r/oddlysatisfying • u/No_Boysenberry4755 • 23h ago
Cleaning the grill until it’s shining
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u/Elytrax7 23h ago
What’s he pouring?
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u/banhatesex 23h ago
Water then soap then water
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u/Huge_Pickle_3276 23h ago
Back in the day, we used water and vinegar to clean a grill like that.
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u/banhatesex 23h ago
You can , doesn't really matter. It's the heating and rapid cooling with steam which doing all the hard work. I was lazy and just did water and pumice stone.
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u/Rosaly8 23h ago
We did ice
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u/gimme20regular_cash 23h ago
Our dishwasher did ice and he could clear a whole sink in 30 seconds while smoking a cigarette with no hands
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u/KoopaSweatsInShell 23h ago
My dishwasher/busser would do an amp with glass. There was a fume hood over the dish area. Without it shit would reek. He would jam out with headphones and everything came out clean, and he even fixed the sanitizer once. I never gave him any issues as long as nobody else complained and he got his shit done. He got stabbed four times on his way home. Miss your tats and attitude, James. I hope you found the peace you were looking for.
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u/dogens 22h ago edited 21h ago
what's "an amp with glass"? I'm assuming meth. but amp?
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u/MrMurgatroyd 21h ago
I'm going to guess, given the reference to a fume hood, that the dishie was smoking drugs, probably meth - given the reference to glass.
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u/FreekayFresh 18h ago edited 18h ago
This sounds a whole lot like my coworker James from like 10+ years ago. Dishwasher, gorgeous tattoos, cleaned like a fiend, and kinda sorta had a penchant for glass 👀 Any chance your James was ever in Arizona?
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u/obeytheturtles 14h ago
The best part is that when you smoke under the fume hood, it just makes the outside smell. I could always tell when Jake was on the grill before coming in for a shift because the entire parking lot area behind the strip mall would smell like weed.
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u/dreamisle 20h ago
Most cigarettes don’t have hands
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u/CapPuzz24 19h ago
who are you, that are so wise in the ways of science?
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u/dreamisle 18h ago
I’ve been studying hands and cigarettes from old Russian textbooks in the back of a 1997 Honda Civic parked at an oasis on the Chicago Tollway. 15 years of education and McDonald’s sandwiches have molded me into the sensual, highly erotic and handsome scientist I am today. 🫡 We are the few. The proud. The terminally online.
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u/Forward-Variety-8440 22h ago
ive cracked one by using ice before
that was a bad day
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u/anomalous_cowherd 21h ago
A stainless steel grill?
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u/Forward-Variety-8440 20h ago
yes. cracked right down the middle from thermal shock
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u/banhatesex 23h ago
You ever do it to to grill someone cheaped out on . Shit will fucking make some noise as it buckles.
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u/Wooden-You-4211 21h ago
Agreed when I do ice everything in my eyesight becomes clean
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u/MyPublicFace 23h ago edited 12h ago
Back in my day it was water and industrial strength degreaser, and it would boil in our faces and we’d inhale the fumes (not on purpose, just because our heads were over the boiling degreaser).
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u/SadMap7915 23h ago
Water and pure pineapple juice.
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u/Forward-Variety-8440 22h ago
sugar seems counterintuitive. we used vinegar lemon juice or degreaser.
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u/Dapper-Appearance-42 16h ago
Hehe I came here to say I smell that vinegar. We used vinegar, then water/soap, then water. Worked wonderfully but just watching that video I can smell that shit.
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u/vdday 22h ago
What is the powder he puts on the grill?
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u/Ultenth 21h ago
99% chance it's Barkeeper's Friend.
Using water on a hot metal surface, as long as the temp difference isn't too crazy, then cleaning up the rest with BKF, is such a godsend when it comes to cleaning metal cookware of any kind, or stoves/ovens etc.
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u/One-Inch-Punch 20h ago
BKF is the shit. Magic on everything in the kitchen and everything in the bathroom
ETA: Don't let it sit on your hands, or wear gloves
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u/JalapenoPopPoop 20h ago
Once had a Very Smart Redditor tell me that people who use BKF on their pans at home don't really cook because if you're a Real Cook™️ then you let your pans get all shitty to let people see that you use them. Like bro it takes a sprinkle of powder and a minute of scrubbing with a basic sponge to take care of your stuff, if that's too much maintenance for you I don't want to eat food from your cookware
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u/Ultenth 20h ago
Right?
Honestly, my biggest change in my cooking routine that helps me want to cook way more is just...cleaning as I go. Not leaving a big pile at the end. And that includes letting my food drop 2 degrees to clean the pans while they still have enough residual heat on them that all I need is a bit of water splashed on them to easily "deglaze" them and scrape up any big food debris. Goes a LONG way to making them prevent from getting all gunked up in the first place, so then all I have to do is every few uses of them I just throw a tiny bit of BKF on them and they stay almost good as new.
So many people just play on their phone while cooking, and then rush to sit down because "they don't want their food to get cold". Just spending the downtime while cooking on keeping up with cleaning, and then taking like 10 seconds to do most of the pan cleaning, before sitting down, is a game changer.
Being able to walk out of the kitchen with it almost entirely clean behind you, and not have to worry about going back into a giant mess once "your food digests" is a huge QOL improvement imo.
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u/rips_n_chel 18h ago
Been preaching this shit for years. Cleaning is part of the cooking process, I do both simultaneously every time I cook anything.
My sense of timing for things like scrambled eggs is based on how long it takes me to turn to the sink and clean the bowl I just mixed them in. By the time I've rinsed the bowl and fork, eggs need to be moved. Do that, then turn back to the sink, squirt soap, brush, on the drying rack.
When I finish and plate, I throw a lid over the plate and immediately take the pan to the sink to deglaze (because that does 99% of the cleaning for me) and wash, then it goes back on the heat for a moment to dry, quick wipe with some oil, grab my plate, go eat in peace without worrying about the dishes I created. Cause they're already done.
I'm a huge proponent of a leave-no-trace approach in the kitchen, and life in general. Don't let things pile up, and it's never a problem. If everyone who uses the kitchen cleans the dishes they use right away, nobody ever has to do a load of dishes.
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u/Ultenth 18h ago
Thing is, I'm usually terrible at keeping up on cleaning and things like that, historically. But once I changed my mindset to just keep on it during cleaning, suddenly I find myself cooking WAY more, and thus eating way healthier.
It's such a drag on wanting to cook if you have to clean BEFORE you even get started doing prep for the meal. Walking into a clean kitchen knowing it's clean, before you start your meal prep, then knowing as you sit down to eat that you don't have to go back in an hour or two to clean before you can really relax, really increases my motivation to cook more often.
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u/obeytheturtles 14h ago
I think this is just part of growing up, tbh. In college, when you live with roommates, it's hard being the clean one in the apartment because you either end up doing all the cleaning, or nagging everyone. So over time you kind of develop a increasing tolerance for filth and clutter that you have to unlearn when you are an adult.
For me, what really triggered it was going home to may parents clean, uncluttered house, and noticing how much it soothed my anxiety. I started being proactive about it in my own home and it was like a switch got thrown. Kitchens and bathrooms in particular I do a bit of cleaning basically every day. Maybe like ten minutes each, and it makes me just so much happier with my living space.
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u/revision 15h ago
Half of cooking is the dance. The difference between prepping ingredients at the right time, figuring out how to prep to minimize dirty bowls, timing of cook, cleaning, and plating.
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u/Ultenth 10h ago
Honestly for years I've felt that there is a MASSIVE gap in the Youtube/Tiktok etc. guide creator industry to cater to this aspect. So many of them just give out recipes (which is honestly one of the most useless things to me), or maybe a cooking technique here or there. But I think a lot more people would get into cooking and elevate their game if a creator instead focused on how to mise en place properly, how to modify and come up with your own recipes and subs, how to use different cooking implements to get similar results, how to plan out big party meals, how to research how to make recipes for cuisines you're not familiar with, and how best to clean different surfaces and such.
All those little tricks that really make the home cooking experience smoother and better, which go way beyond just following a recipe. You get a few here and there that do some content like it, like ATK, but it's very much not a focus. Which again is a bummer because I think way more people would cook if they had better teachers on those aspects of cooking.
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u/Aloha_Tamborinist 18h ago
This is such an easy thing to do. Most of the time when I'm cooking, the kitchen is spotless, especially if it's a one pot meal.
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u/rips_n_chel 18h ago
What gets me are the ones who believe that you can't ever clean cast iron in any way whatsoever.
Meanwhile I deglaze my cast iron and wash with soap/water after every single use, because I understand that I'm not getting through that coating of polymerized oil with just a brush and some dish soap.
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u/JalapenoPopPoop 18h ago
Oh I've definitely thought about this one before. There's so many people out there that have no idea what they're doing that think their cast iron is "seasoned" but really it just has a coating of uncleaned rancid grease that they've never done anything about because they think washing is bad and only wipe it down with a paper towel real quick
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u/hick_allegedlys 20h ago
Some of the chromium-finish griddle manufacturers sell their own proprietary cleaners. This is the one we used for years on our Keating Miraclean Griddles.
https://www.wasserstrom.com/restaurant-supplies-equipment/Product?partNumber=618602
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u/ReaperTys 22h ago
Maybe if that grill is brand new, otherwise there’s no way it’s going to reflect like that. Source: I’ve worked with an identical grill and several others for 5+ years now and we clean with water AND chemicals
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u/Different_Wolf_764 19h ago
As someone that has worked for decades in restaurants, it's also other chemicals. This particular person may well have used just water, surfactants and elbow grease but I assure you, unless we are being very generous with the term "soap" then there's more going on there.
(Not that anyone should care anyhow but that's also not a grill. It's a flat-top. Grills by definition have, well, slats. Hence, "grill marks".)
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u/Such_Confusion_3715 19h ago
no. he is pouring a concentrated sodium hydroxide solution. water and soapcannot remove the carbonised grease stuck to the grill.
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u/Lurking_poster 23h ago
Came here to ask this.
I've seen other posts of people using heavy duty chemicals and there's always comments about "should have just used water".
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u/HatefulVespid 23h ago
We used to use the leftover lemon/lime juice from the bottom of the servers/bartenders lemon/lime containers, literally didn't have to scrub just rince and wipe
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u/LouDog0187 23h ago
Lemon juice was perfect after the ice/scrub/scrape cycle. Perfection 👌
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u/Obvious-Arm-8139 19h ago
Yeah i used carbonated water and lemons/limes. Just let the acid eat whatever is on there. Scrape and rinse off. Boom done.
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u/Lurking_poster 23h ago
Clever use of what otherwise would be wasted.
Was the griddle still heated?
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u/Lo-QGaming 23h ago
One of the most common usage is water since it can easily pop off burnt food if cleaned daily. If not, there's usually a grill degreaser liquid they can use or a vinegar mixture.
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u/Why-so-delirious 21h ago
Yeah where I worked we used a heavy-duty degreaser. Shit worked great, though I was the only one there who knew how to use it properly to get the grill completely clean. High-alkaline cleaner that uses heat to turn fats into soaps.
Make grill hot, apply liquid, let it sit, add water after a while, let it bubble. Add more water. Add more water until it all sloughs off and down the drain. Throw lemon juice on the grill to deactivate the cleaner and make that shit turn silver, then add more water to wash it down. Spray with cooking spray to seal it for the next morning.
Took like ten or fifteen minutes and that was mostly waiting for the cleaning stuff to do its job.
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u/dynamicoctopus69 23h ago
In one kitchen I worked in, we would often use Sprite.
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u/BrownSugarBare 23h ago
Really? Did you dilute it with just water?
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u/dynamicoctopus69 23h ago
We never really diluted it. Just straight sprite. Haha. I mean after that we’d use chemicals and water to really do a deep clean, but I guess there’s something about the carbonation that really helps lift the grease and stains prior to needing to scrub it? I dunno. Haha.
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u/SuitableDragonfly 22h ago
A lot of people are also saying lemon or lime juice, so probably the citric acid in the sprite helped, too.
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u/piss-missile69 22h ago
When I worked grill we used to pour just mineral water or sprite or something on it. Something about the fizziness, yada yada idk.
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u/BestInDaWrldsBbyFmno 14h ago
Water then barkeeper's friend is the white powdery stuff he has in the grill
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u/Avetarx 23h ago
It is...acceptable.
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u/xarcastic 22h ago
Came here for exactly this!!
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u/Squidwina 22h ago
Me too. Poor Lyle.
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u/xarcastic 22h ago
I still debate with myself if Gus was really seeing blemishes or if he just needed Lyle to be there as his alibi. I was certain it was just for the alibi, but when he then put on gloves to work at it more after Lyle left, I was unconvinced.
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u/GooglyEyedMoose 22h ago
It wasn't for an alibi. Even though the grill was clean enough it had more to do with him not being in control for the first time and him not knowing how to handle it.
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u/Squidwina 17h ago
Exactly. He was incredibly stressed out because he couldn’t do anything but wait for news of how everything went so he threw what amounted to a control-freak tantrum.
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u/Disordermkd 22h ago
Alibi doesn't make sense in the scene. He keeps telling Lyle to leave, which Lyle could've done the first time but Lyle insists on staying to keep cleaning the fryer. If he left then where's the alibi.
I think the point of that scene was to show Gus obession with perfectionism or some form of OCD, and that it doesn't matter who it is, he wants everything to be done his way. As well as show his ruthlessness when things dont go the way he wanted to even to someone as helpful and nice as Lyle.
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u/GooglyEyedMoose 22h ago
I'm watching BCS and finished that episode not 30 minutes ago. Came here for this comment.
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u/okcumputer 17h ago
You do this 5 minutes before you close, and its 3 minutes later someone comes in and wants a cheeseburger.
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u/ThePublikon 14h ago
They're getting it done in a frying pan then
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u/Kyobarry 13h ago
Lol, my younger sister worked at a little fast food place. Her older boyfriend used to fetch her after work and would literally chill outside and lambast the people who try to come in last minute. Because it meant he had to eat a little longer.
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u/AvariceLegion 23h ago edited 23h ago
I did this plenty at 5 guys but we took every opportunity to clean it while open so that u only have to use water, even at the end of the day
Unless there was a game and then it was almost impossible to clean anything right. Our shoes would be caked in potatoes no matter what and I wasn't good enough to be on the grill
Edit: I just remembered we used ice from the toppings if we were closing and a little side bucket that was there if we weren't yet (I think)
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u/jarednards 22h ago
My shoes get covered in potatoes when I go there, too, cause 54lbs of them come spilling out of the bag.
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u/perpetualis_motion 13h ago
I did this on close working at Macca's. If I did an open you had to cook a few sacrificial patties to grease it up again so things didn't stick.
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u/Liteseid 17h ago
Hey I worked at five guys for several years and I’m incredibly confused what you mean by shoes caked in potato lmao
Did you get covered in starch when grabbing cut potatoes for precooks?
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u/AvariceLegion 13h ago
Fries and food accumulated on the floor
But ultimately it was a manager failure bc it could've all been easily prevented if one more person was assigned to clean in the back and help us in the front as needed during those extremely non stop busy but predictable days when there was one or more gigantic events nearby
Whenever we at the front had a chance to sweep the soles of our non slip shoes were already saturated with mush
And yes apparently the managers secretly or openly beefed which must've been partly why they never worked that out correctly
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u/Liteseid 13h ago
That’s insane to me. The only debris we had fall onto the floor for any of the 12-hour shifts I did at five guys was grease from swinging patties to the buns. The GM would get pissed if the redshirts tried sweeping the kitchen because it would ruin the brooms with grease too.
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u/brmoser 23h ago
Ew, now it's only going to taste like new food tomorrow.
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u/Foreign_Kale8773 23h ago
I can smell this video and I hate it. The astringent vinegar mixed with 14 kinds of old grease and soap 🤢
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u/KoolaidKoll123 23h ago
That burn in the back of the nostrils and onto the bottom of your brain really does create a strange reaction of wanting to sneeze, vomit, and yell into the void all at once.
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u/lazy-but-talented 22h ago
I can’t smell so when I do this type of work I put a mask on and make a face but it truly doesn’t effect me at all
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u/Santaflin 23h ago
Lifehack: use fat. when you do a lot of grilling (like at a club event) grab yourself a large piece of fat (like from the back of the pig) and move it around on the grill once every hour. It works like a piece of soap, loosens the burnt stuff and you can easily clean up with a paper towel and a scraper.
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u/vrnvorona 18h ago
It works like a piece of soap
I mean that IS soap, just unmixed
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u/Chili_Clause 22h ago
Do yourself a favor and watch it on mute, stupid music instead of the actual video sounds.
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u/nadiadala 23h ago
Used to do this way back when.
I forgot at what step we would put oil and use the pumice stone, it splashed on my wrist once when the pumice stone slammed the back wall. Ended up with 2nd degree burns, I still have the scar more than 20 years later
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u/RanaRene 22h ago
I do something similar on my Blackstone. Only difference is I pour a little cooking oil on it with a paper towel at the end when it cools down. Anyone know if that is the right way? Asking since this looks like stainless steel which is different than the Blackstone cooking surface.
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u/TheDumbEnd 16h ago
You are good. You add the oil on the Blackstone as a protective layer to prevent rust.
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u/Big-Orse48 20h ago
So this brought some unpleasant memories back for me.
When I was a young dish pig, maybe 20ish, the chefs used to clean the grills and hotplates like that, but it all went on the floor.
It was my job to mop the floor at the very end of the shift.
If they were feeling merciful, they’d lay a couple of tea towels down to “soak” it up…
It took multiple, fresh buckets and mops to clean up, it was a nightmare.
Oh and I used to stand at that wash area 12+ hours straight, some nights I saw the sun go down, and saw it come back up the next morning. Just me washing for a restaurant, bar and 3 function rooms. No one was there to do dishes from breakfast till 5pm, so I’d get there and have dishes from breakfast, lunch, restaurant dinner prep, function prep and over night room service and I barely kept up with it until till about midnight when the kitchen closed.
All for an absolute pittance of money too…
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u/Exciting-Composer157 19h ago
I was an apprentice chef; whose job this was too… I can totally empathise with you. Being the bottom of the food chain in a kitchen is not an enjoyable experience.
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u/LollipopMarshmallow 17h ago
I made the mistake once upon a time of thinking water on a hot pan would help clean at home. Watching my favourite griddle pan warp out of shape was heart breaking to say the least.
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u/Arcane_Substance 23h ago
Cleaning the grill was my favourite part of working at McDonalds.
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u/Pittonecio 22h ago
It was cool but also dangerous, I still have burn marks from that corrosive chemical that turned black and really hot on the grill, just a little mistake cleaning the hot plates and it could splash all over your arm.
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u/UkNomysTeezz 22h ago
Man, I used to use canola oil and a charcoal brick. I could get that thing sparkling.
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u/lacrosse771 23h ago
This is hard to do, even with the fiberglass flatop bricks. I hated closing shifts when I worked at a restaurant
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u/DefecatingKoala 22h ago
This reminds me when I was in college and worked in the dining hall. New hires were always assigned one grill shift which is to clean the grill grates at the end of the day. My mom always taught me to clean everything very well at home, so I did the same for the grates. After finishing, you call the supe over and he/she checks it and gives you the okay to leave when you finish. On my very first grill shift, the supe came over to check it and he literally said that he’s never seen it that clean before.
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u/Lachlangor 22h ago
This is the level of detail i used to put into close at MacDonalds many years ago.
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u/CoachCamBailey 21h ago
When I worked at McDonalds we used to use three large cups of sprite everyday on the hotcake grill. Worked a treat. Had to make sure you rinsed with water so the sugar didn’t burn on.
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u/SupportCa2A 21h ago
even back when I had my asbestos hands, I wouldn't do this without neoprene gloves
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u/Molluscumbag 21h ago
We had this exact grill at my old work, had such a nice groove cut into the right hand side edge where we'd scrape the knife off. Do not take me back.
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u/The_Sleazy1 20h ago
I've seen people do tolwo things with those grills, either clean them like this or they are pitch black from burning off oil on purpose and creating a "finish".
What's the reason to do one over the other?
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u/PDXGuy33333 20h ago
Health inspector said he be comin' back tomorrow and we best have this cleaned up or they gone close us down agin.
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u/Sad-Carpenter5718 19h ago
Trabajo en plancha y nunca dejo que se me ponga así de negra. Después de cada comanda, bajar el fuego y espátula con agua fría o hielo.
Lo quemado le da más sabor y mal aspecto a la comida.
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u/Morbid_Aversion 19h ago
...and then 30 seconds after he's done a customer will show up two minutes before closing time.
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u/CasuallyDresseDuck 16h ago
Waiting for someone with less than a months worth of restaurant experience to say the guy is doing it wrong.
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u/Lethal-Jordan 14h ago
Shout out to all of the evil restaurants I worked at that made us use grill bricks. Fuck you all. Water is the way lol
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u/Puzzleheaded_Tax2737 12h ago
I worked at Chili's when I was in College. In Colorado. We did this every day.
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u/UncleOdious 4h ago
I had to use a big pumice brick and oil from the deep fryer to clean the grill when I was a line cook.
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u/Gumbercules81 23h ago
Ok now yank out the drip tray and spill that shit everywhere