If you use your Big Green Egg regularly, you probably have some build up of oils, ash and general gunk. It probably looks something like this.

You need to clean your Big Green Egg before this grime starts affecting the taste of your food, and the best way to do that is to burn it all down… with fire!

How to deep clean your Big Green Egg

Step 1. Scrape off the gunk.
Generally speaking, you don’t want to use chemicals, water or anything that can seep into the porous ceramic insides of your egg. What we are going to use here is a ball of heavy duty aluminum foil to scrape off as much of the sticky gunk as possible. Don’t worry about making it look spotless yet, just work on getting all of the flaky buildup from the lid and the sticky stuff around the inside of the chamber.

Step 2. Clear your ash.
You are going to conduct a “clean burn” so you’ll want to make sure you empty out your ash chamber and anything else that ends up below the grate.

Step 3. Let it burn.
I’d start with at least half of a 10lb bag of charcoal. Light it. I discovered these Walden Sure Fire Starters one day on Amazon and now use them exclusively. They work better than Fatwood and well worth the extra cost. I’ll do a side by side video soon.

Don’t bother putting the grill on top, you are going to clean that the old fashioned way (a little elbow grease). Plus, if you take it out, you can add the other half of that bag of charcoal once the fire gets going.

The key to this clean burn is to get the temperature in the 600 range and maintain it for at least an hour. There are many, many different philosophies on the temperature and duration. Feel free to use Google while you are waiting for your fire to get going.

After about an hour, I usually just close the bottom vent and let the egg cool down.

Step 4. Clean up.
Now your egg should look pretty good. Kind of like this. But you are still not completely done yet.

Once your egg is totally cool (I usually do this step the following day), it’s time to clean up the ashes. Scrape out as much ash as you can through the bottom vent as usual. Now fold up a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil to create a little spear. Use this spear to clear out all of the vent holes on the sides and in the grate. Remove the grate and brush off any remaining ash. I use a shop vac to completely remove everything loose from the bottom of the egg then replace the grate.

Step 5 clean the grill.
If you have a stainless steel grill, you can simply wash it with soapy water and a sponge. I like to place my stainless steel grill on the top rack of my dishwasher and run a normal wash cycle. This makes the grill completely spotless and squeaky clean. If you use a cast iron grill, you’ll want to make sure to use a wire brush to scrub it down after each cook. In either case, you want to scrap off all of the stuck on food particles and get back to the bare steel.

Now your Big Green Egg is clean and ready for the next load of brisket!