After spending a couple of hours scraping, vacuuming and doing a 20 min/ 650º burn-off, followed up by a second disassembly, more scraping, vacuuming and finally cleaning up any stains - the Memphis Pro
was back to its as new state.
Due to the work involved, I want to keep the grease build-up to a minimum. What I decided to do is to cook anything that can be cooked in a pan, in a pan. It's far easier to clean a pan + rack than accelerate
the pit build-up that will have to be dealt with later.
The last few pork shoulders I did were done using a pan and rack. It made clean-up so much easier. The cook time seemed no different vs no pan. An added benefit is the drippings. Discard or use for?
As part of the clean-up was to scrape the bottom side of the cooking grates, after the burn-off the grate seasoning was gone. By using the pan method, I am able to oil/season the grates @ each cook and not
having to worry about sticking until they regain seasoning.
If you are doing a Memphis clean-up, be sure to remove the burn pot. It exposes a lot of nasties that should be dealt with... The 4 pot screws need not be tight. They are more for locators with light clamping as
a secondary function. Too tight may strip the threads and/or make future removal difficult.
