Once, I got a bristle in a waffle cone from an ice cream parlor. Fortunately, I noticed it in my mouth before I swallowed. The parlor used a steel brush to scrub the griddles clean. Their policy is to bake a waffle cone after cleaning and immediately throw it away to catch stray bristles. One employee didn't follow the policy.
When this news first came out, I tried practically all the alternatives. My personal experiences:
Wadded up aluminum foil: really does not work well. It gets loose grime off, but anything at all burnt on will take very vigorous scrubbing and possibly result in shredded foil everywhere. Also feels like a huge waste of foil.
Wooden scraper: works ok, since it's not flexible doesn't get between the slats well, need to put a lot of elbow grease in to get stuck-on stuff, and if you leave it outside
in my high humidity region - even under a cover - it will get disgusting fast
Abrasive pads/steel wool - work surprisingly well, but need to be replaced constantly and it's fairly disgusting work (you will feel like you need a shower afterwards) because you are basically in the grill
Nylon brush - did literally nothing.
The solution I'm currently on is a wire brush that is continuous spirals of wire rather than bristles. Available from your preferred online merchant, etc. Does not work nearly as well as a traditional wire brush: have to use quite a bit more force, and very awkward to maneuver it between the slats. That said, it gets the job done very well and it's durable.
Take a cheap onion. Cut it in half. Flame up the grill real hot. Take an oven glove and rub the onion really hard on the grill. It will sizzle. Mmm. Amazing all the way around.
(Surgeons are super cocky and for them to explain "man this is tricky to fix" ---> I am out).
I was a little skeptical of this advice, so I did some online searching. There are a bunch of articles with anecdotes about this working, but here's an article that seems to have a bit more substance about this method:
I was at a birthday party at a park on Sunday (ended up getting rained out and we had to move to another location), and one of the guys manning the grill was doing this on the public-use grill. It seemed to work pretty well.
Here's what I've always done with my grills (propane this is easier, with charcoal you need to add extra fuel):
1) After done grilling, while you setup the table etc.. and get ready to eat, turn it on the highest setting and cover the grill. Should be done for at least 5-10 minutes.
2) Next time, turn the grill on to the highest setting to warm it up. Again at least 5-10 minutes.
If there's anything at all left it'll quickly be gone with any kind of brush... very easily. or even your spatula.
I'm a huge fan of the Pumie Scouring Stick [1]. It works on a bunch of different surfaces, and I've used it to clean things that seemed baked-on beyond repair (like my ceramic pizza stone).
Scraping with a metal spatula does a good job at getting a lot of the gunk off. Then, rubbing half an onion on the grill when hot cleans off the rest (and leaves a nice onion flavor).
I still use a wire brush sometimes, but it's a different type with longer stiffer bristles. There's no way one of these bristles is going to get accidentally lodged in your food. These bristles just don't fall out and if they did you would see it pretty easily. You have to use it a bit more perpendicular to the grates, but it works. http://a.co/gyIkCeK
I have used a steel brush from a hardware store that has inch-long bristles. These bristles are a lot longer and thicker than the little ones in the video of the article. A lot harder to miss visually and if you had one in your food I think you'd notice it on the first (painful) bite. However I think the 5 minutes of heating after cooking is finished would be a better option.
In Japan they use brushes made with broom bristles (search for エニシダ根のブラシ). They are very hard and great for scraping. At that point, though, I'm not sure how much better it would be if you swallowed a piece.
I wonder if there is a non mechanical way of cleaning it and instead a chemical reaction like oven cleaner. Ideally it would be something that wasn’t seemingly related to a chemical weapon but maybe that’s what it takes.
I think a lot of people don’t let their grill get hot enough. I know I have problems with cleaning my smoker racks (and my wife won’t let me run them through the dish washer) so I have to throw them on my charcoal grill when I’m heating it up.
Yeah, probably. Charred food is not good for you really, but it's going to be on there anyway after you cook on a grill no matter what (unless it's like, a George Foreman...?). I can't imagine the bit of carbon on the grill from the last session would ever cause more harm than normal charcoal!
Hot concentrated sodium hydroxide will do it. Or oven cleaner, if you can't get chemicals. It won't damage steel, but will dissolve aluminum. Ammonia works too, but not as effectively.
OxiClean (or other clean-in-place products) should do a good job if you have a way of submerging the grill top. Brewers use this to clean fermenters and other equipment.
Would it be safe/feasible to use a butane or propane torch for that? Would there be an issue of carcinogenic residue? If not, then a handheld torch is cheap and easy to use, and goes well last 700 degrees.
Yes, but it'd be very slow. Lye would be much more effective. But any solution strong enough to saponify the grease will be strong enough to damage your skin, so use gloves.
There are wads of coiled wire that you can use with a long pair of tongs. Basically steel wool with much thicker wire. This works pretty well and stands up to use.
> Kevin Gallant, of Summerside, P.E.I., had part of his small intestine removed after he swallowed a bristle from a barbecue brush. He still uses a bristle brush, but inspects the barbecue thoroughly after using it.
I have been paranoid about this for years, and I still use a bristle brush. But I was very selective when I went shopping for my new brush. It has very large bristles that are not likely to come off, and if they do, will be very obvious when eating or chewing. Brushes can be found with bristles of larger diameter wire gauges.
Can you really blame him? The brushes are so apparently so good at cleaning that it's worth his time to inspect the results after than switch to an alternative. It's not like his approach is unsafe.
bristle brush cleaning time + inspection time < alternative cleaning time
That approach sounds wrong to me: bristles breaking off is pretty rare already, and inspecting the barbecue for bristles is only as good as your ability to pay attention while doing it, while not finding anything most of the time. People often overestimate their ability to pay attention, because the cost of missing something is usually low and the consequences manageable. People's intuition regarding very rare events is also pretty bad in general. So attention would be the limiting factor, which is why it still seems unsafe.
Also, I felt like the goal is to avoid having a portion of your intestine removed, not really so much to save time.
How is it that the manufacturers haven't had a class action put their way? I mean, they are knowingly making a product that fails in regular usage in a way that is almost impossible to prevent or detect completely.
I'd suggest these types of scrapers be legislated against since they are incapable of being used safely in reasonable intended usage.
Yeah, well, good thing we have OpenBazaar so that people like you won't be able to keep me from exercising my freedom to use a real manly brush to do a real manly job. I'm sure that really offends you, but I'm no snowflake. I can make my own bristle material decisions for my self and on behalf of everyone I cook for./s
I don't know, it's my opinion, but I feel like the /s trend/adaptation has ruined a lot of the jokes for me by being overly explicit and not leaving any ambiguity...where is the fun in that :P
I think on HN the need for clarity is seen as more important than having fun, because misunderstandings can do more damage than fun can create pleasure. This unfortunately limits the number of meta-levels (or ambiguity) you can use in jokes or sarcasm. But I guess it's worth the tradeoff. And actually with a bit of effort you can often have both.
I also understood it as a joke before I reached the `/s`, but not everyone might’ve. Case in point, there’s another post on this thread[1] where another joke (as I see it) was made and the first reply is someone taking it seriously.
Because men were stereotypically more likely to do risky physical stuff. Especially if it's stupidly funny. But of course, that's less so now in many cultures, as women grow up feeling more freedom to Darwin out.
> Unintentional injuries are the #3 leading cause of death among men, but it is #6 for women. This is probably due to the fact that men are much more prone to saying things like, "Hold my beer, and watch this." Also, men tend to work in more dangerous professions where being killed on the job is a possibility.
The stainless counters, sinks, appliances, etc. in a typical restaurant kitchen spent plenty of time being wire brushes when they were fabricated and approximately none of the bristles shed during that process ever made it into anyone's food because those surfaces were cleaned of debris before being used. Wire brushes and stainless steel scrub pads are incredibly common in food-service. Steel scrapers are commonly used on aluminum sheet pans all the time. Green srub pads shed fibers. The "dirty" side of a kitchen is chock full of debris you don't want to eat You don't wind up with this debris in food because the things being cleaned are cleaned properly.
Scrubbing just breaks off stuff that's caked on. It doesn't remove them except for the few removed by gravity. Dirt, metal and burnt food particles all need to be removed from the thing they're on. This is done by washing and rinsing. The water doesn't know or care whether it's washing away burnt food or wire bristles that were left there while breaking loose the burnt food. If things are being done properly it all goes down the drain. Simply brushing your grill and nothing else is not an adequate cleaning job. You wouldn't just scrape off a pan and then use it without washing and rinsing it.
The stuff in a commercial kitchen is (for the most part) designed to be quick and easy to clean properly. Most appliances and surfaces are wash down capable. Anything that's loose can be gotten off of them with a properly directed stream of water. Corners and crevices that are hard to clean are kept to a minimum. Designing things so that an overworked food-service worker can still clean them well enough helps a lot.
This isn't a wire brush problem. This is a people too lazy to clean things problem that's aggravated by the fact that the contents of the average consumer kitchen were not designed to quickly and easily cleanable and the average consumer will not be fired if they habitually fail to clean things properly.
I do not understand why some people think adding legislation to that will solve the problem of people who do not clean things properly.
This subject is a big deal is because many people clean their grill by brushing and brushing only, steel wire is not something you expect in your food.
Regarding the article itself, on one hand I expect medical professionals (who also work in an environment where being able to clean things is important) have a more nuanced opinion than "just don't use wire brushes" On the other hand, the kind of cleaning that goes on in a medical environment is different and all the stereotype of surgeons expecting the world to revolve around them.
> consumer will not be fired if they habitually fail to clean things properly
You summed it up right there. Consumers cannot be reasonably expected to clean to the level of a commercial operation.
The thing is with these brushes, they are sold right alongside other scrapers and brushes as if they can be used with exactly the same level of casual concern. There is often, at best, tiny legalese text on the packaging about the bristles being a hazard. There is no commercial kitchen staff training about the dangers of these tiny pieces of wire getting into food. People at home do not have huge liability to customers eating at their house and expect the burden of safety to be on the producer of the products they are using.
I am not necessarily saying ban these things, but they should come with clear and obvious warnings and realistic operating instructions that if followed would result in no chance of harm. That's on the manufacturer surely.
What if I made a skillet that secreted tiny amounts of arsenic that unless scrubbed thoroughly with bleach and then run through an ultra-high temp dishwasher after every use would eventually poison you? This might be fine for a kitchen crew who is educated about the proper usage, but the average home user would just wash it with dish-soap.
I'm all for keeping legislation light, but when there is a known persistent problem that manufacturers ignore and don't self regulate, it's time to step in and apply a mechanism to ensure reasonable responsibility.
>You summed it up right there. Consumers cannot be reasonably expected to clean to the level of a commercial operation.
"to the level of a commercial operation" just means actually washing it, not just scraping the hard stuff off and calling it good. It is not labor intensive on a per item basis nor is there any special equipment involved.
>There is often, at best, tiny legalese text on the packaging about the bristles being a hazard.
Which is enough as far as I care. The physical characteristics that make the bristles do their job also makes them hazardous to ingest. It's the same as a knife needing to be sharp.
>People at home do not have huge liability to customers eating at their house and expect the burden of safety to be on the producer of the products they are using.
People at home don't have customers to be liable to.
>What if I made a skillet that secreted tiny amounts of arsenic that unless scrubbed thoroughly with bleach and then run through an ultra-high temp dishwasher after every use would eventually poison you? This might be fine for a kitchen crew who is educated about the proper usage, but the average home user would just wash it with dish-soap.
The difference is that the frying pan in that hypothetical example requires expensive specialized equipment that consumers do not typically have in order be used properly.
> "to the level of a commercial operation" just means actually washing it, not just scraping the hard stuff off and calling it good. It is not labor intensive on a per item basis nor is there any special equipment involved.
Are you actually aware of what we are talking about? We are talking about filthy, greasy BBQ grills covered in baked on crap that is really hard to get off, some people use pressure washers. There is special equipment involved, namely special steel bristle brushes that deposit tiny bristles that need to be dealt with in a very specialized way as seen in commercial kitchens where they have stainless easy wipe down surfaces and huge sinks so that everything can be carefully cleaned after each service.
> It's the same as a knife needing to be sharp
Deep down, you know this isn't true. A knife is very well known to be sharp and is obviously a hazard. A wire brush has hidden dangers. Bristles are expected to remain attached, but unknown to many users they come off when cleaning and then even more unknown to them they get into food and can cause trauma in the body and are very hard to get removed.
> Which is enough as far as I care
Well, I am not talking about you, I can see beyond you to the numerous people who have ended up in the ER. This is the problem regardless of how much you scoff at their ignorance, apathy toward sterility, and general lethargy at the family grill on Sunday.
> the contents of the average consumer kitchen were not designed to quickly and easily cleanable
> The difference is that the frying pan in that hypothetical example requires expensive specialized equipment
Erm, isn't this the same? In your examples you are describing specialist commercial equipment, and so in mine I was also.
>Are you actually aware of what we are talking about? We are talking about filthy, greasy BBQ grills covered in baked on crap that is really hard to get off, some people use pressure washers.
When cleaned properly reasonably soon after each use is never gets to that point.
There is special equipment involved, namely special steel bristle brushes
A wire brush is not anymore specialize equipment than a shovel is.
>that deposit tiny bristles that need to be dealt with in a very specialized way as seen in commercial kitchens where they have stainless easy wipe down surfaces and huge sinks so that everything can be carefully cleaned after each service.
Things don't get cleaned carefully in a commercial kitchen. Things get cleaned as quickly as possible. Things are designed to be easy to clean so that less man hours are spent cleaning and more are spent on things that make money. There's no reason you can't clean things just as well at home. It will simply take more time and effort. That would be a big pain if you had to clean a stack of sheet pans at home but for one grill it's no big deal.
>Deep down, you know this isn't true. A knife is very well known to be sharp and is obviously a hazard. A wire brush has hidden dangers. Bristles are expected to remain attached, but unknown to many users they come off when cleaning and then even more unknown to them they get into food and can cause trauma in the body and are very hard to get removed.
If you've ever uses a wire brush regularly you know that the bristles come off as a part of normal wear.
>Erm, isn't this the same? In your examples you are describing specialist commercial equipment, and so in mine I was also.
No they're not. The dishwasher was a literal need. The well designed sinks and counters are an efficiency/profitability thing. The job can still be done without them but would require more labor.
None of the inconveniences you mentioned will end with you in a surgical OR having them removed from your digestive tract or worse (unless you are in the habit of swallowing toothpicks).
I have that scraper, and found that it really doesn't do a very good job. A balled up piece of aluminum foil works better than the wooden scrapers, in my experience. Unfortunately, the best results come from the bristle brushes.
Aluminum is just being wasteful honestly. Not sure how clean you're expecting, but this does a fine job at getting all the big chunks off (which is what you want). Heat will nuke the rest of it.
Depends on what you're cleaning it for. Some people are paranoid that the bits of carbon left clinging to the rails are known to the state of California to cause cancer and must be completely removed before it is safe to heat food.
Or you can be like me and just get the grill hot and give it a quick once over with a metal spatula to remove any chunks that are sticking up. I mean I'm cooking over an open flame here, it's already carcinogen city.
When this article came up last year I thought about grooving a metal spatula with the Dremel, although I've not gotten around to it partly because I have never seen a bristle come off my brush and I always oil the grill with a paper towel and olive oil right before cooking. It's a good idea to quickly make one like this product from scrap wood. Maybe this season.
You can also get a 1x6 piece of oak (or other hardwood) from your favorite lumber yard or home improvement center. I grabbed an offcut of red oak for about $2 a year ago. Thirty seconds with a jigsaw to form a handle.
I use a steel spatula to scrape the obvious stuff off, but don't really bother cleaning a grill very thoroughly. It gets hot enough to burn off most of the funk and germs.
If the op is anything like those at bbqs I go to, chasing the kids around with a disgustingly dirty paddle while they scream with terror is part of the bbq.
As I read it, that post was a joke.
Steel wool is safer, no doubt, but this shouldn't really be anything more than a freak occurrence if you clean a grill properly. The wire brush is just the first step to remove the coarse stuff. Soap, water, and some kind of fine abrasive pad or scrubbing cleaner should remove these barbs. I guess at some restaurants, they're more concerned about speed and don't take the care...
No, that's a (mostly) fair point. I'd distinguish between objects whose dangers are obvious and those whose aren't.
The danger of hammers is obvious. You know to treat them safely, and so there's comparatively little trouble. The possibility of having an untreatable needle stuck in your throat unless you use your tools in the right order is rather less so.
I didn't say anything about banning unsafe objects, however. I think there's a case to be made for it if they're easily replaceable, but that's not the point I put forward.
I don't think so. Its a common argument that generally available products should be safe by default, not safe because of training. The reply is a bit of a straw man, there's obviously nuances to that stance. In this case, expecting _everyone_ to know exactly how a wire brush is unsafe is not realistic. If there weren't alternatives, well, there wouldn't be much to do. But in this case, there's plenty of safe alternatives to wire brushes, thus a strong argument can be made that they should simply be banned.
What would such a ban look like? No wire brushes for BBQs? What about the wire brushes they have in the hardware aisle? Do they need to add 'not for BBQs' to the label?
Seems like good fodder for tabloid evening news and then just let it be.
Most people are just going to go to the barbecue aisle and find the "safe" brushes. Someone really determined to buy a wire brush might find the rust-scrapers or something, but that's no different from paint thinner not being sold as a household cleaner.
It makes sense to me to make the safe option into the easiest, most obvious path to take. Stop labeling wire brushes as "barbecue brushes", and stop stocking them directly alongside the cooking tools. That's the form I imagine a ban would take.
As an aside on the BBQ brushes & Home Depot. This seems like a great consumer education opportunity that could build some goodwill. Surely HD, or at least the HD merchandising team, is aware of this issue.
There's a big difference between a tool only sold to people in a specific industry, and not generally available, and a tool available at retail outlets which is meant to be used by the general public. (And with one thing you mentioned, C compilers, the tool itself isn't dangerous, but the artifacts you can create using the tool can be dangerous. This is why aerospace software, for example, has a lot of procedure around it.)
>I'd say products that are only safe if used properly
That's literally every product ever.
I challenge you to come up with an example of something that's readily available to the general public that cannot reliably cause harm or death if used in a sufficiently ignorant way.
People intentionally eat Tide Pods. Should we ban all cleaning products that an average person is capable of injecting a lethal amount of?
Steel wool is generally much much finer and more ductile than the bristles on a stiff steel brush. Steel wool is just a thousandth of an inch across so it's totally fine to consume a few fibers so long as it's not the extra course stuff. Even then it wouldn't be as bad as a bristle off a steel brush.
From personal experience as a dishwasher, old steel wool tends to lose little pieces as it gets more and more brittle. Pieces would get caught in the rivets where the pan handle attaches. I was yelled at more than once because of that—but how else do you clean a pan?
> I was yelled at more than once because of that—but how else do you clean a pan?
Steel chainmail is awesome for cast iron, and probably safe for anything steel wool is safe for. For pans with coating (enamel or nonstick) where that's not safe, soap, water, and sponge works (sponges have the same shedding problem as steel wool, but usually higher contrast and harder to miss and fail to rinse out when they do shed.)
I concur about the steel chainmail. I washed dishes in a New Mexican Restaurant when I was younger. The worst was the 30 quart bean pot. The starch and the beans. The chainmail made short work of it.
But focusing in on the rivets, there are two ways to look at it. The remaining fat that has undergone polymer-type conversion due to heat is seasoning, not dirt. Or if you really want to get in there, probably an ice pick.
Have you ever tried it? The forces you're applying are completely different. You're squeezing it against the wires of the grill, and it's all one connected piece of metal. If it does break, it will tear, not splinter. Plus, you want to wash off the crud you loosen anyway. Also, it's dirt cheap, You wouldn't keep an old one around for very long.
I am mildly surprised this is a problem. I've used a wire brush to clean the grill for as long as I've grilled and had no issues. But then, I've always combined using a wire brush with pre- and post-cooking heating the grill at full power to burn off accumulated stuff. The wire brush is far more effective at scrubbing things off when the crud is beginning to ash, as opposed to the partially-caramelized state it was in when the food first came off.
Edit: I will additionally add that I also scrub the grill plates on occasion, because as mentioned in other comments, the accumulated crud makes food more likely to stick and can also impart a bad taste.
I wonder if it's more common in Canada because of colder temps making the metal more brittle. I wonder if there's a higher likelihood of incidence when the ambient temp is low.
I couldn't find a wire brush when I bought my grill but was surprised to discover that the actual grill plates were "Porcelain-enameled cast-iron". I just dump them into the sink and let them soak every couple of weeks and they basically come out nearly spotless.
However, I don't normally clean them except for using a plastic brush when they are cold—mostly to get rid of the big pieces. I rather like the "seasoning" :)
It seems to me that porcelain-enameled grates are becoming more common, even on cheaper grills. And yeah, that style of grate cleans a lot easier than the straight metal wire grate I've seen on older grills.
Let the carbon build up. It's seasoning and food doesn't stick to it.
Just preheat the grill to burn off any remains from the prior use. If there's really heavy buildup, use a straight edge scraper like a paint scraper or heavy spatula.
Cleaning a grill down to shiny bare metal is a sure way to have all your food stick to it every time.
Grease and oils get rancid, particularly in hot weather, and rancid grease on the grates can make your food taste bad. Rancid grease on the bottom of the grates can vaporize and flavor the food, too.
The black crust on the grates is mostly carbon. It tastes bad. In addition carbon insulates the grates and can stick to food. So it is vital that your food go on clean grates.
I think that part of the disparity is in frequency of use: if you cook on a daily (restaurant) or even weekly (enthusiast) schedule, you won't have problems. If you only grill on major holidays, you won't be able to just use it without cleaning.
Also, a grooved scraper with the right spacing for your grate does a great job of removing large chunks. You don't need to polish it to bare metal, just remove that excess. Scrape after grilling while it's hot, wait a week, wipe with a paper towel dipped in olive oil when it warms up, and it works well enough for me.
Incidentally, the occasional griller is also the exact person who would most likely be least aware of the danger with a wire brush... sort of a perfect storm situation
You can do it with a pellet grill/bbq too; most of them can get a grate temperature well above 500 degrees, which will do the job. Not as good as propane of course, but easier than charcoal or wood.
Because I don't want my meat to be covered in the ashes, the burnt food particles add bad flavors, ash-covered food looks unappealing, burning off hanging chunks of fat causes excess smoke, and ash-covered food is more difficult to visually measure doneness.
Pre-oiling your metal grates should be done to prevent sticking and burning off excess food particles should be done to prevent build-up.
It's pretty much exactly like seasoning a cast iron pan -- get the grill grates screaming hot, switch off the heat, sop up a paper towel in your high-heat oil of choice (eg: canola oil) but not dripping, and wipe your grill grates.
This is generally only possible with a cleaned grill and it would be prudent to clean your grill after it's heated up and before you apply oil.
Cheese dripping from cheeseburgers or heavily sauced ribs can leave a mess, which can smoke/flameup and give newly cooked food a bad taste. Normally I just brush enough to get the big stuff off the grate.
Or you could just clean it with old wooden utensils that are on their way out, or slice an onion in half and push it up and down the grill with a wooden spoon.
I have also always subscribed to the "Al Bundy" school of grill-cleaning.
The loose carbon also makes it easier to make the "grill marks" that prove "this item was cooked on a hot grill" without actually burning them in too far. This is important if you actually cooked the food by some other means and only used the grill for Maillard, caramelization, drying, and the cosmetic grill lines.
If I'm in there to actually cook something, there's usually a foil packet involved, because otherwise one needs a humidity reservoir, or some other means of retaining moisture in the food, and the tasty fats still drip out.
Not sure if that was a joke, but since it's the internet I'm obligated to take it seriously. :p
That burnt gook always tastes bitter to me. The flavor of BBQ is primarily Maillard reactions of proteins and carbs reacting, aromatic phenols from herbs and spices, and polyphenols from wood smoke.
When you cook fat and meat such as a BBQ polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(PAH) form and those compounds contain several benzene ring molecules. Part of the Maillard reaction process is the creation of PAHs. It's part of the process when cooking meat but not the only thing you taste. PAHs are used as a food additive "liquid smoke" to add a smokey, sweet flavour.
I threw mine out after using it once, and seeing that the BBQ had quite a few bristles stuck on it. I can't believe people actually use those things, it seems horribly unsafe.
Those shredded reconstituted blocks of glass that look vaguely sponge like work really well too, though you gotta rinse it down pretty aggressively afterwards and wipe with a cloth cus it gets powder all over the place.
Ah no not those, I mean literally chunks of ground up bottle glass that just vaguely look like sponges. They're not at all actually sponge like in absorbance property.
I'm not sure if it was exactly the same type of brush, but a number of years ago I found a wire from a grill brush in my mouth after taking a bit at an Outback Steakhouse. The restaurant was profusely apologetic and comped our meal without our asking them. I feel very fortunate to have felt it before I swallowed in light of this, and other articles I've read, since that meal, but unfortunately there's no way to control whether restaurants change the tools they use in-light of these warnings.
I've worked in restaurants and we always used stiff plastic brushes and abrasive pads for cleaning the grills.
Restaurant-grade grill cleaner (basically industrial-strength oven cleaner) is pretty effective. You don't need to do a lot of heavy scrubbing if you use it properly.
That's fine, my objection is to the framing of it being impossible to tell businesses that are already heavily regulated how they are to clean their grills.
I had the same thing happen at a Burger King last year. I was lucky to find it in the first bite. After years of avoiding Burger King because of their consistent low quality food I finally said what the heck, I want a Whopper. But no. Fate is a cruel bird.
Wow what a nightmare, in the article that poor women couldn’t even get it taken out after dozens of x rays and attempted surgeries. I saw from another comment this is from 2016 but somehow I missed it and appreciate the link. Throwing mine out right now.
I had the same problem. This is from 2016 and the issue was likely known a lot earlier, yet I never heard of it and most people I know with a bbq clean it that way.
Which in itself references a huge problem. How do you combat conventional wisdom and traditions?
Can confirm this is terrifying. Zero out of 5 stars.
I once pulled a bristle out from between my molars. Thought about it for 5 minutes...realized it was from the grill (was eating a salad made of leftover grilled chicken). Googled “wire grill brush swallow”. Read horror stories. Immediately freaked out. Even used a metal detector like you would use on a beach on my stomach to see if I swallowed more (didn’t work). Spent the week waiting for disaster to strike (it didnt). Immediately threw out all wire grill brushes forever.
How are these things not banned? If something is sold for casual private use that predictably leads to hundreds of people having metal barbs stuck in their throat every year, and if the procedure to extract those barbs is sufficiently difficult that it has become recognised as a national problem among surgeons, then there seems to be pretty good grounds for banning it. As this thread attests, there are plenty of alternatives.
It's infuriating that articles about a problem like this don't spend just one single sentence on possible alternatives, even though the surgeons are begging.
Fire the editor.
Alternatives I've seen in this thread are a ball of wadded up aluminum foil, a wooden scraper, abrasive pads, and stiff plastic bristles (EDIT: and an onion). This proves once again that the HN comments section is often better than the article itself.
A wooden plank works great for me. I was using an onion as well once in a while. Or try both.
Try searching "wooden grill scrapers" on Amazon for example. Or if you don't like Amazon there are some other sites that sell those. I got mine from Canada, made from cedar and in addition to scraping the grill adds a tiny bit of cedar aroma.
>This proves once again that the HN comments section is often better than the article itself.
The article put the bar on the floor. HN picked it up an inch.
Everyone here is suggesting different things to scrub with that will leave less offensive debris behind. Few are suggesting washing away that debris. You should be able to clean your grill with pretty much whatever you want as long as you wash it properly afterward.
Agree. Perhaps someone can reach out to the editor and ask them to include some alternatives. I've found that a metal putty knife or wooden scraper work well. Also, if the grill is not hot, Scotch-Brite heavy duty scour pads work really well.
Yea, I remember when it was posted last time on here. I think HN is the only place I've heard about this; have been using those things for most of my life without realizing this could be an issue.
1. Use a grill with wide slats instead of round steel bars
2. Run the grill on high for ten minutes after cooking to burn everything to a fine ash
3. Use grill mats when possible so I don't have to clean the grill to begin with
I just use damp paper towels to clean up the grill before I use it since I burn everything off after the previous cook session.
I think you mixed up the order of step 2. The piece of fat should be at the end to lubricate the cooking service. Wetting it again after would be counter productive.
Also I don’t recommend a regular sponge for the water cleansing step due to the materials involved not necessarily be heat safe. Soaked paper towels work great.
The problem is some propane grills are fairly low power and will require a long time to "burn off" the grease and other stuff. I routinely do it with mine, but it takes at least 10 minutes full blast...
If your grill is dirty enough, you may end up causing a fire that will burn through the enclosure (I've seen it happen). It's also fairly polluting, so if anyone's outside it's best to clean some other way. I like the onion trick myself.
having worked in a commercial kitchen with a grill station, believe it or not the easiest thing to do with dirty grates was to throw them in the dishwasher or soak them overnight with the soda fountain tips in a mild solution of bleach. our grates were mild steel and cast iron.
We would start our grills at 5-6 AM for breakfast sausage and ham, which did a great job of re-seasoning the grates if youre curious. day shift would take over from there with the station menu from our chefs. Generally we were careful to avoid sticky marinades or mops for the grill to keep things tidy and sane. Ribs were cooked in the oven, then transferred/finalized on the grill station. When this got too cumbersome we leased a commercial smoker for a few years.
speaking from experience though, the sanest way to keep those grates from getting insane was to wipe them down as you go with an oily onion or oily rag in some tongs. Avoid teriyaki or yogurt marinades like the plague and never leave the station "wet." get to things before they set, especially proteins.
I've been using balls of crumpled up aluminum foil held with tongs. My father grills more often than I do and I bought him a dedicated tool for grill cleaning from a craft fair; it's a brass disk on a stick, with various grate profiles cut out of the disk. It works well, but is a little slower than some other tools. Looks like the creator has a web store now[1].
I was just thinking about this. I’m thinking of laying a wet towel over it and scrubbing it furiously with this mallet looking smashy thingie my wife hasn’t used once in 20 years.
Edit: I’ve been thrown out of the kitchen. I will look into some other peoples suggestions.
Moments like this are exactly why I came out of my shell and started communicating with people again. I googled that, confirmed you are right, confronted my wife, and now I own a brand new (very old) meat tenderizer in the garage.
Seriously you can clean them the same way you clean any other greasy cooking utensil. Those green plastic scrubbers (like scotch guard) work fine.
I have a small bbq and I just take the grills off and put them in the dishwasher! That has a non-stick coating so I wouldn’t want to use a wire brush anyway. The large bbq just gets a hand wash.
If they're what I'm thinking of the green ones will score stainless steel, so consider testing first. The blue non scratching ones may not be quite as effective, but are a lot less dangerous to your pots, pans and other kitchen equipment.
I can come up with three reasons. First is to remove beef residue before cooking chicken. Second is to prevent chicken from sticking - a clean grill with fresh oil sprayed on it works best. Third is that, when running a grill for a number of hours at a time, you generally can't afford to shut the grill off to clean it.
I've used balled up aluminum foil, wet newspaper, and wooden scrapers. All of them work but I like the wooden scrapers best because they're easier to apply pressure with. You can use any plank of wood really. Do it while the grill is hot and you'll wear grooves into the wood.
I have been using a wooden one for the last year. It's about 18" x 5" x 1/2", has a oar-like handle carved in one end, and a taper in the other. I think it's made of cedar. It starts to get groves from the grill as you use it, but even without those it is effective, you just have to angle it to get stuff off the sides of each rung/wire (whatever those are called). Compared to a bristled brush it usually only takes one pass.
They sell bristle-less brushes that essentially have interlocking metal loops. They're much safer but they aren't quite as effective. There are also wooden cleaners and funny-looking cleaners that resemble a cross between a sponge and a pumice stone you can use.
Really, if you go to the grill aisle of Home Depot (or whatever similar store) you'll see plenty of choices.
There are non-bristle brushes available such as this one. I have one and they aren't as effective as a regular brush but at least you don't have the risk:
I have a plastic bristle brush, but of course it can't be used when the grill is hot. It works ok for getting off large bits of char, but I think I will explore other alternatives this season.
Get it really hot and pour boiling water on it. That works with my Weber 100. (With my Genesis I just wait until it catches fire then frantically put it out with the garden hose.)
This is what I've been using, works great but you have to use quite a bit of it and get a large chunk of it. You can re-use it, though. You don't have to get a new piece every time you clean the grill.
I'm inclined to primarily blame the general loss of consumer goods build quality over the past ~25 years.
What proportion of these brushes giving up their bristles in sufficient quantities to be on Surgeons' radars were made in China?
Growing up we had zero plastic-handled brush options. They were all well-built, wood-handled beasts and the bristles would be mutilated and disgusting prompting replacement long before they were falling out of the holder.
You can't even buy a manual can-opener that doesn't deform into a useless paperweight on first use at a big-box store anymore. Why expect their grill brushes to be any better?
Edit:
To clarify, I've seen many plastic grill brushes on shelves at stores. It has become increasingly difficult to find anything made of wood in the kitchen-related isles of stores like Wal-Mart and Target. There are obvious problems with a plastic-handled grill brush. The tendency is to heat the grill prior to brushing, which softens the plastic, loosening the grip on the bristles over time.
Does it make a difference how the wire brush is made? I know of two types, let me call one flat and the other wound. Flat is where wire bristles are inset into a flat head on a handle. Wound is were the bristles are held by wires twisting around (which often have a triangle head for BBQ brushes and are made the same as typical bottle brush).
Wow, such a surprisingly severe consequence for (mis)using an innocuous tool as a wire brush!
Incidentally, our household switched away from brushes a few years ago; we stumbled on a very quick and effective solution after dad got in to reloading. A few of the shorter 2.75" shells loaded with rock salt from the 12ga work wonders on the grill.
I've read that's a common myth, that a little soapy water for a few minutes is going to do nothing to a polymerized fat coating that was seared into the pitted surface of cast iron under high heat, but even if you were concerned about it, a brief re-seasoning afterward would be more than enough to restore any stripping.
A trick I learned from a friend is to cover all the grills with sheets of foil, close the lid and heat the bbq to a high temperature for a short period of time and then remove the foil. Most of the crud should come off easily after that.
All I have ever done is give the BBQ a bit of time to heat up before I plan on actually cooking the food. A few minutes in high heat chars any remnants of the last BBQ session and then I just knock the stuff of the top with a spatula before throwing that day's food on.
I went to buy a BBQ brush last year and all they had were metal bristle brushes. I was surprised given all the bad publicity about this. Needless to say, I didn't buy a brush that day. Any recommendations for a good non-metal brush?
The bristles are a lot bigger than steel bristles, so if one did come off it would presumably be easier to notice in your food and likely less damaging than the stainless steel needles that come off of metal bristle brushes.
You reminded me that last year I used a brick and a piece of wood - combination did take off some crud. Also tried some of that chemical spray - which didn't seem to do a thin.
I use a steel brush intended for cleaning off welding residue. It has much thicker, longer steel wires that would be difficult to miss if they came out of the brush head (which hasn't ever happened yet).
I've tried the stone scrubbers, they work at least as well as a metal bristled brush, but they leave stone crumbs stuck all over the grill and require additional work to clean them off. Not a huge deal, but could be a dealbreaker for some.
An acquaintance once told me she had accidentally inhaled a sewing needle as a child. She had loaded it into a straw and was planning to blowgun it at her little brother. But she made the horrible mistake of deeply inhaling after the straw was in her mouth thereby inhaling the needle.
IIRC the doctor advised her to eat cotton. She eventually passed the needle in a wad of cotton. Personally I am skeptical of this story. Does anyone feel that this approach might work when a bristle from a BBQ brush is not recoverable by surgery ?
I use a chain scrubber to excellent effect - the same that I use for my cast iron. I find it does a better job than the bristle brush, though it does tend to get my hands a little messier.
Try a Looftlighter (or something similar) if you've never. You don't have to use paper/chimney anymore. I started smoking things about 10 years ago and have tried it all. With regard to speed, ease, and cleanup you can't beat electric. Wax starters are another good option if you're out of range of A/C. I'd put my old chimney in third at this point. I'd rather recycle the paper quite honestly.
I don't cook meats anymore but still use my BGE quite a bit.
I was worried about this as well and found a nice product called CharGon that I've been using since last May, no bristles and it makes short work of cleaning the grill:
I tried them all, it's so simple and works great. It's reasonable cost / build quality as well. I think it's ~$20.00 on Amazon and it's not flimsy and the wood is quality with decent heft. The leather tie it came with failed quickly, but the tool itself will last forever. I've had mine for over a year and a half now. I'm not affiliated in any way other than wishing I would have thought of it years ago.
I won't eat anything off anyone's grill who uses any wire brushes anymore, there's no reason to risk it.
When my grill gets hot, I scrape the surface with a straight-edged spatula to clean up. If the grill looks super grungy, I hold the spatula at an angle and scrape between the grill wires.
This does not yield a shiny silver grill, it does however leave a lot of the grill’s seasoning whilst removing charred particles that would stick to the food.
I do this on occasions but worry about aluminium contamination on food bearing surfaces. For me it's not a regular thing but if I were bbq-ing regularly then I'd want to research it properly.
Two reasons not to... You'll end up with particles sticking to residue on the grates - steel wool breaks apart a lot. And because steel wool rusts. Combined with stainless steel you're not doing yourself any favors. If you've ever scrubbed a white wall on a tire with steel wool you'd never use it on a cooking surface like a grate. Maybe cleaning a pan you can wash out, but. I don't know many people who wash grill grates with any level of frequency.
I got freaked out when I learned about this a while back.
It seems wire brushes for grill cleaning come in various levels of quality, and it’s the lower-quality ones that tend to have this issue. The problem is that you can’t truly know the quality of your brush until you use it. (And either find bristles in your good or not.)
If you like a wire brush for the grill, go to a hardware store, and buy a wire brush with really coarse bristles. They are probably in the paint section, or with the welding supplies, not the BBQ grill section. The bristles are about an inch long and quite stiff.
My brother got a bristle from a grill lodged in his throat, it took a couple trips to the surgeon to remove and was extremely painful. And I still have a bristle brush, but I always scrape with the straight edge a few times afterwords (ever since).
I literally just went to an ENT doctor to get a bristle removed from my throat yesterday. It didn't effect my breathing or eating, but it was very uncomfortable. I went a week without getting xrays of my throat. It's not fun.
I've been using a small square of chainmail to clean my grill (and occasionally my cast iron pans) and follow it up with a damp paper towel It works well but is kind of a PITA compared to a wire brush.
those chainmail squares are often marketed for cleaning cast iron based on the canard that soap is bad for cast iron. I'd much rather use soap than steel. Steel's certainly gonna dig into the seasoning.
seriously though, don't use soap. Just get a nylon scrubber or stiff bristled nylon(or whatever) brush and use salt. Soap is going to remove the seasoning and probably leave a soapy flavor behind
This is incorrect. I can show you my cast iron pans and various pieces of carbon steel which are well-seasoned and do not impart soapy tastes. Soap does not damage the seasoning on a pan: https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/the-truth-about-cast-iro....
Every cleaning solution that doesn't include a surfactant is worse. It's slower, more labor, intensive, more water-intensive, and it leaves baked-on crud behind. The latter two are both much worse for cast iron than soap.
I read about this a couple years ago and now live in complete terror of bristles. Unfortunately the alternates are kind of a pain to use, but hey, it beats what these articles describe.
the trick is to brush the grill before it gets hot. you can always rinse the gunk out of your grill brush but you can't un-melt the plastic that keeps the brisles attached. Give it a quick second brushing after it's heated up, if you want. Since it is already mostly clean, you don't spend as much time loosening/melting your brush. I figured this out when I found one of those bristles on some ribs I made. Fortunately, it was before I put it in my mouth.
I once found a bit of wire in a sausage I was eating that I'd bought from my favorite local sausage maker. I've been too scared to try their sausages again :(
If the grates are removable, wouldn't the clean function (crazy high heat) of your oven clean them? Basically turns everything into easy to wash off ash.
My wife found a bristle in her burrito last year. Luckily, she noticed it before swallowing. The place kindly offered her a free burrito as a consolation :(
I was told to try cutting an onion in half and dragging it up and down the grates (after warming up for a bit). After trying it I would say that it’s not perfect but does a decent job of removing the big stuff. I’m still looking for a more reusable solution since I like to grill a lot.
Maybe just a wet rag would work? I’ve seen hibachi chefs use them on a flat grill along with a scraper.
