Cleaning Stainless Steel on Gas Grills

Posted on July 26, 2021 by Grill Girl

Let’s talk about cleaning stainless steel on your gas grill.

We’re beginning to see signs of summer coming to an end. Schools are getting ready. Supplies are going on sale. Your grill has probably already gotten a ton of use this year. How does it look; a little worse for the wear? If you’ve read much on this blog, you know we believe grills are for grilling – not beauty contests! However, there are a few simple things you can do to keep your grill looking nice out in your yard.

A simple chore that packs a visual punch is cleaning stainless steel wherever it might be on your grill.

Some grills have the entire body made of stainless steel. Others might only have a few stainless steel panels or a shelf. No matter how much you have, cleaning and shining it will make a big difference in the overall appearance of your grill.

Here’s the stainless steel shelf that needs cleaning. It’s been out all season and not covered (yikes!). Even considering that party foul, we can get it shined up with the right steps and tools.

When cleaning stainless steel on a gas grill, you have to remove any excess grease build-up. The first thing this shelf needs is a cleaning with soapy water. Use a little bit of dish detergent – whatever you use on your dishes will work. Use a gentle scrubber to clean, but not scratch, the stainless steel.

Once you get all the grease and grime off your stainless steel, inspect it for additional cleaning needs. This shelf cleaned up nicely, but still had a few rust spots.

You might see spots like this on your stainless steel, or discoloration, or tarnish. For that, you’ll need a specific stainless steel cleaning agent. You can get a bottle of it here. Use that non-scratch scrubber again to work the cleaner onto the surface.

This stuff works like a dream and especially impresses me with the removal of discoloration. There wasn’t a great deal of it on this shelf, but I’ve used this cleaner to remove discoloration from parts inside the grill. Internal parts withstand much higher temperatures and you’ll notice discoloration almost immediately.

It’s hardly recognizable! Now we just need to convince this owner to use a grill cover.

In two simple steps, you’ve got shine!

Keep in mind that not all stainless steel is created equally! Higher quality stainless steel will last longer and clean more easily. For more information about stainless steel, check out this blog: What’s the Deal with Stainless Steel?

Have any questions about cleaning stainless steel on your gas grill? Ask in the comments!

What’s the Deal with Stainless Steel?

Posted on June 15, 2021 by Grill Girl

Original Publish Date 02-15-2013

There’s a lot of disappointment floating around when it comes to one material currently on the market: stainless steel.

The two main issues are:
1) Why does my “stainless steel” rust?
2) Why is my “stainless steel” magnetic?

I put stainless steel in quotation marks because that’s how most people would phrase the questions. If either of the two above things were accurate, our customers would believe their item must not be stainless steel…

Right?

No, actually that’s not correct. There are different grades of stainless steel and they all act differently when introduced to either heat or water. In our grilling cases, that would be BOTH!!!

To clear it up, the General Manager at GrillPartsSearch.com has written up a guest blog explanation.

Take it away Will!!!

There are two general series of stainless steel grades used in the gas grill industry: 300 series and 400 series.

The 300 series group of alloys are non-magnetic and the basic 300 alloy contains 18% chromium and 8% nickel.
The 400 Series group of alloys are magnetic and the basic 400 alloy contains 11% chromium and 1% manganese. This series offers a much lower cost option in stainless steel parts.
-The 300 series is subject to corrosion at crevice points, while the 400 series has a considerably lower resistance to corrosion in general.

Knowing that, we choose the parts we sell to our customers very carefully! We try to gain as much information as possible about the grades of stainless steel we offer our customers so we can help them know what to expect from the parts they purchase.

Here’s how that information translates in grilling terms:

Cooking grids are exposed to more liquids and less heat, compared to other parts in a grill. In the case of cooking grids, the extra expense of the 300 series can be worth it. 300 series stainless is less prone to rust but the less than ideal conditions inside a grill will definitely degrade even the highest quality stainless steel. 304 is the most common type of stainless steel in the world, while 316 is generally the highest grade stainless you will find in ordinary applications, and both will degrade in a grill. While we used to carry a limited few grids made from 316 series stainless steel, manufacturers of grill parts worldwide have slowly removed these offerings from their lines of parts. We no longer have any 316 series grids, but carry multiple 304 series grids. You can check them out here and view by material type.

As for burners and heat plates, they certainly are exposed to moisture but are exposed to much more heat.

Heat is just as much of an enemy to steel, if not more so, as moisture and oxygen. Heating and cooling are used in the production of metals to actually change the chemical/molecular bonds and subsequent performance of the metal. It is no different inside your grill. While 300 series stainless will technically last longer than a 400 series plate of equal thickness, the benefit is only marginal. That marginal benefit compared to the substantial increase in cost doesn’t really pay off. We have found by spending a little more to make the plate out of a thicker 400 series stainless, you gain close to the same amount of life you would get out of a 300 series product at a fraction of the cost.

If you ever have any other questions about stainless steel or the applications of such in your grill, we’d love to help!

Just give reach out via email [email protected], phone 678-272-2451, or this helpful form!!!

Thanks so much Will!!!

That’s all for now,

Happy Friday!

-GG

Visit GrillPartsSearch.com’s profile on Pinterest.

Hot Names in the Grill World

Posted on March 10, 2017 by Grill Girl

Hey Y’all!

Grill Girl here! The sun is starting to melt that snow all across the country and I’m back, ready to fill you in on what you need to know as you start grilling in 2017!

Throughout the winter, I spend a lot of time researching the most popular grill models from the previous year. This helps me make sure our website is up to date and ready when you come looking for parts and accessories. Here are some of the most popular names that you may have heard of, or even have on your back deck!

BACKYARD GRILL

These grills are sold at Walmart and Walmart online. With the majority of these grills falling between $100 and $200, they have been very popular since about 2013. The model number system begins with the letters BY, followed by a 2 digit number that seems to correspond with the year the grill was sold. Those first four digits are followed by 8 more numbers that are unique to each grill. For example, BY13-101-001-12 was a popular model from 2013. Some of the popular more recent models include BY14-101-001-01 and BY16-
101-002-05. The grills have 3-5 burners and a large cooking area, but at such a low price point, the quality of parts and material is low. The good news is that there are already replacement parts available for these grills and the knowledge base is growing. You might need to start replacing parts in the first one to two years, but you should be able to find the parts you need to keep your Backyard Grill on your deck or patio!

MEMBER’S MARK GRILL

This is the store brand sold at Sam’s Clubs. Grills with the Member’s Mark name have been popular for the past decade and many have lasted for that long! The best-made Member’s Mark grills were made in the early 2000s with cast iron burners. Those older grills had model number that looked like this: Y0101XC. However, grills being sold in the most recent years have long stainless steel tube burners. This is a pretty common grill style in the past few years, and while they don’t usually last as long as cast burners, they are pretty easy to replace. More current models are made by a different manufacturer and some have models that mix letters and numbers like this: M3206A or a series of all numbers like this: 720-0586. With a price point between $300-$500, you can expect a Member’s Mark to be made to a higher quality in both parts and material. These grills should give you at least 2-3 years before you need to start replacing parts. Even so, we carry burners, heat plates and cooking grids for a large variety of Member’s Mark grills and even have some grease trays available for older models.

MASTER FORGE GRILL

Master Forge is the branded name for grills and other appliances sold through Lowe’s. It makes it difficult to find support because Lowe’s has different manufacturers for different kinds of machines. That being said, Lowe’s has had a huge variety of manufacturers make these grills with the name Master Forge and likewise, a pretty big discrepancy in quality. You’ll see models of all types from Master Forge. Some of the most popular have been 2518-3, MFA350, or SH3118B. Another of their most popular and long-standing models is the built-in modular grill BG179A. Master Forge grills seem to be pretty well built, however, when you look at a modular set up like the BG179A, the cost is between $1000 and $1200, it’s good to keep in mind that you can buy a lot of other brands in that price range that have a better history of customer support and quality. Of course, after you spend the time and money of installing a built in grill, you want to keep it running. We are working very hard to have the parts you need to keep these grills working year after year!

CHARBROIL GRILL

Charbroil has been making grills for decades. You can expect a mid-line price point and a mid-line quality from a Charbroil grill. They make a much larger range of grills to cover basically any price point you can afford. Charbroil’s less expensive grills don’t seem to sacrifice quality as easily as other brands. Instead, you’ll find the cheapest Charbroil grills have only two heat zones with smaller cooking area. The more expensive grills will provide increasingly more burners and space. Every year Charbroil comes out with a wide variety of grills spread across dozens of new models. Charbroil is always looking to provide the next innovation in grilling as well. They add flashy ideas and branding to make their grills seem like they have an edge over “regular” grills. My suggestion here is simply to do your homework. Grilling is grilling. It doesn’t need bells and whistles or flashy marketing gimmicks. To give you an example of this; their newest electric smoker corresponds with an app for your phone! In my grill girl opinion, that seems to take the fun out of it. 🙂

What do you think? Do you have any of these grills on your deck? Maybe you love the idea of using a smoker with a phone app. Feel free to leave comments or questions below!

Happy Grilling!
-GrillGirl

Top 5 Grilling Gadgets for 2015

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Grill Girl

Grilling is not only a great way to cook your lunch and dinners, it’s also one of our country’s favorite ways to enjoy the summer months with friends.

I put together a list of my favorite newly added accessories to our website for this season. I like to call them gadgets because it makes me feel cooler. These items will make grilling even more fun and easier than ever!

LED Grill Light

A Grill Light!! It’s battery operated and comes with a base to clamp onto your grill. This means the uses for this light are extremely diverse. It has a flexible neck so you can bend it to shine a light in any direction. This is perfect for the grilling enthusiast, but also for anyone who loves to camp! Don’t keep yourself in the dark! Your food deserves better!

Meat Claws

Have you seen these? They are basically over-sized, really sharp forks. These are made of stainless steel, so you don’t have to worry about the rusting or getting gross after just a few uses. If you like to smoke meat, these are an absolute must for shredding that delicious pork, brisket or chicken once you’ve smoked it to perfection. We have a pair of these at home and I promise serving a smoked pork butt in our home is ten times easier now than it used to be.

Grill Griddle

This one will be a harder sell – but I promise, you will end up using it much more than you think you will! My favorite version of this is the double-sided cast iron griddle. One side is a smooth cooking surface while the other has ridges if you want some sear marks. It probably won’t take up your entire grilling surface area when you place it in the grill. It allows you to get the flavor of the smoke on delicate things like fish and veggies or even buns while using the rest of your grilling area for your burgers, steak or chicken. I actually made pancakes on a grill using this! We also have a stainless version available if you prefer that!

Grill Wing Rack

If you’ve ever grilled wings on a gas or charcoal grill, I’m sure you know the frustration of that fatty chicken skin getting stuck to your grilling surface. Is there anything more frustrating?! That skin is supposed to get crispy and flavorful and just when you’ve achieved that, you flip the wing and the skin stays right there, stuck to the grid. I HATE that! As you can tell, this hits a nerve with me, but there is an easier way! Chicken wings should not be naked, people. Keep the skin on right? Try out this wing rack and let me know what you think!

Shish-Kebab Grilling Set

Finally, don’t you love shish-kebabs? It’s such a fun way to bring diversity into your grilling repertoire. Get those veggies and meat all grilled at the same time, flavoring each other as they cook. Yum! Here’s the annoying thing – they get stuck to the grilling surface too, or when you flip them, they flip back. If that wasn’t annoying enough, the metal skewer gets too hot to touch. How about this little folding metal set? It comes with 6 skewers, and holds them above your cooking grid so they can cook without getting stuck. The skewers sit in grooves so you can flip them and they stay put! When you’re done grilling, just fold the set up and put it away. It’s made of stainless steel and will be another piece that will last long into your grilling career.

So what is your favorite pick on this list? Do you have any of these items currently? I’d love to hear your feedback.

As always, Happy Grilling from the Grill Girl!

It’s Warm(ER)! Go Grill Something!

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Grill Girl

Hello fellow grill fanatics and welcome to the first warm breath of air in 2015! Was this weekend not beautiful!?

I cannot wait to get our grill back into working order for the Spring and Summer seasons! Did you know that right now is the best time to pull out your grill and check it for working parts?

Keep the grill you love in your backyard and out of the landfill this year by replacing the old parts instead of the whole grill! You will save money and, in many cases, end up with a grill that works better than ever!

Here’s your checklist for Grill Spring Cleaning:

Remove cover (carefully) and make sure there are no bugs who used it as their cover over the winter! Don’t have a cover for your grill? You should definitely get one! Covering your grill will help it cook better for longer!
Look on the back of the grill for a model number. This will help immensely as you look for replacement parts on the internet.
Take the cooking grids off your grill and inspect them. Your grid could be cast iron, steel bar, or stainless steel and coated in a variety of things. It might be hard to determine any of that if you have rusting or other corrosion. Clean the grids with a Brass Bristled Brush. If you notice a large amount of rusting or any breakage, put them on your list to replace!
Under the grids you’ll see some system that covers the actual flame of the grill burners. This could be metal heat plates, shields, angles, or another grate that holds briquettes. Drippings and the heat of normal grilling will cause these to discolor and corrode. Since your food doesn’t go on these directly, you don’t need to worry about rust. However, if your heat plates have large holes, are breaking or if your grates don’t hold up the briquettes, it’s time to replace those as well.
Remove the heat plates or briquettes and you should be looking down on the burner system in your grill. With the hood open, light your grill. The burners should each light up and produce a consistent blue flame all along the outside of the burner. If you have any extra large flames, yellow flames, or burners that don’t light fully, you should may need to replace the burners. Any large holes or major corrosion is cause to replace these pieces. If the burners look great, but you’re not getting enough flame, it could be your gas source, valve or regulator.

Call our customer service to help you today! If you can’t find your gas grill model number, measure the parts you need to replace. Our phone number is 877-244-0737.

And as always – Happy Grilling! –GG

How To Clean and Maintain a Gas Grill – Weekly

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Grill Girl

What are the most important things to do on a weekly basis to clean and maintain a gas grill keep it in good shape?

Rusting is the most common way, especially in grills, that metal deteriorates. You can’t avoid it. The reason is because when you add moisture, high levels of heat, and metal, you’re going to get deterioration – usually in the form of rust. And what does grilling always entail? – Metal, moisture and heat.

In addition to that, there are many different qualities of material available in grills on the market today. If you’d like to know the difference in a $300 grill you can buy on sale at a big box store and a $1200 grill you can buy in a grill specialty store, it’s how it’s made and with what material. Something like cast aluminum doesn’t rust. The only deterioration you’ll see with aluminum is oxidation which occurs over decades instead of months, like rust. It’s more expensive than the stainless steel sheet metal that’s bent into a grill shape. Even among stainless grills, not all stainless steel is created equal. You can read more about the deal with stainless steel in this post.

No matter the material or quality of your grill, there are steps you can take to clean and maintain a gas grill to minimize rust, clean away rust, and help your grill, and grill parts, work for you as long as possible.

Use a BRASS-bristled brush to clean your cooking grid surfaces after you cook your food – while your grill is still warm.
-Brass is important because it is softer than the coatings on your grid surface. Even if your grid says it’s stainless steel, that could just be a coating! The only time I suggest using a steel bristled brush is when you’re cleaning the inside molding or casting of your grill.
-Always check for pieces of the brush that might have broken off your brush while you were cleaning. You don’t want to eat that!
Moisture is NOT your friend!
-Use a cover to protect your grill from rain. If you have an especially fragile (read here cheap) grill, moving it under an awning while it’s not in use is not a bad idea.
-I’m a big believer in quality so I don’t like the idea of a grill you have to give so much special attention to – but that’s the reality with most grills under the $300 price point if you want them to last more than 2-3 years.
Notice some rust? Don’t panic!
-Use your grid brush to remove most of the rust and then rub oil into the area that was rusting. This will seal out the moisture and delay further rusting.
-It’s a good idea to do this whenever you notice rust in your grill, but also reapply oil before you preheat for cooking.
Preheat before cooking.
-Preheating your grill not only gets it to the right temperature for cooking your food, it also sanitizes your cooking area! Use your grill’s highest setting for about 15 minutes to preheat and then adjust the temperature when you’re ready to cook.

Make sure the brush you use has brass bristles and check that no broken off pieces of the brush are left on your cooking surface when you’re ready to grill!

You should get into the habit of taking these steps every time you grill, or at least once a week if you grill often.

There are also some more in depth steps to take when you put your grill away for the season and again when you take it out for the first time each season. Thankfully, here in Georgia, we’re still months away from the end of grilling season!

-GG

Replacing the Heat Shield – with Video

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Grill Girl

Hey Y’all! Grill Girl here!

Today we’re going to be replacing the heat shields on Charbroil 463268606 grill.

You will notice it’s time to replace the heat shields (or heat plates, vaporiser bars, flavorizer bars) when they are rusting excessively or have areas that have rusted through, leaving holes. In this case, we could bend the heat shield in half, it was so rusted.

This is a very simple job and usually all you have to do is lift out the old heat shield and set in the new heat shield.

Notice there used to be a peg in the casting of the grill that has rusted away to nothing. You can just rest the heat shield on the casting of the grill. It is still far enough away from the burner that no flames will touch it.

We used a stainless steel plate to replace the original porcelain coated plate. The stainless steel will long outlast the original.

Look at that pretty, shiny new stainless steel part!

Thanks for watching! -GG

Thanks to RutgerMuller for our beats

Manufacturer Highlight: Charbroil

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Grill Girl

Charbroil Grills – The Highs, The Lows and how to keep yours running

: Looks yummy right?

Char-broil is one of the oldest grill companies that is still in business today. The grills they build range from cheap to expensive, basic to fancy. They sell grills in big box stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s. This makes the grills very accessible and popular. However, because of their contracts with these huge retailers, Charbroil has to get a grill available to the public at a very low price point. Stainless steel is very expensive and still going up in price. To combat the high price of stainless, manufacturers will use thinner stainless steel and/or a lower quality of stainless steel. This is why many parts rust out in 1-3 years of use and need replacing.

What does that mean for all of us? Basically that there are a lot of different models numbers and a lot of different replacement parts available. When you know that you might need Char-Broil burners, cooking grids, heat plates, briquette grates, carry-over tubes, or knobs, it can seem very overwhelming. The good news is that we are dedicated to making your search for replacement Charbroil gas grill parts as easy as throwing a steak on the grill!

This is how we do it; every year we get new parts for Char Broil grills, like burners, cooking grids, heat shields, and carryover tubes. Then, we do research on your grill model numbers using the online manuals, grill sizes, and information from Charbroil directly. This allows us to show the exact parts for your model number. We have a drop down list that includes every Char-Broil gas grill model number we know and list those parts we sell for each. We also include our phone number so if you don’t easily find the parts or model number, you can call us and we’ll do our best to dig up the dirt on your grill and the Char-Broil replacement parts you need.

There is a great selection of high quality parts for Charbroil gas grills available on our website, including new stainless steel burners, carry-over tubes, and cooking grids that were added to our line this year!

We list parts for Char-Broil Advantage Series, Commercial Series, Performance Series, Designer Series, Front Avenue, Masterflame, Precision Flame, Powerhouse and Big Easy burners and heat plates too!

We even have parts for the Infrared and Quantum Infrared Grills. The Quantum Infrared Series grills made it into the number 4 spot of a top 10 list for 2013. We have parts for all three Quantum models sold by Charbroil: 463270610, 463270909, and 463271310.

Click CHAR-BROIL to get started, or give us a call at 877-244-0737.