bit it's dirty put many many many hours of use in you can see we got some grease dripping down the front it's dusty from being stored for the winter but what i want to show you is on the inside you can see all of those grates are nice and dirty you've got your drip pan covered with crud and grease a lot of grease on the inside of the chamber so that's what i want to show you today is what we need to focus on when we're cleaning these grills so let's get started all right so it's time to get inside of this camp chef now one thing that i like to do is i like to work my way from the top down to the bottom and what i mean by that is i like to brush my grates off first i want to start there and work my way all the way down to the bottom of the chamber so i got one of these grill brushes here and i'm just going to go through and scrape all of these down [Music] and we flip those over that way we can get both sides nice and clean and like i said working from the top to the bottom the reason why i do that is so that as the dirt and grime fall down i'm not re-cleaning the same surfaces over and over again so once we get these scraped down pretty good i'm going to remove them completely from the pit which i think we're about ready now that we got those upper racks out of the way we're going to get in here and do the same with these larger or the main racks here and we're going to spend a little bit more time with these later but i'm knocking off all of the larger old leftover food and all of that grime down like i said working from the top all the way to the bottom [Music] and as you can see all of that grime that we just scraped off is now collecting there on that drip pan my next order of business that's a plastic spatula i don't like to scratch up the surface especially when i'm working on these painted surfaces so these are one of my favorite tools when it comes to cleaning the grill what i want to do is take and scrape anything off the walls anything off this drip tray you want to clean these vents you'll see those here you want to make sure those are clean and open we're going to scrape all of this grime down into the bottom of the chamber look at that grime now some of you are probably going to say you know what i've never cleaned my grill this thoroughly well apparently you don't care about your food because i can tell you right now that when you're burning in a dirty pit you can taste and smell that grease burning and to be honest with you it's a hazard because you're more susceptible to grease fires you could see i'm just getting all kinds of soot and grease and dirt and grime off of this it's really cleaning up nicely now that we got the majority of the walls and edges cleaned up pretty good we're gonna get back on to this and i'm gonna scrape any of this and honestly you can use your wire brush for this and in this case this is my wire free tool just get in here rough it up a bit it's going to loosen up all that dirt that grime that grease now i'm going to take my spatula and i'm just going to scrape get in there with this you could see how much grime is actually coming off of that look at that look at that we'll just throw that down into the chamber and like i said don't forget to clean out these vents here and if you notice i'm doing all of this cleaning i still haven't sprayed any bit of cleaner yet you want to make sure that you get as much of this off before you're going to make what appears to be a muddy mess so we're just going to keep scraping through here and get this cleaned up get a lot of this grime off of here [Music] now that we've got quite a bit of a mess up here it's scraped off pretty good i'm going to use a shop vac here just get as much of this off as i possibly can [Music] i see a few areas that i didn't get well and good enough yet so i'll get in here and scrape them we've got it pretty well cleaned up now i'm gonna take some of this goo gone and i'm just gonna be careful and just spray a nice light coat careful not to get it onto any of the painted surfaces here we're just using this as a degreaser to help break down any of that remnants of grease you can see it's already working i'm just spreading this around a little bit and i'm actually going to take it out of the pit i don't think you can hear it but it's fizzing that's good [Applause] while that's working we're just going to take it out and set it off to the side all right i wanted to show you the one thing that most people forget to clean and that is the vent that goes to your chimney and you can see there there is a ton of grime it's best to take a wire brush i'm going to use my spatula here and i'm just going to scrape this away look at that holy smokes and now in regards to that chimney cam chef suggests that every 50 hours you go in and you clean that off and just keep an eye on it you could do it honestly every time you clean the grill but in every 200 hours to take the chimney off and actually inspect it you know you want to make sure that there's no blockages or anything like that because that could lead to a fire or poor performance on your grill we're just going to continue what we've been doing and that's scraping things down [Music] this here is camp chef slide and grill technology this is how you get your direct and indirect heat this slides away opens up to the fire pot there or covers it up there's a ton look at this ash holy smokes look at that that calls uh for the vacuum so it's i want to get in here and really suck up all that ash there holy smokes is there a lot might as well get down in the chamber while i'm in here we'll probably make another trip with the vacuum again push the sliding grill out of the way oh man [Applause] you're going to want to get down in here clean the fire pot out [Music] vacuum all around [Applause] [Music] okay so if you imagine that the drip pan is in here it angles down towards this side of the grill this trough right here is where the grease and grime travel to your grease clean out you want to make sure this trough is clean because what happens if the grease doesn't properly exit the grill you're very susceptible to grease fires and as you can see here there's a lot of crap down in there look at that mind you this grill's been setting so this grease is hardened up that's okay all right that should be good for the grease trough i'm gonna come over here make sure that slide and grill is pushed in and i'm going to clean off the top of this plate here this is kind of what guards the auger and everything but there was a ton of grease and grime on top of that you could see it just caked up and we're just going to push that down in there we'll get it with the shop back here in a minute now you can see look at that and while i'm in here i'm going to scrape the inside of the chamber knock down all the ash down to the bottom you can see that just rolling off that this is scraping down here we're going to get in here one last time with the vacuum here we're going to clean the trough out real good we're going to get down to the bottom of the grill clean up all that ash and soot grease [Music] so now i've got some of the citrus safe this is safe on all surfaces i'm just going to spray the inside of this chamber down and we'll give that a few minutes to sit and i'll wipe it down all right we gave this a few minutes so i'm just going to get in here just wipe this down you could see it's taken quite a bit of grease and grime off look at that i would suggest wear gloves i got my hands all dirty let me use some of the parker and bailey and i'm gonna get that down on the inside of this stainless steel lid and give it just a moment here to penetrate and we'll start cleaning that up now this may take a couple times to get this clean this was just after about 40 seconds you can see how how much that penetrated there in just that short amount of time so we'll hit it again and i laid a towel down in there just to make sure that anything that drips off of this gets caught any of the cleaners that i'm using today i'm going to put a link to that way you can find them really easily all right we gave it another minute and man that is coming nice and clean now you could sit here and spend all day trying to get every last little detail off of real fine triplot steel wool will help with that but you know what we just want to we just want a nice clean grill it doesn't have to be perfect you can see that that shined up that lid really nicely though a little bit of grime on this side and grab it with my spatula see if i can get some of that off maybe i'll hit you with a before and after here [Music] since this parker and bailey work so well i'm gonna use it to clean these grates off i'm just gonna spray it down and let them set off camera not a big deal you don't need to see me cleaning these so one of the most important components in these grilles are the rtd here so i've got some triplot steel wool i'm going to spray a little bit of my cleaner on here and i'm going to get in here and try and clean this up you might have to remove it but i'm going to try my best to clean it up nice now i know you can see that how much better does that look that right there is what we use to monitor the pit temperature and if that's dirty the performance of your grill might suffer so no matter what kind of pellet grill you've got locate your temperature sensor or rtd or thermocouple whatever style they use just clean it up with some triplot steel wool and a little bit of your grill cleaner now on some of these components down here i'm going to spray just a little bit of pam on it basically canola oil that'll just help protect it basically season it again as you can see we've got the grill cleaned up pretty good it's time to get it put back together we've got our drip tray here we've got our lower racks here and we clean these off with one of the cleaners and we used some hot water and a rag to wipe them to wipe them nice and clean and we've got our upper racks and you can see those are nice and shiny again and i'm just going to stack these like so keep them in the back now that we've got the inside cleaned up and put back together let's shut it let's clean the outside and i'm just going to use some of that simple green we'll just spray the outside surfaces here you know dad i bought you this grill this you could do is keep it clean i'm just going to take me some paper towel and just wipe that clean [Music] and we're going to hit it with that parker and bailey on that stainless steel because it does such a great job on that chimney cap there [Music] we've got the grill all cleaned up we got a brand new bucket with a brand new foil liner we're going to hang this off to the side we're starting to a good and successful year whenever you go through and clean your grill you always want to run it afterwards for a little bit so we're going to run this for about a half hour 350 degrees it's going to take any remnants of the cleaners burn them off all right so we'll come over here the controller is already on we're going to say set temperature i'm going to turn this up to 350 degrees i'm going to say confirm we're going to open this lid for that startup mode we'll give this a chance to heat up now since we stripped this of all the greases and oils it might not be a bad idea to take a little canola oil spray and get down in here and just spray your drip pan we're going to spray the inside of the grill a little bit we'll get onto those grates while we're in that startup procedure i want to come over here and show you a few things that we've added to this camp chef woodwind we've got the foldable front shelf it's super nice adds some additional space especially if you use that sidekick attachment you can just add the shelf to the front it folds stores out of place another thing that we've added we added the caster wheel set even on the 24 inch model of the woodwind these are a lifesaver it makes moving this grille simple because i tell you what when you've got a hopper full of pellets and if you've got that sidekick attachment and you've got that propane tank hanging off the back this sucker can get heavy and those caster wheels are a game changer i'll put links down in the description for the wheels and for this foldable front shelf and for the woodwind wi-fi 24. i suggest you take a look now the startup procedure is done we're going to close this lid let the grille heat up just like any job well done we need to take a look at our work let's check out the cleaned up camp chef woodwind wi-fi 24. [Music] [Music] [Music] well i hope you enjoyed this video cleaning the camp chef woodwind wi-fi 24. it doesn't matter what kind of pellet grill you have you should do this several times a year but there's no better time than doing it right now just before grilling season with that being said enjoy yourself this year cook some great food and i'll see you next time at anderson smoke show you better be careful you're not up in the video if you walk in front of the camera i might just put you in and you can tell all your buddies i'm on [Music] youtube [Music] you

Channel: Andersons Smoke Show

Views: 49,468

Keywords: pellet grill, pellet smoker, camp chef, wood pellet grills, wood pellet grill, pellet grills, camp chef woodwind wifi, best pellet grill 2020, camp chef pellet grill, camp chef woodwind, woodwind wifi 24, camp chef woodwind wifi 36, andersons smokeshow, weber smokefire, camp chef woodwind wifi 24, camp chef smoke pro, vertical pellet smoker, best pellet smoker 2020, best pellet smoker, rec tec, rectec, rider dlx pellet grill, how to clean a pellet grill, woodwind 24, sg30

Id: 8ixe2ePbSvM

Length: 20min 36sec (1236 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021