Grand Hu$tle?!? - The Grill Daddy Pro.

Like most thirtysomething black men from the South, I pride myself on my BBQ skills. I learned most of my tricks from my Dad. Growing up, he cooked just as often as my Mom did, and this usually meant throwing any number of meats on the grill. He'd then serve them to me and my brothers, often with no veggies or even starches, yet call it a balanced meal. Not that I'm complaining of course. Now a grown a$$ed man with my own massive 5 burner gas grill, I tend to do the same year round, especially in the Winter.

If you didn't know, Winter BBQ = Kaing Sh*t!

Like father like son.

Anyways, the downside of all this cooking out is that the grill tends to get messy. You can't just throw grates in the dish washer, so this usually means standing over the sink with Brillo pads and elbow grease. With a huge grill with massive stainless steel grates, this can easily take upwards of an hour when you factor in the time needed to soak, then scrub. Not that I need to explain it to you, but cleaning grates is emphatically not Kaing Sh*t.[1]

The Grill Daddy Pro is a superscientific Nasa-developed (not really) gizmo that's supposed to spare you withered hands by using vaporized water to magically clean your grates in no time flat. You've probably seen the ads on late night TV, but the company that hawks it is so ashamed of their product they don't even provide the obligatory YouTube video ad. Sorry for breaking with the usual format, but if you need to see this for reference, peep their site.

But does it actually work?

In a word, hell naw!

Yes, I actually bought one of these about a year ago. I avoided the hustle upsell to the "Pro" model, and just bought the regular (Amateur?) version which went for a paltry $19.95 at the time (it's now $5 less). The contraption looks much like a standard grill brush, but you add water to it, fire up the grill, then the water combines with the heat to produce magical space age (ok, not really) vapors that clean your grill spotless in moments.

Sounds great, right? Well, I could explain how it actually ended up working, but thankfully there was indeed a YouTube video that captured the Grill Daddy effect far better than my words could convey. Watch.



Yep, it worked exactly like that. In short, it's no different that taking your typical grill brush, dipping it in water, and scrubbing. And no, the magical space aged (ok, not really) vapors don't make the grates spitshine clean. All they do is merely smear the gunk and decomposed caked-on food around even more.

Synopsis: Yes, I feel like a complete and utter fool for blowing $30 (with S&H) on something I knew wouldn't work in the back of my mind. I used this thing twice and banished it to the garage. I guess the silver lining is, this incident is what encouraged me to start this Grand Hu$tle feature. Sadly, there's no easier way to clean grates than soaking them in degreaser and using steel wool to scrub away the old hamburger droppings. On a somewhat related note, old hamburger droppings add a curiously nice charcoaly taste to gas-grilled food, provided the old hamburger droppings aren't more than a few weeks old. I've been using this trick for years, and nobody's gotten sick yet. Don't knock it till you try it.

Final Verdict: They got me, don't let em' get you too. Grand Hu$tle!

Question: Do you own a Grill Daddy Pro? Would you buy one now?

[1] Yeah. New phrase.