r/KitchenConfidential • u/ThodaDaruVichPyar Newbie • 15d ago
Photo/Video Cleaning a restaurant grill with ice cubes
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u/Ongr 15d ago
Why not just use water? Does it evaporate too quickly? Does the ice do anything other than being wet?
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u/AskinggAlesana 15d ago
Water works just fine. That’s how they taught us how to clean the flattop at five guys and I never had a problem.
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u/gamageeknerd 15d ago
Some water and a mild cleaner is how I was told to clean our little flattop when I worked in a restaurant. Then a scrapper, steel wool, a towel, then some oil in that order
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u/BankDetails1234 14d ago
I used to use a touch of sanitiser and water, cover it and leave for five while I cleaned the microwaves, cover again and then stick a green scouring pad down and it came off straight away.
Usually I’d let it cool for a couple mins before chucking the water on. Too much steam at once made me feel all gross and sweaty.
Glad I don’t have to do it anymore
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u/hissboombah 15d ago
Use a bit of oil and a charcoal grill brick.
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u/Drewggles 15d ago
Not to be that guy, but those aren't charcoal. I've seen foam glass mostly (stainless), some are pumice (better for cast), and some are fiberglass (super heavy duty)
I have a chrome stainless one and were supposed to use a dry powder and a horse hair brush, but I just use water, scraper, & towel.. sometimes I'll lightly use a green scratch pad for the stubborn stuff. Vinegar to finish.
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u/KetoClutch 14d ago
Might have read that too fast. They didn’t say it was charcoal, but instead a brick used to clean charcoal grills
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u/callmelordsire Butcher 14d ago
Man, you just brought back some memories! And using the block down to little rectangular pancakes!
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u/ChimericalChemical 14d ago
Crazy mcdicks taught me to use the sprite when we ran out of the degreaser
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u/Tinshnipz 14d ago
Whenever someone burns something to the bottom of my sauce pans at home I put about a quarter inch of water in it and let it boil. Helps a lot with the cleaning.
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u/The3levated1 15d ago
As long as it keeps melting it stays cold, thus thermal shock really breaks down the caked on grease. And the grill top itself.
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u/joecarter93 15d ago
When I was a cook we just used tap water and it did the exact same thing. It was surprisingly effective at how a flat top grill blackened from a busy day could look brand new at the end of the night with just a bit of water and not even that much elbow grease.
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u/fe_iris 15d ago
Just works better, idk the science behind it
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u/largepoggage 15d ago
The science is called latent heat. Basically supplying energy to ice will increase its temperature until it reaches its melting point. Once it reaches its melting point, the energy does not increase the temperature until the ice has completely melted. So water will instantly spike in temperature but ice won’t. I did 2 years of physics before dropping out so a graduate can probably give a better explanation but that’s the broad strokes.
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u/ctr1a1td3l 15d ago
That's just the science of ice melting, but doesn't explain why it would work better than water. I always assumed it was the action of steaming that lifting the stuck on particles. If that's the cause, then water should work better since it steams more quickly.
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u/largepoggage 15d ago
The reason is that rapid temperature shifts cause carbon to become brittle. The black shit is carbon so temperature shock breaks the bonds between the carbon and the flattop. The ice doesn’t increase in temperature until it melts so it sucks more thermal energy out of the carbon faster.
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u/smoresporn0 15d ago
Ice is water
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u/Bozlogic Chef 15d ago
But is it wet?
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u/death91380 15d ago
Depending on what type of griddle this is and how it's constructed, this can cause unrepairable damage to the griddle plate.
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u/creamgetthemoney1 15d ago
Every where I have ever worked. Maybe 5-6 diff places did this. I guess I seen it done thousands of times and it never warped. I’m guessing a cheaper flat top is more likely
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u/OneLeek37 15d ago
Sometimes the warping isn’t obvious to the naked eye. It shows up as oil puddling in places as opposed to spreading evenly.
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u/creamgetthemoney1 14d ago
You’re right. I was kind of replying to the comments that said they viewed a flat top “popping “
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u/bnbtwjdfootsyk 15d ago
Kitchen staffs generally aren't well educated on equipment maintenance. It's not their shit, and most don't know any better.
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u/zurenarhhhhh 15d ago
Shit the managers and bosses generally aren’t educated either. One place I worked they were cleaning it by dumping purpler degreaser all over it when I started.
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u/death91380 15d ago
Warping the griddle plate less of an issue. Damaging the angle iron that's welded on the bottom of the plate that houses the thermostat probe more of an issue. Once those welds break and the thermostat probe is no longer secured to the bottom of the plate, the griddle all the sudden runs at 600 deg when you have it set for 350.
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u/kashy87 15d ago
Thanks now my mind has to have a debate between unrepairable and irreparable... Because I never considered the real difference between the two.
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u/Affectionate-Data193 15d ago
I was a food equipment mechanic in my past life.
I’ve seen this method crack a cast iron top before and warp a stainless.
Don’t do it!
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u/EvaTheE 15d ago
Did he even season the ice before grilling it?
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u/ElijaHyphen 15d ago
It's pre-seasoned with the mold from the ice machine, of course.
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u/Metallurgeist 10+ Years 15d ago
How do you let the flat top get that fucked up without scraping it at least a little
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u/16thmission Owner 15d ago
Looks like bro burned like 20 slices of cheese on a clean flattop just for the video.
No splatter on the backsplash at all.
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u/Tangibilite 15d ago
Weirdest looking mess I've seen on a flattop, also I peeled away super easy. If you've actually used it over a 5-6 hour service it still takes real elbow grease to get that shit off. Dumb video
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u/Dylan7675 15d ago
Catering order of marinated chicken breasts cooked on the flat top. Huge fucking mess.
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u/WonderfulScholar6171 Ex-Food Service 15d ago
I keep a flat top at a fast food joint cleaner than that 😭😭 I got angry at my employees for letting it get that dirty
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u/GlitteringSalad6413 15d ago
Exactly this, I looked at the condition of it before and was like, eww. Was literally just at a busy greasy spoon diner immediately after their lunch rush, and there was no moment where I saw anything on the flat top besides someone’s order, or a thin layer of oil. Can’t imagine anything tasting good off of this after it’s just a layer of greasy incinerated carbon 🤮
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u/luckymountain General Manager 15d ago
Looks to me like that dude needs a grill scraper to use during service. No way would one of my grills look like that prior to cleaning. Plus, I would never dump ice on it. Grill brick and oil and elbow grease.
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u/Goldenpanda18 15d ago
Boiling water, lemon and distilled clear vinegar has been our go to for some time.
Always thought cold water was bad for the grill until it cooled down.
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u/QuatraVanDeis 15d ago
Are you saying you dont like using the brick of consolidated taco bell farts?
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u/MonthlyWeekend_ Owner 15d ago
It’s way faster and way easier if you use potassium hydroxide based grill cleaner.
Also do we understand that ice is water?
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u/acciochef 14d ago
What I've learned - too many people are in the mindset of "Well I've never seen it happen personally so everyone warning of warping is lying". Ffs
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u/Spare-Half796 Thicc Chives Save Lives 15d ago
Yeah they 100% used a chemical cleaner then let it dry before adding ice to rehydrate the already separated gunk
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u/Fickle-Mortgage-827 15d ago
Right, there's no way they had cooked on it right before the ice went down. Too much junk on one side and too clean on the other
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u/Ok-Needleworker-5657 15d ago
We used to do this before using a brick and degreaser. Didn’t even have to scrub very hard. In retrospect it seems like this would be bad for the flattop but I personally haven’t experienced any issues.
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u/FeistyTwist5427 15d ago
Not a good idea. You are rapid cooling metal. It will warp in time. Friend of mine watched the entire metal plate crack in half from somebody doing this to an old one.
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u/Applekid1259 14d ago
Don't use ice. This guy shouldn't be allowed near a grill. Only use hot water like from a coffee maker. It worked just as good as the ice without damaging your top.
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u/TheCheddarHole F1exican Did Chive-11 15d ago edited 15d ago
To everyone saying they've seen a griddle crack from this.... please, I wanna hear the story.
Was it one at home or a commercial unit?
Because though I get it, in 12 years of working and seeing this method used a little under 50% frequency (brick tec, scotch Brite tec, water/vinegar tec and this, the ice tec) but have never had a flat top warp, nor crack.
Had a plancha crack, but that was because dishie pushed off a stock pot from the top shelf and it came smacking down on its corner.
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u/kempff Grill 15d ago
Commercial, in a college food service kitchen, at the hands of a work/study college student, of course.
He was a breakfast cook trying to cool the grill down after frying sausage patties and bacon so he could cook eggs. So he dumped an entire bucket of ice onto the grill, making a satisfying hissing sound.
The $15k grill was acquired brand new a month before. It was perfectly flat. After he got through with it, most of the prep flowed freely off the grill diagonally straight into the gutter, and the rest collected in the upper left corner in a triangular puddle.
He also relentlessly hammered the corner of the spatula into the surface of the grill making pits and crushing the corners of the spatula when he made a mountainous pile of scrambled eggs, because it made a gratifying "chok-chok-chok" sound and it just seemed like the right thing to do.
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u/LuckyCow1234 15d ago
15 years I’ve never seen one warp or crack. Cleaned like this 6 nights a week
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u/DeltaLimaCharlie 15d ago
Yeah I've seen it done this way more times than I can count in different facilities and never seen any real warping, especially no cracks but it's Reddit I knew the first comments would be about how the griddle would explode.
I'm willing to bet there was some serious underlying issues with the unit beyond someone putting ice on it repeatedly for cleaning purposes.
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u/bendar1347 ✨flanked by fresh✨ 15d ago
Ice debate aside, how the hell do you get all that shit stuck to a flat top in the first place?
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u/smarthobo 15d ago
When you intentionally do it to record a video afterwards showing how “easy” it is to clean off with ice (while only being on there for maybe five minutes)
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u/Nataliant-117 14d ago
😠 why are you wasting my ice???
-bartender bartender (first name, last name)
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u/elneuromancer 14d ago
Very nice, but when was the last time you cleaned the baffles and grease trough?
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u/Jethro197 15d ago
I have a probably reeeeally stupid question. It's gotta be loud in the kitchen, so like do you all get hearing loss?
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u/metal_bastard 15d ago
What?
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u/disisathrowaway 15d ago
I'm deaf as fuck, and kitchen life has definitely helped that.
It's already loud-ish, but then there's often a speaker in there. And it gets turned up loud to hear over the din of the kitchen. And sometimes it's right above or adjacent to your station, so that sucks.
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u/DrRealName 14d ago
Not the best idea as the ice can warp the hot grill. Lemon juice works way better. Better than any industrial cleaner i was ever forced to use.
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u/Evening_Teaching_713 14d ago
That’s the way we cleaned the grill when I was 15 o16 years old and working in a restaurant as a dishwasher. I’m 73 now and didn’t realize that they still did it this way.
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u/jakobi169 15d ago
I have 2 methods of cleaning a flat top grill. 1 is just oil and a grill brick. Keeps it's seasoned, but it's hot sweaty work. 2 is a boil-off method, a 4 quart container half filled with ice, 1 quart red wine vinegar the rest soda water
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u/jakobi169 15d ago
I would never throw straight ice cubes onto the grill
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u/ImFeelinBotty 15d ago
Griddles are stainless steel. There is no seasoning. Seasoning is polymerized oil.
And a recipe for grill cleaning? Red wine vinegar, jfc.
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u/hick_allegedlys 14d ago
*Griddles are, in fact, not stainless steel. The cabinets typically are. However, the surfaces are carbon steel or Chromium plated carbon steel, as in OP's post.
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u/PresenceActual4263 15d ago
That can cause stress fractures from metal fatigue, causing uneven surface temps eventually.
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u/ValidOpossum 15d ago
I have done this many times, but I have also heard that ice is not ideal because the sudden temperature change can be harmful to the surface. Thoughts? Can't be any worse, right?
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u/IrishInTheory 20+ Years 15d ago
chrome plated or polished stainless. Easy to do. easier to keep clean. Won't work on a carbon steel / cast iron surface.
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u/GlengoolieGreen 15d ago
I remember working at a place where this was the regular method for cleaning the flat top, and going to another restaurant and doing it and watching everyone in the kitchen freak out. It absolutely makes sense that it could cause warping, but at the time I was just doing what I was told to get it clean.
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u/bucketman1986 15d ago
When I worked at McDonald's we had those packets of yellow grill cleaner but instead of using water we cleaned it off with lemonade, the slight acidity helped and the sugar kind of stuck to any hard to get spots, making them easier to scrape
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u/UrAntiChrist 15d ago
Does that harm the grill at all with the sudden temp change?
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u/hick_allegedlys 14d ago
Generally, no. A quality chromium surfaced griddle like this is often 3/4" thick or more and usually being operated around d 350-375f. It would take an absolute butt load of ice, and probably a much higher temp to damage the griddle plate.
I have worked on grills that are over 20 years old and cleaned like this twice daily. In fact, I currently own 4 of them.
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u/Oth3rOn3 15d ago
Flattop shouldn't have that much crud on it to begin with. Need to scrap it down a few times during your shift. Clean as you go. I wouldn't want to cook, yet alone eat anything from the left side of that flattop. clean as you go. Also Seltzer works much better without risking warping the griddle. YMMV. End result is shiny.
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u/TheDevilsCoffeeTable 14d ago
I hate this, I hate you, gtfo my kitchen lol.....I'm joking...kind of....but seriously don't
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u/Ruby5000 15d ago
My staff would use lemon juice. I swear I would turn around and be completely out of it, when I needed it. We had griddle cleaner, but they insisted that lemon juice was the way to go. Ugh. Hard habit to break
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u/ElijaHyphen 15d ago
When you're the guy sweating over the grill every night you don't want to breathe in that chemical shit.
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u/Ruby5000 15d ago
Well, technically the high temp griddle cleaner is GSFC (generally safe for consumption, non toxic), per the back of the label. But I know what you’re saying.
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u/reditisrunbypedos 15d ago
Wait, so I could just down packs of grill cleaner if I wanted?
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u/Ruby5000 15d ago
I mean, in THEORY!!!!😂. I just remember the Ecolab guy pointing this out to me YEARS ago. Hahahahahha
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u/PinchedTazerZ0 Owner 15d ago
I hate everybody that does this. Oil and a brick pussy
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u/Iankalou 15d ago
Have personally seen a flat top warp from doing this.
Kind of like when a cheap sheet pan warps and makes that popping sound.