How To - Clean your Kamado grill

Aside from the general cleanup you typically do after each use, you should try and do a thorough cleaning of your Kamado grill about every 6 months.  This isn't hard to do, since your Kamado is basically a self cleaning oven.

Self Cleaning your Kamado

1. Add lump if needed and light your fire
2. Place heat deflectors, grill grates, pizza stones, etc.. in place if you want to clean them as well.
3. Bring the grill up to between 600 and 650 degrees and hold there for roughly 30 minutes.  I actually cooked pizza's on mine right before doing this since they require high heat.
4. Close the top and bottom vents and let the grill completely cool down.

Once you have done the self cleaning and the grill has cooled down, you will want to do some additional cleanup to remove any leftover ash.  You will likely have a lot of ash that has collected over time in or around the firebox that you cannot get out without removing it.

Additional cleaning

1. After self cleaning is complete and the grill is cooled, remove all accessories and the firebox from the grill.
2. Use a shopvac to remove any remaining ashes in the bottom of the grill.
3. Using a plastic bristle scrub brush, brush off all accessories, the firebox, and the inside of the Kamado.
4. Go over the inside of the grill once more with the shopvac to pick up any additional ash created by the brushing.
5. Clean the exterior ceramic of the grill if needed with Windex or for tough to clean spots you can use Simple Green BBQ Grill Cleaner.  Bar Keepers Friend is also good to polish/shine the exterior surface.  An old tooth brush or nail brush will be helpful for the hard to clean spots so you can scrub them after you apply the Simple Green.

Something else you want to do periodically (if it applies to your particular grill) and it just makes sense to do it at the same time is to check the lid bands and make sure they are tight.

After a cleaning

Simple Green and Bar Keepers Friend

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