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Memorial Day is coming up, and as with many holidays during the warmer months, you might be celebrating with an outdoor barbecue. Grilling is a messy business — no matter how flawlessly you follow the method for juicy Memorial Day hot dogs, you’re going to be cleaning grease off that grill at the end. A wire grill brush is a pretty common method, and it’s a quick way to clean off the grates rather than letting them soak in water. That said, they run the risk of letting loose pieces of metal wire into an area where you prepare food. Instead of a brush, you might consider a grill brick.
If you’ve never used a heavy duty grill cleaning brick, it’s not a brick in the traditional sense made of clay or concrete. Instead, it’s a specialized, brick-shaped scrubber made of pumice stone. Pumice is a highly abrasive type of volcanic rock which typically gets used in skincare (for exfoliating dead skin) and tooth polish, and it turns out that it’s great for exfoliating the residue from your grill too. The brick shape helps because it’s easy to hold without any danger of your fingertips grazing a still-hot grill, although you should wear gloves or oven mitts anyway. It helps to use oil of some kind while you’re scrubbing too — the brick can be loud if you scrub it dry.
Grill bricks are less risky than brushes
You’re not guaranteed to have any trouble with a wire brush, but the steel or brass bristles can sometimes dislodge from it. When this happens, the loose bristles are now in your grill and possibly contaminating your meat, and injuries have happened in the past. Some people use the alternative of aluminum foil, but it doesn’t work so well. You can also cheaply clean your grill with half an onion, but you might want something a little sturdier and which doesn’t spoil (even if a grill brick eventually wears down).
Because a grill brick is made of a non-porous rock, it won’t be dropping any dangerous wire shavings. The pumice in a grill brick instead degrades into a grit which is more environmentally friendly and helps to displace the tough residue, although it can leave traces of pumice dust behind which you’ll need to wipe up. Many grill stones are supposed to be non-scratching, and they’re considered most useful for deep cleaning and stripping seasoning from a Blackstone grill or similar models. They can’t get into the nooks and crannies of a grate quite as well as a brush, but otherwise the effectiveness of brushes and bricks seems similar, and they’re most useful on flat grills. It’s certainly worth a try if you’re concerned about metal brushes.
