FoodMayhem.com

There are many advances lately in the world of cooking gear-- many of which seem to be focused on cooking inside. But what about cooking outside? Today we review a product for just that: "Clean BBQ" a disposable grill liner. Actually, Jessica and I do our grilling inside-- on a Blue Star Indoor Charbroiler (in the Residential Nova series range).

To test out Clean BBQ, we cooked a few products, and will discuss the two that seem most prescient: hot dogs, a classic barbecue food, and fish, every barbecue's nightmare. Before we could get to the cooking though, we had to figure out how to use the liner. As you can see from the picture above, to the right, the structure is a largely corrugated aluminum with regular cutouts. For some reason, I first thought I'd need to wrap the liner around some of the grill rods, or perhaps try to line up the corrugation with the grill. Neither of those are necessary. After placing the liner over the grill, it sits perfectly, no fuss. Plus it was simple to cut to length using normal scissors. I also tried tearing it bare-handed to see if that would work in a pinch, and while it was a bit messy, it did work.

Hot Dogs & Buns
It seemed to us that hot dogs were the simplest and most common barbecue food. All you need for a BBQ is a few wieners and buns, you're good to go. So we placed our liner and fired up the grill. After a few minutes the hot dogs went on and were cooked according to package instructions. Just before fully cooked, we toasted the hot dog buns on the liner. Everything cooked as normal and there was no sticking.

You can see that the liner did receive the cooking residue from the "after" picture to the right. However, after removing the liner, the actual grill was still dirty and needed to be fully cleaned. So while the liner did not hurt our cooking process, it did not help our cleaning process. If we were cooking on a public grill, I likely would have cleaned the grill beforehand anyway, so the liner didn't save us much work.

Fish
Fish is a classic grill item that doesn't seem to be as popular any more, unless you're a camper. That's probably because it can be a nightmare for the grill cook-- it sticks easily and can be difficult to work with. So it seemed like a perfect challenge for the liner.

We seasoned our fish with some general Cajun spices (this was eaten in our dinner with Pete) and then placed on the liner over a heated grill. Normally, we would use spray or some oil to lubricate the grill. Clean BBQ doesn't assert that their product is non-stick, just that it "resists sticking". Well, our findings, as you can see, is that it doesn't, in any way, resist sticking. All of the skin was ripped off the fish by the liner. I have grilled red snapper on this grill before, without spray, and it is normally not this dramatic. Also, the fish did take somewhat longer to cook than normal with the liner.

Summary
The primary function of Clean BBQ is for protecting food from the dirty grill. And the product seems to achieve that well. Although the gaps are pretty large, and it's hard to tell if the food touches the grill underneath. Clean BBQ however fails to meet its secondary function of eliminating the need to clean the grill. In all cases where we used the product, the grill was dirty afterwards. The last problem I have is that I like perfect grill marks and the product changes the way the grill marks look.

If you're going to a public grill, Clean BBQ would be a handy product to have around. For all other uses, just buy a really good grill brush.

posted by Lon at 2:20 PM 0 Comments add a comment