CNN
–
Whether you’re making a serving of hamburger or slow-boiling ribs with barbecue sauce on your charcoal grill, you know grilling can get pretty messy. Cleaning your grill after each use is an important step in making sure that your grill is being well looked after – and also that you are removing any potentially harmful residue from burned parts from your most recent grilling. But not all grill brushes are created equal. In fact, using a wire brush to clean your grill can be harmful to your health. So we started looking for the best grill brush without wire bristles.
We spent weeks testing a handful of the top rated wire free grill brushes to find the one that cleans the best. The Kona BBQ Grill Brush is our first choice as it is the most effective and safest way to clean your grill.
Best grill brush overall
The Kona BBQ grill brush has a durable, large stainless steel brush head that cleans your grill effectively and safely.
CNN
Kona BBQ grill brush.
The Kona BBQ grill brush has a durable stainless steel brush head that, according to the manufacturer, works best when submerged in water. This has been confirmed in our tests and the wet brush melts away leftover food or dirt on the grill. The solid brush head ensures that no bristles, pieces of wire, food scraps or residues from the tools are left on your grill. The surface area of the brush head is quite large so it won’t take long to clean your grill surface. It also has a longer handle than most brushes so you can clean your grill while it’s still hot. In our tests, we’ve found this to be the most effective brush for cleaning our grills.
We spent weeks grilling dozens of burgers and chicken drumsticks to test our pool of grill brushes – but after all that we decided the grills just weren’t messy enough. For our last test, we coated ribs with barbecue sauce and let them do their thing on our grills. We used different types of grill for this test – a Weber Spirit three-burner gas grill with a flat cast iron grate, and traditional charcoal kettle grills with stainless steel grids and porcelain-coated wire grids.
We cleaned the grills several times with each brush to see how effectively they clean on the different types of cooking grids. Each brush cleans the grill in a unique way, so some of the brushes require additional steps, like dipping in water or wiping the grill after using a stone that leaves residue. We took all of these factors into account when we selected the Kona BBQ Grill Brush as the best wireless grill brush on the market right now.
Char Broil nylon bristle grill brush ($ 14.98; lowes.com)
We found the Char Broil nylon bristle brush to work well when it came to cleaning the grill, but due to the material of the bristles, it can only be used on a chilled grill surface. The brush has lab-tested extra long red nylon bristles that work well when cleaning, but we’ve found that they hold onto dirt off your grill when you’re done. In order to ensure that you do not leave any dirt on the surfaces when you are finished with this brush, and to prevent dirt build-up, this grill brush must be cleaned thoroughly after each use.
EarthStone Grill Cleaning Pad ($ 5.98; homedepot.com)
The EarthStone Grill Cleaning Block is just that and nothing more – it’s a stone block that you use to clean the surface of your grill. The one we tested came without a handle, which means you have to hold it in your hand when cleaning the grill. It can be used on both hot and cold grilling surfaces, but since your hand is very close to the grill grate, we recommend that you only use it on your grill after it has cooled down. The stone cleans well and removes dirt from the grill, but leaves white residue on both the grill surface and your hand. The stone is said to be made of “recycled material” that is non-toxic and free of chemicals. You can choose to purchase an EarthStone cleaning block with a handle, which is what we recommend.
Chafing stone ($ 9.74; homedepot.com)
Much like the EarthStone, the Scrubbin ‘Stone is a cleaning block that can be used to clean hot or cold grills – and requires you to wipe your grill down when you use it. Scrubbin ‘Stone says their brush is made from recycled, heated glass and that the stone is also non-toxic and chemical-free. The one we tested came with a handle that was a nice upgrade to the EarthStone cleaning block. Again, these stones require the extra step of wiping the stone scraps off the grill when you’re done. But if you are comfortable with it then this is an effective way to clean your grill.
BBQ floss ($ 22.30; amazon.com)
Grill Floss is a sleek, nifty tool that literally wraps every wire on the grill grate with dental floss. The stainless steel tool wraps itself tightly around each rung of your grillage, so you can achieve 360-degree cleaning. However, this means you have to manually clean each and every wire rung, which takes time and can feel cumbersome. The appliance comes with three different head attachments for different sized grill grids, but it’s worth noting that none of the Weber gas grills do this as they have flat, cast iron grids. It also comes at a higher price than other cleaning tools we tested.
Cuisinart Wooden Scraper ($ 14.99; amazon.com)
The Cuisinart wooden scraper is a solid piece of beech wood that you rub along your grill and, in theory, should be shaped so that it fits exactly into the grooves of your grillage. However, after testing several times within a few weeks, we could hardly leave a dent in the wood and therefore found this to be the least effective cleaning tool that we tested on our grills. The tool is noticeably larger than other grill brushes and the dirt from your grill will stick to the bottom of the paddle.
Read more from CNN Underscored: