Cleaning 008

As a new owner, the first thing you need to do is read all the posts in the owner's archive as well as this area. Lots of good tips.

One of them is to NOT clean your smoker. Think of your smoker as a cast iron skillet. The smoke actually seasons the smoker so you don't want to clean the black off.

You do want to scrape off the walls of any food, keep the racks clean. Keep the hood above the smoke box covered with foil and cover the bottom with foil (poke a hole for the grease to drain out the drain hole) replace the foil as it gets messy.

Welcome to the forum.

Welcome, Never cleaned mine, wouldnt know how!!just change the foil. Heavy duty works best imo

I bought mine used so I wanted to clean it up and start fresh. Search for Greased Lightning on the board here. I got it at Westlake Hardware and it was wonderful. It just melted all the gunk right off. WEAR GLOVES! I learned a lesson there. It's been a couple of weeks and I still have black on my hands. But, search the board and find out how often to clean it. From what I read here, once you get it seasoned, leave it alone. Just get the old meat droppings out kind of cleaning. The folks here on the board recommended putting foil on the bottom and on the top of the wood box. I followed that suggestion (wouldn't have thought of that myself).
This board is great for ideas! Definitely do some reading in the CS owner forum.

I have had my CS for about a year now, and I have never once cleaned my smoker. I do as some of the others suggested above and line the bottom of the smoker and the top of the woodbox with foil so that when the smoker gets too greasy I can just change the foil and scrape out any excess grease which gets under the foil. I also poke a hole in the foil corresponding with the hole in the bottom of the smoker and place a disposable aluminum drip tray to catch the grease, otherwise the grease pools in the bottom of the smoker and accumulates rapidly. Be sure to check the drip tray occasionally so that it doesn't overflow and get grease all over the floor, because it can get full pretty fast when you are cooking large pieces of meat.

G'day,

Micah

Thanks for the cleaning instructions. No more cleaning. Just foil.
Had this jewel for 2 wks, have only done turkery breast. (GREAT) Getting ready to try some Ribs, and pork Loin..

Warren

I have another cleaning question.

Has anyone tried one of those steam cleaner thingys?

Not to remove anything other than grease.

I think that the combo of the water and heat would work wonders but dont want to remove any od that season...

Most of those devices work under some amount of pressure.

I think it would work great on the grates, but it would probably take the seasoning off the ways.

But, hey, we say, you try it and tell us if it worked, there's always new ideas out there.

steam cleaner thingys

I got one of those things free when I bought my Bissel carpet cleaner but I never knew what to do with it besides aggravate the cat (they hate getting sprayed with steam but it really leaves 'em clean).
I need to clean my grates before doing a brisket so I will see how it goes. Better than running the dishwasher for just the grates.

if ya can try it on the bottom to see if it removes the excess grease easier