Poll: How often do you clean your barbecue?

[Jason]

Cleaning your barbecue is never a fun job, particularly when you've left grease and grime build up over a long time.

As the weather turns warmer and we start to fire up the barbie more often, cleaning is an important chore. But how often should we tackle it? 

Our latest Workshop poll asks how often you clean your barbecue. Are you fastidious and clean it before or after every single use? Or do you believe that the flavour builds up over time and prefer a more sporadic cleaning regime?

Let us know by voting in the poll on the front page. You can also justify your choice by replying to the discussion below. 

Thanks for joining in the conversation on Workshop.

Jason

[Jackson]

@Andy_Mann - we agree re: Matt Preston.

I'm just going to have to trust you on the sandwich though  

[Andy_Mann]

@Jackson, I can't imagine that anyone could enjoy watching Matt Preston eat, but I'll give you the point anyway.

You don't know what you're missing if you don't experience a Dripping Sanga in your lifetime, but sadly, it'd be hard to replicate it's delectable best, in this day & age of processed foods.

For starters, you'd be hard pressed to find white (any) bread without preservatives & additives, delivered to your door, & partially wrapped in paper. Money left clearly visible on the front porch, & change left, if you'd overpaid by not having the right coinage.

To be sure, for sure, for sure (Grandpa was Irish), ants ran amok back then (possibly soldiers, but hard to say, they didn't wear uniforms in my more relaxed upbringing), but someone was always home, so they were'nt deemed a problem.

Dang, I'm straying off topic, but I'll throw in these quickies before the mods whip me.

Have you:

1 .. Eaten a pooch we'd on soursob?

2 .. Picked your nose & eaten snot?

3 .. Pulled a chain, & wiped up with gloss dunny paper?

4 .. Survived the existance of leaded only petrol, that stayed the same price for months?

5 .. Salivated over the miracle of the Wireless?

6 .. Known when needles were only for sowing, knitting & gramophones?

7 .. Learnt that landlines were the responsibility of surveyors, until the telephone industry messed that up.

I'm getting tired, haven't eaten, & wish you a lovely day.

[davehutchy]

Are we talking about just scraping the hotplate or a full clean of inside and out? I reckon I do the latter no more than once a year...

[Andy_Mann]

C'mon @davehutchy, are you tell'n me that your energy/water saving dishwasher's that busy?

[Grandy]

It's interesting hearing the comments on the depression sandwich, I grew up with this a dietary staple, no money for much food so we ate what was on hand, the bread was generally the 2 day old loaves tossed out by the bakery up the road.
To freshen this up a bit we treated ourselves to the deluxe version of the sanga, fried bread in dripping, this was a tasty hot version and again lots of pepper & salt and if were really lucky we could add a dash of tomato sauce or my favourite a splash of Worcestershire "black" sauce. (Am I allowed to call it "black" sauce these days?
I still occasionally whip up a stack of these as a treat and a reminder of how good we have things these days

[Jason]

When it comes to their barbecue, most Workshop members are prepared to invest plenty of time to keep it clean.

Most community members who participated in our recent poll indicated that they clean their barbie after every cook. The second highest response was before every cook.

Fortunately only five per cent of respondents said they never clean their barbecue!

The full results of our poll are below. 

Thanks for joining in. Feel free to keep the discussion going by replying below. Perhaps you'd like to share your tips for keeping your barbie clean? I like the quick tip below...

Jason

[mje]

I always clean before I cook and yep leave the oil on the hot plates. I usually turn on the BBQ and the get a sport drinking water bottle, spatula / crapper and paper towel. I wait for hot plate to get hot and clean it with these items. I do not use salt as it rusts the BBQ. I will pressure clean the BBQ every 4 to 6 months. I use a BBQ cover this seems to prolong the life of the BBQ.

[Andy_Mann]

@Grandy, it's great to hear your first hand experience, which confirms what I was told as a kid.

I'm salivating over your deluxe version, that'd be amazing, & it just so happens that I have a frypan with some solidified fat in it from last night, so I'll be diving into some for lunch, so thanks for sharing.

I'm with you on having/enjoying retro days, I've mown our lawns by hand (hand mowers are 100% human powered), snipped the edges with hand powered grass shears, & it's a heart warming experience.

Quite frankly, I'm bemused that a Depression Sanga would be deemed gag-worthy, have the youngs never eaten a cold chop that was left over from a barbie? Crikey, there's not much meat on a lamb chop, & the fat's the tastiest part, hot or cold.

But then again, I know people who bin leftovers, because they can afford to, & that to me is the sickening thing of today's society/mentality.

By the way, you'd remember the Jones', sadly, they've been crushed by the stampede of Wannabes in recent years, & are a forgotten generation.

RIP Jones'.

[Grandy]

Hi Andy,

I do well remember the Jones'es, lived in a few neighbourhoods that they were abundant in, never really had the resources to try and keep up with them in younger life and as I matured I set out on my own path and had no interest in what the other half did.

You do however bring back some fond memories with your talk of hand mowers and hand shears, I did enjoy the excitement of chasing our first Victa as a lad and spent many a hour traveling around the world on our sturdy old Hills Hoist, arrr, they dont make em like they used to, modern clothes lines would not stand for two full loads from an old wringer machine plus 6 kids with designs on being stunt pilots.
That's when we wern't hell bent on breaking land speed records (or ourselves) racing down steep hills in an old cane pram converted to a billy cart.
Now those were the days when kids were tough, no steering, no breaks and the old man used to say no brains so I guess not everything has changed

[Andy_Mann]

I'll have a crack at starting a "The way we were....." thread later today.