Grill Trouble

H

hawkpatriot

Joined
Jul 20, 2004
Messages
535
Seems like every time I fire up my propane grill, everything's fine until the food starts cooking. Over the flames, theres these two heat distributor plates that always give me trouble. When I grill salmon or chicken, or any other greasy foods, the grease drips down onto these plates. Then it bursts into flame, and keeps on doing this until I complety douse evrything with a water and start over. Then I get unevenly cooked chicken and burned salmon. I constantly have to open up the grill and check to see if the plates are burning. Anybody got any input on this? And don't say "switch to charcoal". Yeah everybody knows charcoal gives food better flavor, but as far as I've seen it's a little inconvenient when you need to grill some grub up in a hurry.
 
I'm wondering if those plates(flavorizer bars?) are so loaded up with gunk from previous cooking that they're igniting.

Did the unit do that when it was new?

If it is buildt up gunk, cleaning or replacement may solve the problem.

If your house oven has a self clean setting that might clean well, as long as the plates are not enameled or porceline(sp) coated.

Good luck,

Thomas Zinn
 
The grease is supposed to drip on those plates and burn -- that's what barbecue flavor comes from, the burning grease. Reading your description of the problem I'm not sure if it's flaming up excessively or if it's working fine until you freak out and throw water on it and mess it all up....
 
I've never understood the bar things.

On a charcoal grill, some grease and drippings from the meat fall down onto the charcoal and burn off giving the meat that nice smoke flavor. Occationally, there's a little flare up, but the fuel, the fat, burns off so it's generally pretty short.

A gas grill needs something similar. The old approach was lava rocks. And they work. The grease falls on the hot rocks and burns off the rocks much like it does off of charcoal. The rough surface of the rock helps control flare ups. The tip here is to leave the thing running for about five minutes after you take the meat off to finish burning off any remaining fats and so forth. Every once in a while, light the grill and let it run for about ten or 15 minutes before putting the meat on to really give the rocks a good cleaning.

But these new gas grills... I just don't know how they're supposed to work.

But whatever you do, don't throw water on a grease fire, even a small one. Just move the food aside and wait for it to burn off.
 
Ya, you could cover the plates with rocks, however, it is a bad idea to get them wet. Or next time your grill they may explode. Also since the rocks are pores(sp), they will absorb the grease and oil, if you don't change them they will become rancid and so will your food. :eek:

So how high are the these flames? Try pouring a little beer over your food (while on the grill), it should thin out the fat/grease as well as add a little flavor. ;)


Oh, and there are grilling forums you know. :D Don't tease me, I was curious. :)
 
I recently switched from a charcoal grill to gas. I always said that would never happen, but now I would never go back to charcoal.

Here are my ideas:
1. Clean the burner plates (possibly the entire grill), then after each use, leave the grill on high for a few minutes to clean it.
2. Maybe you should try indirect cooking for these items. If your grill has separate burners, you can shut one one off and put a drip pan under the food. I've used this technique with pork loins and whole chickens.
3. How hot do you run the grill? No matter what I cook, I always get it really hot to start and then turn the heat down.
 
According to Weber, keeping the lid closed helps with flare ups. "Constantly" opening the grill is actually creating/making your problem worse.

To preserve heat and prevent flare ups, you should only open it to turn food and check for done-ness. -Meaning if you expect something needs to cook for 15 minutes, there's no need to pop the lid at two minutes, five minutes, eleven minutes and so on.

Summer's coming, fine tune your technique a bit and you're golden! :cool:
 
Ok, this is easy but slower. Heat your grill and scrape off all the old gunk on the cooking rack with a wire brush that is made for cleaning grills. Let that burn off, leave one burner on medium heat and turn the other burner off! Put your marinated meat such as Chicken Breast on the cold side, just leave a little more time for it to cook and it's great. Burgers and steaks can be done that way if you turn the heat up and still leave the meat on the cold side. I like to place foods away from the LP cylinder, never have liked the drip of grease on that either. You fix my mower and I'll cook for you. :D
 
You may have 2 problems. First, clean the plates. Second, you may be cooking at too high a heat. Try lowering the flame a little. Hope this helps.
 
I clean off the plates before I start grilling. I warm the grill up to high before I start, and turn it down a little to medium. After a few minutes of cooking, the grease is dripping down onto the bars, and with burgers and steaks this isnt a big problem. But with salmon and chicken, the grease will flare up and keep spreading. And alot of times, I'll close the grill after everythings set, and leave it for a few minutes, and I'll come back and see the whole thing smoking and burning up.
Anyways I've seen some good techniques here so I'll try them out. If they don't work I'll switch to charcoal. :)
 
Dimbeam said:
Ditto. Charcoal is the ONLY way to go. Gas is not hot enough.
Click to expand...


How about just a wood fire? For some reason I'm just not comfortable with the brickets. I almost always use kaiwe (misquete?) and guava branches as kindling. Tasty!
 
Try the lava rocks. I had the same problem and my grill's manual said "do not use lava rock" . . . . . so after reading that I promptly poured a bag of lava rocks on my grill and the flare up problem disappeared. Go Figure. Stupin manuals - what do they know? ;)
 
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