BBQ Grill Cleaning in Los Angeles

Brushing the grates after a cook keeps the food from sticking. It does nothing for what's underneath. Below the grates, grease and carbon build up on the heat plates, drip into the firebox and settle in the grease tray. Spiders build webs in the burner venturis. Ash and leaves blow in during Santa Ana season. After a year or two, that layer is thick enough to cause flare-ups, uneven heat and burners that light slowly or not at all.

A professional cleaning goes after all of it. We pull every removable part, clean the firebox down to bare metal where we can, clear the burner ports, and check the ignition while it's all apart. Most grills come back cooking hotter and more evenly, simply because the burners can breathe again. If you want to see exactly what we do and why, our guide to what happens during a professional cleaning walks through it in detail.

• Flare-ups every time you cook, even with lean food
• One side cooks much hotter than the other
• Yellow, lazy flames instead of blue ones with a little orange at the tips
• Black flakes falling from the inside of the hood onto your food
• A smell of old grease when the grill heats up
• The igniter clicks but takes several tries to catch
• Grease dripping out the bottom of the grill or onto the island

Most households in LA do well with a professional cleaning once a year. Heavy grillers, coastal homes and rentals usually want two. Our guide on how often to clean a grill breaks it down by use.

A cleaning fixes problems caused by dirt and grease. It won't fix a burner that has rusted through, a gas valve that sticks, or an ignition module that has died. If we find something like that, we'll tell you what it is and what it would take, and in many cases we carry the part on the truck and can do the repair the same visit if you want it. That work falls under grill repair.

Deep rust, heavy pitting on the exterior stainless and grills that have been neglected for many years often need more than a cleaning. That's what restoration is for. We also don't clean the island itself (tile, stone or stucco), though we'll wipe the countertop around the grill.

We clean built-in and freestanding gas grills from just about every manufacturer: Lynx, Viking, DCS, Fire Magic, Wolf, Twin Eagles, Alfresco, Hestan, Weber, Napoleon and others. Infrared burners, rear rotisserie burners and sear zones get their own treatment, since infrared ceramics can crack if they're scrubbed or soaked the wrong way. We also clean smokers, flat-tops and pizza ovens; see that service page for details.