Spare the grease, spoil the BBQ

Too much TLC can spoil just about anything.

If you're too soft on your kids, you ruin them. If you always keep your plants in nursery conditions, you never harden them off. And you can be too kind to your BBQ as well.

Yes, for years I went through an almost religious cleaning ritual with my BBQ. After each cooking session, I'd be out there scrubbing it down, and getting just about every speck of grease off it. No yucky sticky pieces of six-month-old charred pineapple on my grill.

But you know something about grease? It's a rust inhibitor. Amazing. Grease on = no rust. Grease off = equals rusty sausages next time you fire it up.

Today was ridiculous. We had house church at our place and burgers for all. But it's hard to cook up a feed for a crowd when you've only got enough non-rusted space to do 3 hamburger patties at a time while the rest of the BBQ radiates its magnificent heat across acres of rust.

So I've been forced to abandon my much-loved rituals. My attempts to preserve this meeting place of metal, meat and fire ended up assisting the decline of my BBQ - there are now literally sheets of rust to be chipped off each time.

So tonight I raise my tongs to all those greasy, sticky, dirty old BBQ hotplates out there. I've learned my lesson: keep it mean.