He Can't Grill, Either

Outta Leftfield
When it comes to cleaning the grill, options can be half-baked
Published: Wednesday, May 11, 2011
By Mike Morsch

Unfortunately, you don't bake on a grill.

Mother’s Day proved to be Opening Day of the grilling season at our house, and I must admit, it appears that my barbecuing skills have not improved any during the off season. I can still burn meat with the best of them.

*Sigh* Self-deprecating humor is one thing, but is it even possible that one man can be bad at so many things? Will we be seeing columns about how he can't brush his teeth or tie his shoes?

But this season opens up with a bit of vindication: Turns out it’s not a completely and utterly ridiculous idea to suggest that a self-cleaning oven be utilized when cleaning the grates of the grill.

Years ago, I was laughed right out of my neighborhood for suggesting that if a self-cleaning oven could clean the oven’s grates, then why couldn’t it clean the grill’s grates with the same effectiveness?

Don't these two paragraphs say exactly the same thing?

There appear to be two schools of thought on this: the husband’s creative thinking methods designed to save elbow grease and maximize leisure time … and the right way as determined by the wife.

Wahoooo, here's an original idea for humor: the smart wife knows more than the dumb husband! Move over, Tim Allen!

Traditional cleaning of a charcoal grill goes something like this:
(1) Remove the grates and soak them in warm, soapy water.
(2) Make sure the beer is cold.

Ah, and a beer joke. We're opening up new horizons in comedy here, folks.

(3) Use a stiff wire brush to gently scrub the surface of the grates.
(4) Drink a cold beer.

It got funnier the second time, didn't it?

(5) Sit in the lawn chair and try to think of easier ways to clean the grill. (Throwing the grill away after every use and buying a new one certainly isn’t practical, but that doesn’t mean the idea should not be considered.)
(6) Approach wife with the self-cleaning oven idea, which makes a whole lot of sense before and after several beers.

How much longer is this list going to be?

(7) Pick the ridicule and chastisement out of your backside for even thinking you were bringing those nasty grill grates into a perfectly clean kitchen and sticking them into a brand new and perfectly clean oven.

The more clauses you add, the more amusing a sentence becomes.

(8) Drink another beer, scoff at the fact that Scrubbing Bubbles is not recommended for cleaning grills.
(9) Ponder the various uses of a wire brush that don’t involve grill grates. (I couldn’t think of any others.)

Third beer reference in a single list. #9 is actually a decent question.

(10) Take a nap in the lawn chair, allowing the grill sufficient time to air dry.

By suggesting years ago that the self-cleaning oven could do the work of the warm, soapy water, Scrubbing Bubbles and wire brush, I had apparently violated some kind of No Stinky Grill Grates in My New Oven Rule.

"Stinky"? Are grill grates really stinky? Dirty, yes, but are they really known for their odor?

However, there are any number of websites these days where information can be found supporting the theory of putting the grill grates in the self-cleaning oven. Maybe I was just ahead of my time in this area of thinking 10 years ago.

Try reading both those sentences out loud. They sound TERRIBLE. At this point, it may be interesting to refer back to his June 10, 2010 article on virtually the same subject. Some quotes of interest:

"...the first round of meat was successfully charred over the holiday weekend."
"Personally, if mankind can invent a self-cleaning oven, then I think it should be able to invent a self-cleaning grill. Failing that, we should at least be able to remove the grill’s grates and place them in a self-cleaning oven..."

So we have this year's article in 100 words or less, basically. Burn food? Check. Clean grill? Check. The end.

Things have evolved now for me in the area of grilling. I no longer have the Weber kettle charcoal grill. I have some kind of Cadillac gas grill. It’s a big, old thing that takes up a good chunk of a relatively small back deck, and provides me the opportunity to efficiently burn the meat at a higher level of grilling incompetence.

It's old? He just purchased it a year ago. Unless he's trying to use "big old" as in "large," in which case that comma doesn't belong there. Glad we FINALLY established that he burns meat, too.

And I do not utilize the self-cleaning oven at our house to clean the grill, mostly because I’m not even sure we have a self-cleaning oven. It was not among the important questions I asked in advance of a second marriage, which is a shortcoming on my part. That question should have been higher on the list.

What is he even talking about now?

Admittedly though, switching from a charcoal grill to a gas grill has not come without its perplexing issues. For example, this weekend while I was I was goosing the chicken with barbecuing implements,

"I was I was" - somebody didn't proofread!

my father-in-law and I were chit-chatting, and he ended up schooling me in how to check the level of propane that’s left in the tank, a method that I had not yet learned.

From "for" to "learned," that's all one sentence. How on earth does this man presume to edit the writing of others?

But he is a camping enthusiast from way back, so he has a certain amount of credibility in this area. He said the way to determine the level of propane left in the tank was to take some boiling water and pour it on the tank. The areas of the tank on which the water didn’t boil determined the level of propane in the tank.

And here I thought the areas of the tank on which the water didn't boil determined the level of propane in the garage. Good thing he specified.

He told me this assuming that I knew how to boil water. However, my science skills are very limited in the principles of propane gas, and for a moment, I thought he was pulling my leg.

So now he doesn't know how to boil water. My "can't brush teeth" column idea probably isn't too far off.

It has always been my policy to try and stay out of hot water, and I judge a successful outdoor grilling experience as one that doesn’t involve me blowing up the house.

How would you blow up the house if you're grilling outdoors?

Somehow, boiling water on a propane gas tank just wasn’t registering with me. (Disclaimer: Not that I don’t believe my father-in-law, but I did not in fact try pouring boiling water on the tank, so don’t do it unless you know it to be safe.)

Science teachers are welcome to come by the office and boot me in the backside and demand an explanation for me not paying attention back in junior high science class.

What? A science teacher is going to attack him because he won't pour boiling water on his propane tank? I don't remember outdoor grilling being a part of my high school education.

But that’s the type of grilling I really don’t need.

This column in 100 words or less: "I'm bad at grilling, but I think you should clean the grill grates in a self-cleaning oven. I'm not sure we even have a self-cleaning oven. My father-in-law told me how you can tell if you have propane in the tank, but I don't want to try. Hopefully my high school science teacher won't find out. Bad pun."