Pull a wire brush across hot grill bars and look at what it leaves behind. The bristles fray, strands snap off, lodge between the bars, and the next thing you cook picks them up. This BBQ brush has no wire bristles to shed. The head is a heat-resistant cloth pad on a 31 cm handle. Wet it, press it onto a hot plate, and the water flashes to steam against the metal, lifting grease without scraping and without a single chemical.

Why It Stands Out

• Nothing on it can end up in your dinner — a wire brush sheds as it wears, the strands are invisible against grill bars, and they do not soften in cooking. A cloth pad cannot shed a wire because it does not have one.
• Steam does the work instead of force — water on metal at 200 degrees flashes instantly, and that expanding steam gets under baked-on grease and lifts it. Less effort and far less wear on the grill.
• Better on a hotplate than any brush — this matters here, because most Australian barbecues run a flat hotplate alongside the bars. A flat pad contacts the whole plate at once; a round wire brush only ever touches it in a line.
• Water is the only cleaning agent — no degreaser, no spray-on BBQ cleaner, so no chemical residue sitting where the next lot of food goes.
• It does a scraper's job on a hot plate — the flat face and the leverage do most of what a BBQ scraper does on a warm plate, so one tool covers the routine clean.
• Replaceable head, not a replaceable brush — the pad snap-locks on, so when the cloth wears through you replace that and keep the handle.
• The head goes in the dishwasher — which sounds minor until you have tried to clean a greasy brush by hand. That is the job everyone skips.
• 31 cm curved handle — you can put weight through the head while your knuckles stay clear of a plate that has just been at 200 degrees.

Where to Use

• The hotplate on a gas barbecue — its best use by a clear margin. Flat pad on flat plate, straight after the cook while the steel is hot, and the fat comes off in one or two passes.
• Grill bars and grates — works well, though you will do a few more passes because you are cleaning around a shape rather than across a surface.
• Straight after every cook — the whole value is that you clean grill grates while they are hot in two minutes and buildup never happens. Leave it a month and you are back to a scraper.
• Through summer — December and January is when most Australian barbecues do more cooking than the kitchen, and when fat left on a plate goes rancid in a day.
• Charcoal kettles and camp grills — anywhere with residual heat in the metal, which is all this needs.
• As a gift for someone still using a wire brush — one of the few BBQ tools worth giving, because most people have never thought about the bristle problem.

How It Works

1. The heat is already in the metal — a plate at 200 degrees holds an enormous amount of energy, and that heat, not the brush, is what this uses.
2. Water hits it and flashes to steam — expanding hundreds of times in volume as it does.
3. The steam gets under the grease — that expansion happens between the residue and the steel, breaking the bond and floating it off.
4. The cloth carries it away — and because it is softened grease being wiped rather than carbon being ground off, the plate and its seasoning come through better than under a wire brush.

How to Use

1. Get the barbecue hot first — not optional — at least 200 degrees. On a cold grill there is no steam, and this is just a damp cloth on a stick. More people are disappointed for this one reason than any other.
2. Turn the burners off — work with the stored heat, not with gas burning under a wet cloth.
3. Wet the pad and shake it off — properly wet but not dripping. A dripping pad cools the plate and floods it instead of steaming.
4. Push it flat and go steady — full contact, firm pressure. You should see steam immediately. If you do not, the plate is not hot enough.
5. Re-wet between passes — expect to dip two or three times to do a plate. That is normal, not a fault.
6. Keep the handle off the metal, then rinse and hang it — the handle is PVC and the plate has been at 200 degrees.
Tip: clean it while you are eating, not before you cook. The plate steams for a good twenty minutes after the burners go off, so the job takes two minutes while the barbecue does the work.

Care and Maintenance

• Rinse it straight after use — grease left to set as it cools is much harder to get out, and a pad full of old fat stops absorbing water, which is what makes it stop working.
• Put the head through the dishwasher after heavy cooking — the only realistic way to get a cloth pad properly clean.
• Hang it to dry completely, every time — a damp pad shut in a drawer will be mouldy within a week in an Australian summer.
• Keep the handle away from flame — PVC softens, so never rest it across hot bars.
• Replace the pad when it frays — a worn pad does not steam properly and you end up pressing harder to compensate.

Specifications

What's Included

• 1 × Bristle free BBQ cleaner with cloth steam pad fitted
• Spare pads are not included

Use it while the plate is still warm. That is the whole trick. At 200 degrees or more it lifts grease off a hotplate quickly and easily, with nothing that can break off into your food.