View Single Post
  #1 (permalink)   Report Post  
kaskiles
 
Posts: n/a
Default smoke residue cleanup

Hi,

I purchased an American Gourmet Deluxe Grill & Smoker from walmart.com
about 1.5 months ago. My primary interest was offset smoking, and I
didn't really plan to grill.

I used the smoker about 3 times per week, with a starting fire base of
char coals and I would then add Hickory chunks purchased from the
local Walmart for like $5 for a blue plastic bag full.

The food is mostly good, and I'm still getting the hang of controlling
the temperature, etc.

But one thing I noticed a couple weeks ago is that the wood smoke tar
build-up in the cooking chamber is so bad now that it really needed to
be cleaned up... It had been dripping this tar from the smoke-stack
to cooking chamber seam early on. After a couple more weeks it was
really building up, and when it would get hot in use it will drip out
on the concrete. But the final straw was a few cooking times ago,
the liquified tar would be dripping down in strings from opening the
cooking chamber door and contaminate the food! I had to use a screw
driver to pry the door open easily, then have a wrag to whipe up the
liquid tar before opening the door fully to keep down the
contamination.

I decided today to move the grill grates into the cooking chamber and
try to burn it out clean, like automatic oven cleaning... The
thermometer is pegged way beyond it's 550F and I couldn't get it out
to try to keep it from getting damaged, some strange spring metal clip
just won't let go. Also, all the tar bubbled up and is dripping all
over the place, good thing I layed down some cardboard under it. This
tar made a big fire inside too. Now I'm trying to just let it cook
out.

Am I doing the right thing for cleaning it? The only thing I've found
that cleans this tar (dissolves it) is strong Ammonia. I really
didn't want to scrub down the entire cooking chamber insides with
Ammonia...

Thanks, Kenneth.