en BBQ care and maintenance | greatwesternbarbecue

In the fall clean your barbecue as prescribed by the manufacturer. Oil the grids and if you are not using the grill much, place them in a plastic bag and store them inside in a warm dry place. This will help to prevent rust.
If you are using or storing the barbecue near to the sea OR a swimming pool, wash the outside of the grill with fresh water from time to time. Even Stainless steel rusts. There are many different qualities of stainless. The poorer the quality the more quickly it will start to rust.
Wrapping grids in tinfoil and then baking at high heat will help to burn up stubborn bits that are hard to romove.
Using a plastic spatula used for mudding gyproc is a great tool to clean the inside of a round enamelled barbecue (Weber, Napoleon, Outdoor chef.
A clean barbecue is a happy barbecue. This does not mean you have to clean it from top to bottom everytime you are finished. The frequency depends on how much garbage is left behind after you are finished your cook. Chicken thighs are famous for dripping lots of fat and skin for instance. If your barbecue is flaming too much it could well mean that the fat is not draining properly because of the amount of garbage on the vapourizer bars or under/on the burners. The more left over grease and refuse that piles up, the more it is infusing those flavours into your food too.
Check your hose connection occasionally. For sure when you start it up in the spring and once again during the season. If you are moving your grill a lot, check it more frequently. Use a 50/50 dish soap solution and wipe it on the connections with a brush to see if there are bubbles. Tighten the connections.
Replace your hose once a year they say. I know of no one that does this but it is a good idea to replace it occasionaly. Rubber ages. If the hose is seeing daylight then replace it more often.

Too many flames !!

There could be many reasons to having a lot of flare ups. The truth is that all barbecues have them. You can only minimize their severity and frequency. For direct grilling things like burgers and sausages etc, make sure the grill is hot before you start. If the flavourizing bars are not hot the fat will drip and not vapourize immediately. This will lead to a build up of fat and cause flare ups. Give your barbecue time to warm up to cooking temperature.

If you are doing something really really greasy. Try cooking it indirectly with a pan underneath to catch the fat drippings until it is almost done. then carmelize the outer surface on high heat. I do this with chicken thighs and fatty pork. It also gives you a chance to use the wood chips inside to smoke the meat while it cooks indirectly. Great stuff.

Keep your barbecue clean of too much garbage from previous cooks.

I have people that come in asking for Volcanic stones as if this is an answer to flare ups and better taste. I can be sort of. It will cover the burners more but....these porous little rocks also collect fat in those little holes. Not only can this impart a stale flavour on your next cooks but be impossible to clean. Lava rocks can actually flare up more than "flavourizer bars". Where they do add some radiant heat, because the stones are uneven sizes they can create more hot spots. AS to adding tast...chew o one to see what it tastes like. Taste is created by evapourating fat when hitting flavourizor bars or rocks. This is why major manufacturers do not use them anymore. Not because of the cost....stones are as cheap as dirt. Still, there are folks that swear by them and all the more power to you. The engineers who designed your barbecue did not put them in.

Uneven flames or lack of heat can be caused by a few things.

If the burner on one side becomes stronger than the other it is an indication of uneven gas flow in your grill. Your burners should be clean. Take a finishing nail or something to clean the burner holes. It could be caused by spider nets. For some reason these little buggers love the smell of propane and decide to make a home there. Get a venturi brush and clean the burners inside and the orifices that deliver the gas to the burner.

If your bottle was just filled then it may have been overfilled. Bleed some out.

Regulators are not infallable. Try another regulator.

We have had lots of folks that say that from the time they bought their grill (none of ours)...if they turn on one burner it is fine, two burners ok, three burners the flame goes down, four burners there is hardly flame at all.

This is a design flaw and not repairable. Buy a better grill next time :-)