HAMPTON ROADS, Va. – Who wants to cook on a grungy grill? We`re thinking nobody.
Well, the folks at Consumer Reports came up with a great way to put grill brushes to the test to tell which ones will give you a clean cooking surface whether your grates are cast iron or stainless.
To mess up the test grills, CR testers roasted sticky chicken breasts on stainless and cast-iron grates. Although CR says a hot grate cleans up the best, the
brushes were tested on cold, warm, and hot grates using a systematic method of 50 strokes, and then the surfaces were assessed.
CR was surprised to find that a lot of grill brushes have short or flat handles that keep your hand over the hot grates. So when you shop for a grill brush, look for one with a long handle and an angled head.
Some brushes didn`t perform well. The Char-Broil Cool-Clean Brush has a nylon head designed for ‘cool to the touch’ grates. In our tests, it did a poor job of
cleaning on cool and warm surfaces.
The Char-Griller Wood Grill Scraper is a wooden paddle that becomes notched as you scrape it along hot grates. But it didn`t do a very good job in our tests on any of the surfaces or between the ribs.
Some did a better job on the grimy grates. The Nexgrill Grill Brush has a replaceable stainless steel head that did a very good job on hot grates. The long
handle keeps your hand away from the heat, but wear a glove if you put pressure on the knob.
CR staffers were impressed by the performance of the Earthstone Grill Stone. It`s made of recycled materials
and did an impressive job of removing the cooked-on chicken on cold, warm, and hot surfaces.
But it leaves a lot of residues on the grates and inside the firebox that must be cleaned thoroughly before cooking. But if you`re tackling a really gross grill, this is the tool to have.
