How to Season Grill Grates

If your grates are new, or were just professionally cleaned, it is important to season your grilling grates prior to your next grilled meal.

Over time, grill grates can corrode or get so sticky that it’s nearly impossible to pull food off in one piece. Food that sticks loses juice and dries out when you try to pry and scrape it from a sticky grate.  Seasoning your grill grates will fix this problem!

Seasoning grates remove contaminants, repels rust and seals pores to stop food from sticking. Seasoning before and after you grill will make cleaning easier and make your food taste better.

Easy Steps to Seasoning Your Grill

Step 1. Start with a cool grill.  With the grill off, use a paper towel to coat the surface with a thin layer of the grate with high-temperature cooking oil. Canola oil and peanut oil work well because they have a smoke point over 450 degrees, but you can also use coconut oil, spray-can vegetable, sunflower, avocado or grill oils.

Step 2. Wipe any excess oil off the grate with a paper towel, then turn the grill on medium for about 15-20 minutes.  The target temperature is around 220-350 degrees.  You want to see the oil start to smoke, but are avoiding burning. By the end, the grates should become dark.

If your grates are new, or professionally cleaned, some people choose to repeat this process a second time prior to your first grill.

Tip: After each use, burn away excess with 10 minutes of medium-high heat.  Brush away any food debris to clean off the grates. Let the grill cool.  Then lightly apply a coat of high-heat cooking oil for next time.

We believe that oiling your grates is one of the most important steps you can take to prevent rust.  For more rust-preventing tips, check out this blog post:

Tips to Slow Rust

Happy Grilling!

Inferno Grill Cleaning provides professional grill cleaning services in the Cleveland, Ohio area.  We are not always the brains behind every blog post.  Various sources were used to gather information for this article, including sabergrills.com, tasteofhome.com and weber.com.